Report catalogs abuse of Native American kids
An initial investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland cataloged some of the brutal conditions that Native American children endured at more than 400 boarding schools that the federal government forced them to attend between 1819 and 1969. The inquiry was an initial step, Haaland said, toward addressing the “intergenerational trauma” that the policy left behind.
An Interior Department report released Wednesday highlighted the abuse of many of the children at the government-run schools, such as beatings, withholding of food and solitary confinement. It also identified burial sites at more than 50 of the former schools, and said that “approximately 19 federal Indian boarding schools accounted for over 500 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian child deaths.” The number of recorded deaths is expected to grow, the report said.
The report is the first step in a comprehensive review that Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, announced in June after the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of children who attended similar schools in Canada provoked a national reckoning there.
Beginning in 1869 and until the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were taken from their homes and families and placed in the boarding schools, which were operated by the government and churches.
There were 20,000 children at the schools by 1900; by 1925, the number had more than tripled, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
The discovery of the unmarked graves in Canada last year — 215 in British Columbia, 750 more in Saskatchewan — led Haaland to announce that her agency would search the grounds of former schools in the United States and identify any remains. Haaland's grandparents attended such schools.
“The consequences of federal Indian boarding school policies — including the intergenerational trauma caused by the family separation and cultural eradication inflicted upon generations of children as young as 4 years old — are heartbreaking and undeniable,” Haaland said during a news conference. “It is my priority to not only give voice to the survivors and descendants of federal Indian boarding school policies, but also to address the lasting legacies of these policies so Indigenous peoples can continue to grow and heal.”
The 106-page report, put together by Bryan Newland, the agency's assistant secretary for Indian affairs, concludes that further investigation is needed to better understand the lasting effects of the boarding school system on American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Assimilation was only one of the system's goals, the report said; the other was “territorial dispossession of Indigenous peoples through the forced removal and relocation of their children.”
Newland said there is not a single American Indian, Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian in the country whose life has not been affected by the schools.
“Federal Indian boarding schools have had a lasting impact on Native people and communities across America,” said Newland. “That impact continues to influence the lives of countless families, from the breakup of families and tribal nations to the loss of languages and cultural practices and relatives.”