BY RADIO IOWA CONTRIBUTOR

Some 30.000 Iowans say they will likely lose their housing due to eviction in the next two months, according to a recent federal survey.

Renters and service providers are bracing for a surge in evictions, as a federal moratorium is slated to expire next week.

The eviction orders are expected to have an impact on Iowans’ ability to find housing for years to come, according to Ericka Petersen of Iowa Legal Aid.

Petersen says, “Even the filing an eviction, even if it doesn’t actually…don’t even end up being evicted, the filing of an eviction dramatically decreases your opportunities for future housing. So it’s huge.”

With affordable housing shortages in communities across the state, Petersen says some renters are finding themselves at a loss for where to go next.

“Other states have turned to things like expungements of eviction records, but we don’t have anything like that here right now,” Petersen says, “and so I think that it is going to harm and does harm a lot of people.”

Qualifying Iowans can get rental assistance to help pay down their bills. More information is available by calling 855-300-5885.

(By Kate Payne, Iowa Public Radio)

BY RADIO IOWA CONTRIBUTOR

The caravan heading west with the remains of nine Native American children who died over a century ago at a Pennsylvania boarding school stopped at the Meskawki Settlement in Tama Thursday.

The nine children, from the Sioux Tribe, were among hundreds of Native Americans forcibly removed from their homes and sent to the school where their hair was cut, their names were changed and they were punished for speaking in their Native language. Yolanda Pushetonequa of the Meskwaki Tribe says the settlement was honored to be a stopping point, especially considering the Sioux and the Meskwaki weren’t always allies.

“Right now, it’s a generation of healing together and having unity as we confront a lot of these traumatic experiences that we’ve all had as indigenous people,” she says.

The gathering began with a prayer circle, followed by a shared meal and remarks from a representative of the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council who has been coordinating the burials in South Dakota. Pushetonequa says it was a time of intergenerational healing.

“A lot of the social issues that we face, they derive directly from what happened to those children at the boarding schools and then came back home with that trauma with them,” she says. “It’s not just something that you can shake off.”

Jenna Thomas, who lives on the Meskwaki Settlement, has a family connection to the Rosebud Sioux. Thomas says her family knew of children who died at government-run boarding schools, but never what happened to some of them.

“I’m really happy at moments that we’re able to finally get this closure and that they get to come home, but at the same time when you think about where they were and how far away from home they were, what they might have witnessed or endured while they were there…that really makes me sad,” she says. “And it hurts.”

The Winnebago Tribe will host a ceremony in Sioux City this (Friday) morning for relatives of the nine boarding school students, who died between 1890 and 1910. The Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was closed in 1918. U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has said her department will investigate the 367 boarding schools where as many as 7,800 children from nearly every tribal nation in the country were taken for assimilation.

(By Ken Huge, KFJB, Marshalltown)