The U.S. Department of the Interior in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced a partnership that will expand the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in an effort to help the Native communities.
According to a release by the DOI, the initiative is intended on documenting the experiences of survivors and descendants of federal Indian boarding school policies. There has been $4 million put toward digitizing records for federal Indian boarding schools, as well as creating an oral history collection and documenting generations of Indigenous students’ experiences. Through investigations, it was found that from 1819 to 1969 the boarding school system included 408 federal schools in 37 states or territories. This included 21 schools in Alaska and seven in Hawaii. The investigation also found marked and unmarked burial sites at 53 schools, and this number is expected to increase.
“Federal Indian boarding school policies have touched every Indigenous person I know,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. “Deeply ingrained in so many of us is the trauma that these policies and these places have inflicted. This is the first time in history that a U.S. Cabinet Secretary comes to the table with this shared trauma, and I’m determined to use my position to help communities heal. This is one step, among many, that we will take to strengthen and rebuild the bonds within Native communities that federal Indian boarding school policies set out to break.”
According to the DOI, the initiative is an effort to recognize what is a “troubled legacy” of federal boarding school policies. The goal is to bring to light past trauma and help future generations. Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland and the Bureau of Indian Affairs prepared a report that goes over laws and policies for federal Indian board school systems. The goal is to also create the first-ever official list of federal boarding school sites and also identify marked and unmarked burial sites.
The DOI stated that for more than 150 years between 1819 and the 1970s, the U.S. has implemented policies for these boarding schools. The focus was to culturally assimilate American Indian, Alaska natives and Hawaiian children by forcibly taking them from their families, tribes and villages. It coincided with territorial dispossession, the report said.
“The report details the conditions experienced by attendees including manual labor and discouraging or preventing American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian languages, religions, and cultural beliefs,” the release by the Bureau of Indian Affairs stated. “While children attended federal Indian boarding schools, many endured physical and emotional abuse and, in some cases, died. "
According to the Department of the Interior, in May 2022 Volume 1 of the investigative report was released and Volume two is expected to be published this year. The oral history project will help to create space for survivors, and details on it will be coming within the next few weeks.
The full Volume 1 document is available here.
