At Least 973 Native Children Died in the US’s Abusive Boarding School System

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 (NABS), 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.”