An investigative report by the U.S. Department of Interior found that more than 970 Native American children died at federal Indian boarding schools between 1819 and 1969.
During the 1800s, the United States established Indian boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Native children by separating them from their families and communities. Once at boarding schools, the children were given English names and had their hair chopped.
The schools prevented the children from using their native languages or practicing their religions and cultural practices. They were sorted into units to perform military drills and forced to do manual labor, including lumbering, brick-making, garment-making, and working on the railroad system.
The report, which did not identify the cause of death for each child, acknowledged that the actual number of deaths may be higher. It also identified 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 school sites.
This was the second volume of the investigative report commissioned by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who is the first Native American in the country to serve as a cabinet secretary.
The U.S. government pursued the policy through education, viewing it as “the cheapest and safest way of subduing the Indians, of providing a safe habitat for the country’s white inhabitants, of helping the whites acquire desirable land, and of changing the Indian’s economy,” according to the report.
“The intentional targeting, removal, and confinement of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children to achieve the goal of forced assimilation of Indian people was both traumatic and violent,” the report said.
The new report updates the list of federal Indian boarding schools to include 417 institutions across 37 states or territories. It also found the U.S. government spent more than $23.3 billion, in 2023 inflation-adjusted terms, between 1871 and 1969 for the Indian boarding school system and associated assimilation policies.
The new report also includes recommendations for the government, including issuing a formal apology and investing in programs to help Native American communities heal from the traumas caused by the boarding schools.
It also recommended the U.S. government formally acknowledge its role in adopting a national policy of forced assimilation and carrying it out through “the removal and confinement” of Indian children.
Bryan Newland, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, said the investigation involved reviewing 103 million pages of government records and participating in listening sessions with hundreds of Indian boarding school survivors.
“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.
