TOPEKA — Kansas acquired land nearly a century ago that is home to some of the state’s oldest buildings, but the state now faces an ownership challenge from the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, raising questions about how history is preserved and who is represented.
The Shawnee Indian Mission State Historical Site was a Methodist boarding and manual labor school for hundreds of Native American children from across the country from 1839 to 1862. The site today hosts three historic buildings — one of which is a museum accessible to the public — surrounded by kept grounds, wooden benches, herb and native plant gardens, and a winding creek.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation wants the land conveyed to itself so it can create a site for cultural revitalization, language preservation and ceremony, said Joseph Rupnick, chairman of the nation.
The buildings on roughly 12 acres of land represent a painful history, Rupnick said at a Thursday legislative hearing.
Such boarding schools were notorious for forcing Native American children to assimilate to settlers’ way of life. Physical punishment was often levied against children, including at the Shawnee mission school, and abuse was common at government-run schools.
“The land today carries the weight of those memories,” Rupnick said.
Rupnick, who said he attended two government boarding schools, said transferring the land to tribal ownership would provide justice and healing, and it would honor the relationship between the state and sovereign nations. He envisions a collaborative preservation effort, incorporating multiple tribes that include descendants of children who went to the school.
But the state has not appeared interested in Rupnick’s vision.
“We remain the best steward for the site,” said Patrick Zollner, the executive director of the Kansas Historical Society.
The state has planned preservation efforts of its own, and it led the charge to establish the buildings as a national historic landmark in 1968. The state, the city of Fairway and the Shawnee Indian Mission Foundation announced in 2022 a plan to conduct a ground penetrating radar study to locate potential gravesites. That plan hasn’t yet come to fruition.
The state acquired the land, which sits in present-day Fairway, in 1927 by eminent domain — the first and only time it has used such a method, Zollner said. At one point, the city of Fairway wanted to build a new city hall on the grounds, according to historical records.
“Some Native Americans accepted mission education as necessary for their children to live in a white world,” one placard read. “Others resisted.”
The school was not a place for traditional Native American education. Teachers threatened and physically punished children, and life at the mission was meant “to change the way children acted and thought,” according to museum displays.
Mostly Shawnee and Delaware children went to the mission, but children from more than 20 other tribes also attended. Boys were trained to be farmers and girls were trained to be housewives, displays said.
“Children were put into American clothes. They were forbidden to speak their native languages,” a placard read. “If they arrived without an American name, they were given one. Individual achievement, not group cooperation, was praised.”
“Its purpose was explicit: to assimilate Native children, to suppress their languages, cultures and identities,” Rupnick said.
The site was home in 1855 and 1856 to offices for Kansas’ first territorial legislature, or the “Bogus Legislature,” a crucial precursor to “Bleeding Kansas,” cementing the land’s reputation as one of the state’s most prized historical sites.
Sen. Adam Thomas, an Olathe Republican, introduced Senate Bill 518 in late February on behalf of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. It marked at least the third attempt in recent years to shift ownership from the state to a tribe.
In 2024 and 2025, the Shawnee Tribe, which is headquartered in Oklahoma, supported legislation in the House to transfer ownership to its tribal government, citing improper use of the facilities and a contracted architect’s report that showed buildings in distress.
On Thursday, Rupnick relied on the same report that indicated the site’s east building desperately needs repairs, which the state has vowed to address.
Sen. Tory Marie Blew, a Great Bend Republican, saw pictures of the building, and said at the Thursday hearing “it doesn’t look safe.”
Repairs are going to cost millions, she said, questioning whether the state could take on the cost.
Opponents, including Zollner and members of the Shawnee Indian Mission Foundation, reiterated a concern that the state’s relinquishment of ownership would lead to erasure.
Foundation leaders described the tribe’s interest in ownership as a “critical threat.”
Under the agreement proposed in SB 518, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation would pay for the site’s conveyance and take over ownership in July 2028. The bill contains restrictive covenants to prohibit gaming on the land and conditions to prohibit surrounding land from being used to build a casino.
Sen. Larry Alley, a Winfield Republican, said he was concerned stable funding would cease if public ownership was eradicated.
He was not ready to advance the bill Thursday. Instead, he encouraged compromise. He proposed the two sides meet and discuss potential solutions that involve all historical perspectives.
Rupnick said he was willing to discuss the site’s future opponents, as long as any meeting is open to all federally recognized tribes that want to be involved.
“There has to be some sort of an agreement that makes sure that we are not erased, the sacrifices there were not erased. Part of that was built by our kids’ backs,” Rupnick said.
He added: “We want to make sure we have a very strong voice in whatever is adopted or pushed forward.”
Alley said he visited the site ahead of the hearing. He held up a thick packet of paper he said contained the names of children who attended the school. He said he saw names of Native children carved on the attic ceiling in one of the buildings.
“The names are preserved in record,” Alley said, “and I was very impressed with the records that are being kept for both (of) the historical events that have happened at the entire site.”
