About this episode

Published September 9th, 2026, 06:43 pm

For more than a century, the U.S. government took Native children from their homes, cut their hair, forbade their languages and set out to erase who they were. It called them schools and Michigan had several. Reporting on them in 2021, Odawa Anishinaabe journalist Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau found 10 of her own relatives in the enrollment records — her great-grandfather, his siblings, and generations before them. Her book, "What the Ancestors Say," is out Sept. 29. Nadeau joins host Robyn Vincent to talk about what she found, who told her their stories, and what a state does with a history it has barely acknowledged. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org

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The Metro

The schools built to erase her family

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32m