CROW CREEK RESERVATION, S.D. (KELO) — Members of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and beyond are remembering several children whose graves were found at an unknown cemetery. Chairman of the Crow Creek Reservation Peter Lengkeek said the discovery began last year when a water line broke in the same area. "Through finding a hand drawn blueprint of that area with the infrastructure and the roads and the buildings that were there, we had noticed that real faint in the top left corner was the word 'cemetery,'" Lengkeek said. "You could just barely make it out, but that was when we saw that. We kind of stopped digging, you know, stopped further excavating and kind of took a break and tried to figure things out." Author inspired to write story of World War I veteran Experts from the Tribal Historic Preservation Office confirmed that up to 38 graves, many children, were on site. The tribe's research shows many of the children died while attending a Catholic boarding school that was first built in the 1800s called Immaculate Conception. "Looking for further research through the Catholic Church, because it was a Catholic Church that used to oversee this boarding school, we had discovered that their archives were sent to different places here in South Dakota. We contacted those places and told them what we were looking for. The only bit of information we received back from Vermillion was an old picture that showed white crosses and graves in that area," Lengkeek said. The Crow Creek Reservation regained control of the school in the 1970s. But many were still haunted by what had happened. "Growing up in the boarding school was more or less surviving because you always had a lot of older, bigger boys. And it always was about fighting. And so, I you know, I was a little boy. That's what I ran into," Douglas Philbrick said. Dakota culture says that the spirits of children who died without proper burials remain here on Earth. On Saturday morning, a ceremony helped send them home to their loved ones. People gathered in a circle to pray and sing. Capitol tree arrives in Pierre for annual event "It's a great opportunity to be here to have them honored in a grave site," Philbrick said. "Like one of the elders said, this is a place if they want to come and feel happiness for those that have gone on, this is a place that they can do that." Efforts are still being made to provide trauma resources for impacted tribe members. For now, there is a sense of relief over the Crow Creek Reservation knowing that several children are now reunited with loved ones. "A lot of healing needs to be done just so we can grow and prosper the way the creator intended us to grow and prosper and to live our life," Lengkeek said.