Report calls for U.S. government to own up to abusive boarding school history

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.

By Mary Annette Pember and Stewart Huntington | ICT

The U.S. Department of the Interior released its final investigative report Tuesday on the ugly history of federal Indian boarding schools, calling for a formal apology from the U.S. government and ongoing support to help Native people recover from the generational trauma that endures.

The second — and concluding — report from the department’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative also calls for return of lands that once housed the boarding schools, and construction of a national memorial to honor the children who were separated from their families and forced to attend schools that sought to wipe out their culture, identity and language.

The overarching theme of the boarding school initiative report and recommendations is that of healing for Indian Country, with a list of specific ways the federal government can tangibly assist tribal nations and peoples. It also reported that hundreds of additional children are now known to have died at the boarding schools and that additional burial sites had been discovered.

“The federal government — facilitated by the department I lead — took deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, said in a statement released with the report. 

“These policies caused enduring trauma for Indigenous communities that the Biden-Harris administration is working tirelessly to repair,” said Haaland, who became the first Native person to be included in a presidential cabinet when she was tapped by President Joe Biden to lead the department.

“The Road to Healing does not end with this report — it is just beginning,” she said.

During a press conference Tuesday afternoon outlining the report’s findings, Haaland appeared to choke up when discussing the impact the schools have had on Native families, including her own.

“History has shaped our nation and … for too long it's been swept under the rug,” she said. “All while communities grapple with the undeniable fallout of intergenerational trauma. I'm so proud of the strength of our team, our accomplishments here today, and where this initiative will lead us. We are here because our ancestors persevered. It is our duty to share their stories.”

The report and its recommendations were authored by Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community.

“For the first time in the history of the United States, the federal government is accounting for its role in operating historical Indian boarding schools that forcibly confined and attempted to assimilate Indigenous children,” Newland said in a statement.

“This report further proves what Indigenous peoples across the country have known for generations – that federal policies were set out to break us, obtain our territories, and destroy our cultures and our lifeways,” Newland said. “It is undeniable that those policies failed, and now, we must bring every resource to bear to strengthen what they could not destroy. It is critical that this work endures, and that federal, state and tribal governments build on the important work accomplished as part of the Initiative.”

Ruth Anna Buffalo, president of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, said the report is a good step but that more research and effort are needed.

The coalition has led efforts to bring the facts of the boarding school era out of history’s shadows, focusing its efforts on the people most impacted by the schools — especially the Native ancestors who died at the schools but remain uncounted.

“The report is important for the families of those directly affected, for those left with no answers,” said Buffalo, a citizen of the Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation. “It’s a heavy topic that deserves to be handled with love and care. ... Our ancestors were very spiritual people and I find it hard to comprehend how they were treated in such a way.”

The wounds of the era hit home for Buffalo and her family.

“Unfortunately, it’s a common thread for the First Peoples of these lands,” to have personal, lived experience with boarding school-era trauma, she said. “There is much more work that needs to be done.”

Hundreds more deaths

The Department of the Interior’s final report of the Federal Boarding School Initiative largely makes good on promises from its initial report issued in May 2022, which called for continuing the investigation into the scope of the federal boarding school system.

Haaland’s initiative and the launch of the investigation in 2021 represented the first official U.S. effort to acknowledge the existence of the boarding school era and its negative impact on Native peoples.

The initial report for the first time included historical records of boarding school names and locations, and the first official list of burial sites of children who died at the schools.

The latest report, which officials said included a review of more than 100 million pages of documents, expands on those findings to report that student deaths at boarding schools are nearly double what had previously been reported, increasing from an estimated 500 to 973.

The estimated number of identified boarding schools also increased, from 407 to 417, and the number of “other” institutions such as orphanages and asylums with similar missions of assimilation increased from 1,000 to 1,025.

Researchers verified the identity of 18,624 students who attended boarding schools from 1819 to 1969, and identified 74 marked or unmarked burial sites at schools versus 53 sites shared in the first report.

The report also estimates that the U.S. government budgeted more than $23 billion, converted to 2023 U.S. dollars, on the federal boarding school system.

Notably, the latest report contains additional findings and recommendations that are more specific than those found in the past document, and in all cases, authors stated that the actual numbers in all categories will likely increase as research continues.

The latest report comes as Congress is making progress on legislation in the House and Senate that would create a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies with authority to investigate not just federal schools but also private and church-run schools.

Deb Parker, chief executive of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, noted that the introduction to the report is a letter from Newland that cites an incident in which the U.S. military took 104 Hopi children from their families and sent them to boarding school. The U.S. Cavalry then returned to arrest 19 Hopi leaders as prisoners of war after they refused to send any more children.

“This is just one incident of hundreds or thousands,” said Parker, Tulalip Tribes. “[But] when one amplifies this across the country, it tells a horrific story. It’s devastating not only to children but also to communities and their families.”

Parker said NABS has been interviewing boarding school survivors across the country as part of a project with the Department of the Interior, funded by the Mellon Foundation and Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“The stories are mostly devastating in nature,” she said. “It’s so concerning that for so many, this is the first opportunity they have had to tell their stories and receive some sort of acknowledgement of the pain they’ve endured.”

She continued, “We are reeling from these stories and trying to understand our next steps. I believe this second volume of the DOI report is incredibly important in helping guide us in taking these next steps. It’s important to listen to survivors and hear their recommendations directly…. I think we’re headed in the right direction.”

A series of recommendations

The latest report outlines a series of eight recommendations that appear to be guided, at least in part, by steps that Canada took in response to that country’s Indian residential school history, which closely mirrors the U.S.

Unlike the U.S., however, which has only recently recognized such a history existed, Canada began its work with an apology in 2006 before moving on to reparations and other substantive actions.

The U.S. commission would be patterned after the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was created as part of the 2008 Indian Settlement Act. Canada eventually paid to residential school survivors more than $3 billion in reparations, which are notably absent from the U.S. initiative’s recommendations.

When asked about financial reparations, Newland said, “During the Road to Healing tour when we were listening to survivors about their experiences and their families, they’re weren’t a lot of specific calls for compensation or damages to individuals. What we did hear a lot was about the need for real resources for community based healing, language revitalization and things we’ve highlighted in the report. There’s a lot of work to yet to be done. It’s important to turn these broad recommendations into concrete steps; that’s got to be the endeavor of our entire government.”

Haaland added, “There are trust and treaty obligations that our government made with tribes, and we need to uphold those."

The Canadian government also collected survivor stories, provided traditional and mainstream mental health supports, issued a government apology, collected and made boarding school records publicly available and helped locate unmarked graves of children who died and were buried at the schools.

The U.S. Indian boarding school system served as a model for Canada and operated far more schools, with 417 schools compared to 139 in Canada.

Haaland and Newland traveled the country on an historic “Road to Healing” tour, with 12 stops that provided Indigenous survivors the opportunity to share for the first time with the federal government their experiences in federal Indian boarding schools. Transcripts of the tour, which finished in late 2023, are available on the Federal Boarding School Initiative website.

The Interior Department also launched an oral history project documenting and making public experiences of generations of boarding school survivors. Funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is interviewing survivors for what will be a collection of first-person narratives that will be shared with the public.

“This report further proves what Indigenous peoples across the country have known for generations – that federal policies were set out to break us, obtain our territories, and destroy our cultures and our lifeways,” said Newland. “It is undeniable that those policies failed, and now, we must bring every resource to bear to strengthen what they could not destroy. It is critical that this work endures, and that federal, state and tribal governments build on the important work accomplished as part of the Initiative.”

Ongoing efforts

The report also states that the Department of the Interior is working with tribes to repatriate or protect human remains and funerary objects from Indian boarding schools sites located on U.S. government lands, and will do so under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The efforts will include remains at the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where nearly 180 students who died at the school are buried. The site is controlled by the U.S. Army.

The Land Back recommendation will also be ongoing, with calls for return to tribes of the Indian lands that the government provided to religious organizations and states for the purpose of building schools. In many cases, the lands were to have reverted back to tribal ownership if organizations stopped operating schools.

Churches and other organizations, however, continue to hold some of this land today long after boarding schools closed. In an independent investigation, ICT found that Catholic entities may continue to hold more than 10,000 acres of these lands.

The report also identifies 127 treaties made between the federal government and tribes in which boarding schools figure highly, and calls for the U.S. to make good on its promises in treaties and other legislation to provide quality education for Native Americans as well as essential Indigenous language preservation curriculum.

‘Anger and hurt’

Reactions from tribal leaders were mixed, though many praised the report.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. noted that Oklahoma had more federal Indian boarding schools than any other state, with 87, and that 18 of the children known to have died at boarding school identified as Cherokee.

“The operation of federal Indian boarding schools in this country marked a troubling chapter in our history,” Hoskin said Tuesday in a statement. “We have witnessed, in recent years, a renewed effort to have transparent and difficult discussions about this country’s history of operating Native American boarding schools, and much of this effort is a result of Secretary Haaland’s ongoing investigation into the government’s past oversight of these federally operated facilities.

He continued, “This report is long overdue, but it is also appreciated. We hope that the next steps beyond this federal investigation help account for the injustices that have occurred and that 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.”

Peter Lengkeek, the chairman of the Great Crow Creek Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, welcomed the report but said the wounds from the boarding school era remain deep.

“I believe it is a step in the right direction,” he said. “But coming into the tribal office I stopped different [individuals] and asked their opinions. ‘If someone was to come to you and say they want to make it right with tribes, what would that look like?’ The common (answer) was, ‘It doesn't matter what they do, I still have this anger and hurt in my heart.’”

The pain from the era is still alive on Lengkeek’s reservation, which is not far from the St. Joseph Indian School in Chamberlain, South Dakota. The school is still in operation but no longer operates under the policies of the boarding school era.

“My brothers… went to Vietnam after and fought in war. To this day what bothers them is St. Joseph Indian School, not the war. The school. I can’t imagine what they went through for that to be worse than war,” Lengkeek said.

Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, praised Haaland and Newland for pulling the report together.

"I think this is the beginning of a longer road of healing and reconciliation," Barnes said. "Speaking as a Native person, I know how my own individual life was affected by my family members’ experience at boarding schools. I can see how those boarding schools have caused ongoing trauma in Native communities. I find that learning more about the boarding school past gives me a lot of forgiveness that I didn’t know I needed to have for those in our communities who struggle. It gives me space to find some forgiveness and understanding on how they got to the place they’re at."

Amy Sazue, executive director of Remembering the Children, a memorial project for children who died at the now-shuttered Rapid City Indian Boarding School, thanked Haaland for the investigation.

“I'm just really filled with gratitude for her and remember when she said that [the Department of the Interior] was a tool used against our people for a long time,” said Sazue, Sicangu Lakota. “So having her in that position has really been a good example of what happens when we have representation in those places.”

In Minneapolis, LeMoine LaPointe, a Sicangu Lakota elder who works as an Indigenous cultural consultant fostering positive conversations in Native communities, acknowledged the difficulties inherent in the report — and its release.

“This country has never addressed the horrendousness of the boarding school era. It’s hard to swallow the truth,” he said. But he said Natives can lead the way forward to “a more positive and beneficial place.”

“Despite the genocide and despite the historical trauma, we, Native people, are still the repository of healing,” he said. “Within our Indigenous knowledge we have systems of healing that we can develop for ourselves and also help the broader community.”

Muscogee (Creek) Nation spokesperson Jason Salsman said the report stirs conflicting emotions.

“The atrocities and horrors of the government-led attempt to erase Native people and culture through these institutions is still a very real impact today,” Salsman said. “But there is also a feeling of triumph and recognition. We have overcome, and are still here. Our culture, our language and our ways live on and remain strong.”

Report highlights

The second and final investigative report released Tuesday includes eight recommendations from Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, who authored the report. Here are recommendations:

Apology: The U.S. government should acknowledge its role in a national policy of forced assimilation of Native children and issue a formal apology to individuals, families and tribes that were harmed by U.S. policy.

Investments: The U.S. should invest in tribal communities in five key areas: individual and community healing; family preservation and reunification, including supporting tribal jurisdiction over Indian child welfare cases; violence prevention on tribal lands; improving Indian education; and working to revitalize First American languages.

A national memorial: The U.S. government should establish a national memorial to acknowledge and commemorate the experiences of Native people within the federal Indian boarding school system.

Repatriations: The government should identify children interred at school burial sites and help repatriate their remains.

Return school lands: The government should work to return the federal Indian boarding school sites to tribal ownership.

Tell the story: The government should work with institutions to educate the public about federal Indian boarding schools and their impact on communities.

Further research: The government should study how policies of child removal, confinement and forced assimilation have impacted generations of families, particularly the present-day health and economic impacts.

Advance international relations: The government should work with other countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand with their own similar but unique histories of boarding schools and assimilationist policies, to determine best practices for healing and redress. 

ICT journalists Shirley Sneve, Amelia Schafer and Felix Clary contributed to this report.

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