The remains and stories of Native American students are being reclaimed from a Pennsylvania cemetery

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This photo provided by the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center shows the 1892 student body of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School assembled on the school grounds in Carlisle, Pa. (John N. Choate via AP)

CARLISLE, Pa. – The Carlisle Indian Industrial School had not yet held its first class when Matavito Horse and Leah Road Traveler were taken there in October 1879, drafted into the U.S. government’s campaign to erase Native American tribes by wiping their children's identities.

A few years later, Matavito, a Cheyenne boy, and Leah, an Arapaho girl, were dead.

Persistent efforts by their tribes have finally brought them home. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma received 16 of its children, exhumed from a Pennsylvania cemetery, and reburied their small wooden