Historic Investigation of U.S. Boarding Schools for Native Children Ends With Scathing Report
For the first time in its 248-year existence, the United States government investigated its own Federal Indian Boarding Schools, a genocidal element of the racist settler colonial project by which the country was formed. From the passage of the Civilization Fund Act in 1819 up until 1969, the U.S. government stole Indigenous children from their parents, and separated and killed family members as part of a broader policy to steal territory and sever the cultural, economic and spiritual ties between Indigenous peoples.
Children were forced into boarding schools to assimilate to the European settlers’ way of life. They lived in harsh conditions and were subjected to forms of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, death, disease, and starvation. Indigenous children dealt with a full erasure of their identity — having their physical appearance altered, names changed, and Christianity forced upon them. The justification used by the U.S. government was to “kill the Indian, save the man,” as said by Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of the first boarding school, Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
Launched by U.S. Dept. of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Indigenous person to hold the position — the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative included a lengthy fact-finding mission along and a pathway for the government to pave a road to healing.
Unicorn Riot coverage of Road to Healing Listening Sessions
“For the first time in the history of the country, the U.S. Government is accounting for its role in operating Indian boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Indian children, and working to set us on a path to heal from the wounds inflicted by those schools,” wrote U.S. Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland in the investigative report.
The investigation reviewed 103 million pages of records and produced two investigative reports profiling 417 boarding schools and 1,025 assimilationist institutions. The research found an estimated $23.3 billion in FY23 inflation-adjusted dollars was spent on the boarding school system, which “at least 18,624 Indian children entered.”
The government confirmed that at least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died while attending Federal Indian boarding schools and 74 marked and unmarked burial sites were discovered at 65 different school sites across 37 states or then-territories.
Furthermore, 127 different Treaties between the U.S. and Indian Tribes that explicitly include the Federal Indian boarding school system were listed in the final report. Also noted is the fact that the U.S. government entered into at least 59 public-private relationships with religious institutions and organizations to advance the systematically abusive and often deadly boarding school system.
A 12-stop ‘Road to Healing’ listening session tour was organized by the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. At each stop, former boarding school attendees and their family members gave personal accounts of the trauma they faced and continue to endure. Unicorn Riot covered three of those listening sessions (more below.)
The final investigation noted that the U.S. government “should fully account” for the nearly two-century boarding school system “and renounce the forced assimilation of Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Villages, and the Native Hawaiian Community.”
The report gave eight recommendations to “aid the process of collective and individual healing from the harm and violence caused by the assimilation policy,” they’re listed below:
- Acknowledge, Apologize, Repudiate, and Affirm
- Invest in Remedies to the Present-Day Impacts of the Federal Indian Boarding School System — Individual and Community Healing, Family Preservation and Reunification, Violence Prevention, Redress Indian Education, and Revitalization of First American Languages
- Build a National Memorial
- Identify and Repatriate Children who Never Returned from Federal Indian Boarding Schools
- Return Former Federal Indian Boarding School Sites
- Tell the Story of Federal Indian Boarding Schools
- Invest in Further Research
- Advance International Relationships
Read the full second investigative report below.
Read the first investigative report below.
Road to Healing Listening Sessions
Unicorn Riot reported from three of the tour stops: Onamia, Minnesota, Gila River Indian Reservation, Arizona, and Riverside, CA. See our articles and videos below.
US Department of Interior Hosts California Listening Sessions on Federal Indian Boarding Schools [Sept. 15, 2023]
US Dept. of Interior Continues Boarding School Listening Sessions, Visits Minnesota [June 3, 2023]
U.S. Department of Interior Halfway through “Road to Healing” Tour [Feb. 3, 2023]
The full list of the 12 areas visited are as follows:
- Riverside Indian School, Oklahoma (7/9/2022)
- Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, Michigan (8/13/2022)
- Rosebud Sioux Tribe, South Dakota (10/15/2022)
- Gila River Indian Community, Arizona (1/20/2023)
- Navajo Nation, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah (1/22/2023)
- Tulalip Indian Tribes, Washington (4/23/2023)
- Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Minnesota (6/3/2023)
- Sherman Indian High School, Southern California (8/4/2023)
- Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Northern California (8/6/2023)
- Alaska Native Heritage Center, Alaska (10/22/2023)
- Pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico (10/29/2023)
- Montana State University, Montana (11/5/2023)
Minneapolis based Native American Boarding Schools Healing Coalition attended the Minnesota listening session in June 2023.
“It is so brave of survivors and family members to come forward and share this truth,” said NABS CEO Deborah Parker. “And the stories are painful and the U.S. Government and churches made sure that it was painful. They made sure that students were ashamed of who they were so they would remain silent.”
In Sept. 2022, NABS held A Night of Remembrance: Honoring Boarding School Survivors and Those Who Never Made It Home event outside the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul. Watch a live stream from the remembrance below.
Cover image by Niko Georgiades for Unicorn Riot. Images via Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Reports.
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