New boarding school database helps Native families find ancestors
Like this?
Log in to share your opinion with MPR News and add it to your profile.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. In Canada, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.
This story comes to you from ICT through a partnership with MPR News.
The Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has launched the first-ever comprehensive digital database of Indian boarding schools that links information from more than one source.
Create a More Connected Minnesota
MPR News is your trusted resource for the news you need. With your support, MPR News brings accessible, courageous journalism and authentic conversation to everyone - free of paywalls and barriers. Your gift makes a difference.
The database, the National Indian Boarding School Digital Archive, is accessible to the public, with a list of schools and students that dates back nearly 150 years. It was released May 21 after years of research.
Unlike other digital collections, the archive also includes an advisory that the content may trigger secondary trauma or PTSD, and offers resources for self-care and organizations that can help.
“Indian Boarding Schools hold a complex and often painful legacy in American history,” the coalition said in a press release announcing the archive’s release.
“For generations, Native American children were forcibly removed from their families and communities and sent to these schools, where they were subjected to cultural assimilation and abuse,” according to the statement. “The repercussions of this traumatic chapter continue to reverberate through Native communities to this day.”
For now, the archives include information on nine of the federal Indian boarding school, including the Chemawa Indian School in Oregon, Pipestone Indian Training School in Minnesota, Flandreau Indian School in South Dakota, Stewart Indian School in Nevada, Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial School in Michigan, Fort Bidwell Indian School in California and Mt. Edgecumbe Boarding School in Alaska.
In addition to the names of students, the archives list documents found in student files, photos, evaluations, institution finances and other information documents about the schools. Work continues so that additional schools can be added to the database as the information is gathered.
“It’s a huge undertaking but we’re here to do this work and are committed to our communities and tribal partners,” Fallon Carey, the coalition digital archives assistant, told ICT. Carey is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
At least 60,000 Native children had attended the federal boarding schools by 1925, either voluntarily or by force. Many died at the school and never made it home.
Elusive information
Even the most basic information about the children who attended the schools has long been difficult to locate.
The scattered nature of records kept by federal, academic, church and private archives has made accessing large portions of information difficult, according to Deb Parker, the coalition’s chief executive. Parker is a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes.
"This initiative marks a significant milestone in NABS commitment to truth, healing, and justice," Parker said in a statement provided by the coalition. "The majority of all Indian boarding school records are currently not available to the public. By making these records accessible, we are taking a big step toward honoring the history and strength of Native peoples and building a more just and equitable future."
Even information on the number of schools has been elusive. Last year, the coalition released the most up-to-date list gathered through the organization’s ongoing research. The list of 523 schools is available on the organization’s website.
The newly released archives include information about the various schools such as location, years of operation, and the entities that operated them. They also include profile information about the more than 550 tribal nations in the U.S.
The archives also provide links to several other boarding school archival sources, including the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project, the Carlisle School Digital Resource Center and the National Archives and Records Administration.
The coalition partnered with the University of Minnesota and used the university’s resources for organizing the information. The coalition website includes tutorial videos for help in navigating the archives.
Focus on student files
Details vary from school to school but can be hidden in voluminous records.
For instance, the records for Pipestone Indian Training School alone represent more than 90,000 pages of information.
Officials said that gathering documentation for up to two schools typically requires an eight-week trip for two archivists, who use a special overhead scanner to produce high-resolution PDF files of the records. The files are then analyzed, catalogued and uploaded to the archive.
Coalition leaders first envisioned such an archive more than 10 years ago and began fundraising for the project. The current archive represents more than four years of work dedicated to compiling and digitizing 39 student indexes and expanded records from the nine schools.
The U.S. sources include the National Archives and Records Administration as well as information from several organizations that partner with the coalition.
The coalition’s work is driven by tribal communities according to Carey.
“Our tribal partners requested that we focus first on digitizing student files,” Carey said. “There is so much more work to come.”
Currently, Carey is a team of one at the coalition, but after a recent grant of $500,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the organization will soon be hiring more people to work on the archive.
“Even if we had 12 full time archivists who worked for the rest of our lives, we’d never finish digitizing all the boarding school documents,” Carey said.
‘A long journey’
Community reaction to the project has been positive so far, according to Joannie Suina, director of communications for the coalition. Suina is a citizen of the Pueblo of Cochiti.
“We’ve gotten several phone calls from people saying, ‘I’m so grateful I was able to find my grandparents records,’ ‘It feels so good to connect with our roots,’ and, ‘Now we have a centralized resource to utilize,'" Suina said.
The archive is an ongoing project.
“It’s going to be a long journey going forward - the archive is a powerful tool and there will be some kinks to work out,” Carey said. “We’re asking people to give us a little grace as we move forward.”
Coalition leaders are continuing to seek sponsorship from members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate for legislation that would create a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act.
The proposal would create a commission that could locate church and government records, document ongoing impacts from U.S. boarding schools and provide a final report with recommendations for justice and healing.
The proposed legislation was initially co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and then-U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo. Haaland is now the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Sponsors in the House now include Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, Chickasaw, of Oklahoma and Democrat Sharice Davids, Ho-Chunk, of Kansas.
“The NIBSDA database really allows us to be a hub for folks to access a new tool and resource to find their relatives and in some cases, bring (their remains) back home,” Suina said.
“We deserve access to these records. This will help create paths towards supporting generational healing for survivors and their descendants.”
