Investigation Reveals at Least 973 Native American Children Died in U.S. Boarding Schools
At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system, according to a recent investigation by the Interior Department. Officials are now calling on the government to apologize for the schools’ atrocities.
Unmarked graves and tragic deaths
The investigation, commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, discovered marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools where Native American children were forcibly assimilated into white society. The findings did not specify the exact causes of death, but officials cited disease and abuse over 150 years ending in 1969. Some children may have died after falling ill at school and being sent home.
Painful testimonies and federal policies
These findings follow a series of listening sessions held by Haaland over the past two years. Former students recounted harmful and degrading treatment by teachers and administrators while separated from their families.
“The federal government took deliberate and strategic action through 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,” said Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary. “Make no mistake, this was a concerted attempt to eradicate the quote, ‘Indian problem’—to either assimilate or destroy native peoples altogether.”
The grim history of boarding schools
Initial findings two years ago estimated that over 500 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died at these schools. The federal government supported these schools through laws and policies passed in 1819, with many still operating into the 1960s. Native American children were given English names, subjected to military drills, and forced to perform manual labor such as farming, brick-making, and railroad work.
Heartbreaking stories from survivors
During the listening sessions, former students shared tearful recollections of being punished for speaking their native language, locked in basements, having their hair cut, and being subjected to solitary confinement, beatings, and food deprivation. Many are left with only basic vocational skills, limiting their job prospects.
Donovan Archambault, 85, former chairman of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, recounted his mistreatment at boarding schools from age 11. Prevented from speaking his native language and forced to cut his hair, Archambault turned to alcohol before turning his life around decades later. “An apology is needed. They should apologize,” he said. “But there also needs to be a broader education about what happened to us. To me, it’s part of a forgotten history.”
Calls for a formal apology and reparative actions
Haaland expressed her personal sorrow but emphasized the need for a formal government apology. She did not say whether she would press President Joe Biden to issue one. Interior Department officials recommended government investments in programs to help Native American communities heal from the traumas caused by boarding schools. This includes funding for education, violence prevention, and revitalization of indigenous languages.
The schools and related assimilation programs received $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending. Religious and private institutions, which ran many of these schools, received federal money as partners in the campaign to “civilize” Indigenous students. By the 1920s, most Indigenous school-age children—about 60,000—were attending boarding schools run by the federal government or religious organizations.
“These are stolen generations of children,” said Deborah Parker, CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. “It’s about time the federal government speaks so honestly and candidly about the impact.”
Haaland noted that her grandparents were “stolen from their parents, culture, and communities” at age 8 and forced to live in a Catholic boarding school until they were 13. Some children were as young as 4.
More than 200 government-supported schools had religious affiliations. The coalition identified over 100 additional schools run by churches without federal support. U.S. Catholic bishops apologized in June for the trauma experienced by children in these schools, and in 2022, Pope Francis apologized for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with boarding schools in Canada.
Pending legislation before Congress would establish a “Truth and Healing Commission” to further document past injustices related to boarding schools. The commission would have the authority to subpoena people for evidence. However, Catholic bishops recently opposed this subpoena power, urging lawmakers to avoid an adversarial posture since they are willing to cooperate.