Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report
On June 22, 2021, Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, directed Department of the Interior agencies to investigate the Federal Indian boarding school system to examine the scope of the system, with a focus on the location of schools, burial sites, and identification of children who attending the schools. In May 2022, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report was released.
In a memo contained at the opening of the report to Secretary Deb Haaland, Bryan Newland, the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, wrote:
"This report shows for the first time that between 1819 and 1969, the United States operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states (or then-territories), including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii. This report identifies each of those schools by name and location, some of which operated across multiple sites.
This report confirms that the United States directly targeted American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children in the pursuit of a policy of cultural assimilation that coincided with Indian territorial dispossession. It identifies the Federal Indian boarding schools that were used as a means for these ends, along with at least 53 burial sites for children across this system- with more site discoveries and data expected as we continue our research.
The report highlights some of the conditions these children endured at these schools and raises important questions about the short-term and long-term consequences of the Federal Indian boarding school system on Indian Tribes, Alaska Natives, and the Native Hawaiian Community. I am recommending further investigation to examine those consequences.
This report places the Federal Indian boarding school system in its historical context, explaining that the United States established this system as part of a broader objective to dispossess Indian Tribes, Alaska Native Villages, and the Native Hawaiian Community of their territories to support the expansion of the United States. The Federal Indian boarding school policy was intentionally targeted at American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children to assimilate them and, consequently, take their territories. I believe that this historical context is important to understanding the intent and scale of the Federal Indian boarding school system, and why it persisted for 150 years.
This report, as I see it, is only a first step to acknowledge the experiences of Federal Indian boarding school children. It notes a desire from people across Indian Country and the Native Hawaiian Community to share their individual and family experiences within the Federal Indian boarding school system and the resulting impacts today. This report also presents an opportunity for us to reorient our Federal policies to support the revitalization of Tribal languages and cultural practices. This reorientation of Federal policy is necessary to counteract nearly two centuries of Federal policies aimed at the destruction of Tribal languages and cultures. In turn, we can help begin a healing process for Indian Country and the Native Hawaiian Community, and the United States, from the Alaskan tundra to the Florida everglades, and everywhere in between."
Interior Secretary Haaland Remarks on Abuse of Native American Children
Podcast
- American Genocide: The Crimes of Native American Boarding SchoolsAmidst an unprecedented federal investigation into hundreds of Native Boarding Schools and the 100,000+ children these institutions forcibly removed, one school has become the epicenter of controversy in America’s attempt to reckon with its dark history: Red Cloud Indian School. While today some see the school as a positive presence in the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota Tribe, others cite it as a perpetrator of generational trauma. While the U.S. government is starting to admit its culpability in a church-facilitated campaign of genocide, the quest for justice is exposing tension throughout the Native community. In this new podcast from IllumiNative, series hosts Crystal Echo Hawk (Pawnee) and Lashay Wesley (Choctaw) hit the ground in Pine Ridge, South Dakota to chronicle the actively-developing situation for themselves, covering every twist and turn in this true crime story about the compounding intergenerational pain of Native American boarding schools and whether it’s possible for a community, Native peoples, and the United States to achieve truth, healing, and reconciliation.