- Details
- By Levi Rickert
Opinion. The final Indian boarding school report, Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative - Volume II, released on Tuesday by the U.S. Department of the Interior chronicles the dark chapter in American history that describes the pain and suffering endured by thousands of Native American children.
Authored by Interior Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Bryan Newland (Bay Mills Indian Community), the 105-page final report adds to Volume I that was released on May 11, 2022.
Findings
The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative - Volume II:
- Updates the official list of federal Indian boarding schools to include 417 institutions across 37 states or then-territories;
- Provides detailed profiles of each Federal Indian boarding school; Identifies 1,025 other institutions that did not satisfy the Interior Department’s four criteria, but tried to assimilate and educate Native youth;
- Confirms that at least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died while attending Federal Indian boarding schools;
- Confirms that there are at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 different school sites;
- Lists 127 different Treaties between the United States and Indian Tribes that implicate the Federal Indian boarding school system; and,
- Reports that the Interior Department estimates that the U.S. Government made appropriations available of more than $23.3 billion in FY23 inflation-adjusted dollars between 1871 and 1969 for the Federal Indian boarding school.
The $23.3 billion, in FY23 inflation-adjusted dollars, that resulted in almost 1,000 student deaths in an effort to assimilate Native American children is a staggering truth.
The Road to Healing
The final report also contains a section that provides an overview of The Road to Healing that was instituted by the Interior Department across Indian Country so that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) and Newland could hear first-hand testimonies from Indian boarding school survivors and Indian boarding school descendants made testimony about personal experiences.
The 12-stop Road to Healing tour began on July 9, 2022 at the Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, and concluded on November 5, 2023, at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.
The snippets of the provocative testimonies contained in the report provide a glimpse into the pain and suffering Native American youth experienced and endured while away from the families and tribal communities. Across Indian Country, the testimonies shared commonalities with reflections of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse regardless of region of country or if the school was operated by the federal government or Christian denominations
After the release of the final report, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, Jr. said in a statement that he hopes “we can begin to heal some of the generational traumas Native people still struggle with as a result of past anti-Indian policies and practices.”
“The newest research by the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative has identified 973 deceased students at federal Indian Boarding Schools across the United States, including 18 who identified as Cherokee. We know thousands and thousands of other Native children during those dark decades were taken from their families and faced the cruelties of forced assimilation, child labor and many other traumas at boarding schools,” Hoskin said.
As the principal chief said, we must begin to heal.
Recommendations
Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Newland provides the following eight recommendations in the final report “for meaningful actions that the U.S. Government may undertake to correct and heal those wrongs”:
- Acknowledge, apologize, repudiate, and affirm;
- Invest in remedies to the present-day Impacts of the Federal Indian boarding school system;
- 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; and
- Advance international relationships.
While the title of Volume II is called final, the story of Indian boarding schools and its long-term historical trauma is far from over. The recommendations are sound, but will cost money. We hope other presidential administrators will be as dedicated to healing among tribal communities as the Biden-Harris administration has been with Secretary Haaland at the helm of the Interior Department.
Congress needs to pass the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act of 2024 (Senate Bill 1723 and House Bill 7227)—which is legislation to investigate, document, and report on the histories of Indian boarding schools, Indian boarding school policies, and long-term impacts on Native communities.
The passage of the legislation will allow the Truth and Healing Commission to go beyond what the Interior Department has done over the course of the past three years.
Both Secretary Haaland, Assistant Secretary Newland and their staff should be commended for the Interior Department's work to uncover the secrets and truths of what happened behind the closed doors of Indian boarding schools.
We know healing is a lifelong process, but at least the journey has begun.
Thayék gde nwéndëmen - We are all related.
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