Five Native American children who died more than a century ago at an Indian boarding school in Pennsylvania will be going home to their closest living relatives this September, the United States Office of Army Cemeteries announced in a federal notice on Thursday.

The Department of the Interior announced Friday that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland (Bay Mills Indian Community) will travel to Mille Lacs County, Minnesota on Saturday, June 3, 2023 for the seventh stop on “The Road to Healing” tour.

A bipartisan group of 27 US Senators has reintroduced legislation to investigate the federal government’s centuries-long Indian boarding school policies, which led to the attempted termination and assimilation of Native Americans from 1819 through the 1960s.  

It’s been a year since the Department of Interior released the first volume of its federal investigation into Indian boarding schools. Native News Online Senior Reporter Jenna Kunze, who’s written more than half of the 175-plus stories we’ve published on Indian boarding schools, takes a look at what’s happened since the groundbreaking report was published, and what’s on the horizon.

Opinion.Today marks one year since the release of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report by the U.S. Department of the Interior. 

Today, a group of archivists published a list identifying 87 Catholic-run Indian boarding schools that operated in 22 states through the late 1970s. The list is part of an effort to point tribal communities to the diocese, parishes, or religious orders where specific school records might be housed.

TULAILIP, Wash.—The Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) plans to launch a website this summer that will allow Native Americans to search for information on relatives who attended Indian boarding schools. 

*Trigger Warning* The situations detailed in this story and survivor testimony could be triggering and harmful to some.  

Michigan State University (MSU) hosted three Indian boarding school survivors on April 6 to share their stories to a packed auditorium of those familiar and unfamiliar with the horrors of the boarding school era. 

The Department of the Interior announced on Monday that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland (Bay Mills Indian Community) will travel to the Seattle, Washington area on Sunday, April 23, 2023 for the sixth stop on “The Road to Healing” tour.

In a landmark statement made today, the Vatican formally repudiated a centuries-old theory of church decrees that endorsed the forceful seizing of Native lands and near-total destruction of Indigenous peoples.

After 145 years, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate are done waiting.

A national survey on oral health published this week illustrated how structural racism—including intergenerational trauma stemming from Indian Boarding schools— has contributed to significant oral health disparities among Native populations.

WASHINGTON — Speaking at the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) Executive Council Winter Session on Wednesday, Deborah Parker (Tulalip), CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS), called on tribal leaders to advocate for the reintroduction of the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act.

A private liberal arts college with strong ties to the nation’s flagship Indian boarding school is looking to right a historic wrong by opening a center devoted to contemporary Native American and Indigenous studies.

The Canadian government has agreed to pay more than $2 billion to hundreds of Indigenous communities to settle a lawsuit centered around nearly a century of abuse suffered by children who attended Indian residential schools.   

Opinion. On Friday, I attended the fourth stop of The Road to Healing Tour at the Gila River Indian Community, near Phoenix, Arizona. It was part of a yearlong tour in the second phase of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative launched in June 2021 by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo). 

GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY — Tribal citizens and boarding school survivors filled the Gila Crossing Community School near Phoenix on Friday, as senior officials from the Department of Interior held the fourth listening session on the yearlong Road to Healing Tour.

Athletes from around the world will compete at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo. next week.