Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
CARLISLE - The arc of history bent a little bit here Saturday, and hopefully for the good. An assembly of Native American visitors, Dickinson College leaders and curious Carlislers assembled to bless ground that will someday play host to the new Jim Thorpe Center for the Futures of Native Peoples. “We should not just come build on this site here at Dickinson. We should speak to it first and explain our intentions,” architect Johnpaul Jones wrote in a blessing presented at Saturday’s ceremony. “We are making a pact with a living thing, giving it a new purpose. We ask the site not to be angry when we dig in it and remove earth. And thank it for its sacrifice.” Jones, the lead design consultant for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C. and himself of Native American descent, is part of the design team for the Thorpe Center. The intention is the building will become a premier resource for cultural revitalization, intergenerational knowledge-sharing and indigenous-focused research from its perch on West High Street. In that way, its leaders hope, they can balance the name “Carlisle” as a place historically identified with trauma and cultural erasure, with a present-day identity seen as clearly contributing to the well-being of Native Americans for generations to come. About 20 tribal leaders and other Native Americans from across North America attended the blessing. They included three granddaughters and one great-granddaughter of Thorpe, the most-celebrated of the many world-class athletes who passed through Carlisle and an icon in Native American history. Mary Thorpe, a Thorpe granddaughter from Jones, Okla., said she is thrilled her ancestors’ name headlines the effort. It showcases both his, and her peoples’ resilience, she believes. “There’s a lot of emotion that you go through coming up here (to Carlisle), you know?” Mary Thorpe, 44, said. “You’re a survivor of children that were meant to be broken. You come back here and you’re trying to heal some of that generational trauma so the next generation doesn’t have to maybe fight as hard as we are still trying to today. “So it’s an honor and it’s a privilege to be standing here,” The backstory For most of the last 150 years, Carlisle - as a place - has carried a reputation for trauma to Native Americans. It is best-known to them as the place where the federal government set up the prototype for a system of boarding schools aimed at assimilating young tribe members into mainstream American culture. And assimilation, by 19th Century standards, meant attempting the complete erasure of their native cultures. At Carlisle alone, some 7,800 Native American students were housed at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School between between 1879 and 1918. It’s not an overstatement to say, that the boarding school system “completely changed our communities forever,” said Amanda Cheromiah, the executive director of Dickinson’s existing Center for the Futures of Native Peoples. But the new building, in a way, she and others noted, is a one-century-later celebration of survival. The Thorpe Center will celebrate the culture the federal government once sought to erase through symposiums, art exhibits, ceremonial gatherings and ongoing research efforts. Saturday’s ground blessing, led by Perry Martinez, a tribal council member of the San Ildefonso Pueblo of New Mexico, was offered as way to start its journey correctly. In many Native American traditions, the Earth is seen as a living entity with its own spirit. Blessing the ground, then, reaffirms humanity’s place within a larger, interconnected web of life. Construction is slated to begin in the summer of 2026. As Jones put it, in his message for the day: “Native American people who will use this new facility have traveled a difficult path. This will be a welcoming, healthy and good spirited place.” Mary Thorpe was a little more blunt. “It just shows that Pratt didn’t succeed in killing the Indian, you know?” she said after Saturday’s prayers and chants subsided. “We’re still here.”
