U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland released new findings on Indian boarding schools in the United States.

According to a May 11 Department of the Interior news release, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a comprehensive effort to address the legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies, said that, from 1819 to 1969, the system consisted of 408 federal schools across 37 states or former territories, including 21 in Alaska and seven in Hawaii. The investigation identified burial sites at approximately 53 schools across the school system, a number that is expected to grow.

"Many children like them never made it back to their homes," Secretary Haaland said. "Each of those children is a missing family member, a person who was not able to live out their purpose on this Earth because they lost their lives as part of this terrible system."

Haaland also shared the experiences of her grandparents, who were eight years old when they were sent to Indian boarding schools in the United States.

According to the New York Times, the 106-page report found further investigation is needed to better understand what lasting effects have been created by the boarding school system on American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Newland also emphasized investigating assimilation, to better understand the “territorial dispossession of Indigenous peoples through the forced removal and relocation of their children."

“The consequences of federal Indian boarding school policies — including the intergenerational trauma caused by the family separation and cultural eradication inflicted upon generations of children as young as 4 years old — are heartbreaking and undeniable,” Haaland said. “We continue to see the evidence of this attempt to forcibly assimilate Indigenous people in the disparities that communities face."

The full first volume of the report is available online.