Developers seek approval to locate businesses, housing in Wakarusa River floodplain

The board of regents of Haskell Indian Nations University and a prominent Indigenous studies professor urged developers of a proposed commercial and residential project to deploy ground-penetrating radar on the site to search for children who could be buried in unmarked graves.

In the late 1880s and the 1900s, Native American children from many tribes were moved to the off-reservation boarding school in Lawrence known as Haskell Institute in an effort to strip them of their tribal identity and assimilate them into white culture. Haskell was part of a federal system of schools where children were subjected to physical and emotional abuse. Students who died at boarding schools were buried in cemeteries or unmarked sites.

The New Boston Crossing’s proposed project would be on 175 acres south of the Haskell campus near the Wakarusa River. The development blueprint had to be redesigned to reduce impact on a wetlands area following reviews by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The original plan was approved in 2023 by the Lawrence City Commission and the city-county planning commission despite environmental and cultural objections.

Landplan Engineering of Lawrence, which is working for New Boston Crossing, outlined at a public meeting this week elements of the new plan for a business district and single-family homes, townhouses and apartments.

Brittany Hall, president of the Haskell National Board of Regents, said in an interview the Haskell board demanded developers make use of ground-penetrating radar to search for the bodies of children who could be buried in unmarked sites within the construction zone. The exploratory investigation should be overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in collaboration with tribal nations, the board said.

“Indigenous children utilized the Wakarusa River corridor as a means to escape Haskell Institute,” Hall said.

Dan Wildcat, a professor of Indigenous and American Indian studies at Haskell, said the Wichita-based developers had a responsibility to engage with hundreds of tribes — not just the four recognized tribes in Kansas — to gather information about children who never returned home from Haskell Institute.

Those conversations should occur before city, state and federal officials allow heavy construction equipment to transform that part of the river valley, he said.

“We heard stories, you know, about children who went missing,” Wildcat said. “We don’t know if they ever made it home. We have received, in the past, information from tribes. They believe they have children, or people associated with their tribes, who may be in that area, obviously in an unmarked burial.”

He said he was skeptical government agencies would direct the development company to deploy radar technology to look for possible burial sites unless pressured by tribes.

Indigenous artifacts

During the informational meeting on the project, an archaeology consultant who performed spot checks of the proposed construction site at behest of the Kansas State Historic Preservation Office said he found stone chip debris and discarded tools at several locations.

Tod Bevitt of Buried Past Consulting in Oskaloosa said his limited examination of the development property “didn’t find any bodies.”

“We went out and surveyed and found a number of cultural resources. We found several prehistoric, pre-contact period artifact scatters,” Bevitt said. “From my perspective, I would not want something to impact, disturb, destroy — especially — human remain burial areas. If that is something that is there, that would be raised to a very high level of concern.”

Bevitt said that if human remains were uncovered during construction that information was required by state law to be promptly reported to law enforcement.

Haskell Indian Nations University maintains a cemetery on campus with more than 100 graves of children who died in the early years of the Lawrence boarding school opened in 1884.

In 2022, the U.S. Department of the Interior released an initial report indicating American Indian boarding schools were responsible for hundreds of student deaths between 1869 and 1969. The Interior Department’s final boarding school report in July confirmed at least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died while attending federal Indian boarding schools.

President Joe Biden issued a formal apology last week to Indigenous communities across the country for the role the U.S. government had in creation and operation of the system of boarding schools.

Wetlands intrusion

Phil Struble, president of Landplan Engineering, said the revised preliminary plat and zoning requests to be considered by the City of Lawrence would reduce the area of wetlands disturbed by construction to slightly more than 3 acres from the original total of 7.5 acres. The development site is southeast of the intersection of U.S. Highway 59 and the South Lawrence Trafficway.

“We think we made some real strides on how to alleviate how much of the wetlands on this project we disturb,” Struble said. “The project still has a lot to do.”

The Lawrence/Douglas County Planning Commission and the Lawrence City Commission must review the revised plans, which also must be considered by the federal Corps of Engineers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and agencies of the state of Kansas.

State Sen. Marci Francisco, a Democrat who represents Lawrence, said she was concerned about environmental ramifications of building in the Wakarusa floodplain and the impact of a large development in an area that could hold unmarked remains.

She said the risk of locating housing in areas open to flooding was made clear during the recent catastrophic storms in North Carolina. The commercial elements of the New Boston Crossing development would likely result in more empty storefronts in other parts of Lawrence, she said.

“I think just as you avoid the floodplain, you should avoid a graveyard,” the senator said. “Especially a graveyard that comes with so many questions and concerns about Haskell.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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