Interior Department report details the brutality of federal Indian boarding schools

BY: SHAUN GRISWOLD – MAY 11, 2022 9:16 PM

The atrocities committed at boarding schools designed and run by the federal government to eradicate Indigenous people were outlined by the U.S. Interior Department for the first time in a report published Wednesday.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland held back tears as she described the scope of the investigation that identifies 408 federal Indian boarding schools across 37 states that operated between 1819 and 1969.

New Mexico had at least 43 of these schools, the third most in the country behind Oklahoma (76) and Arizona (47).

Burial sites were found at 53 different schools, but the department won’t publicly share the locations due to concerns of “grave-robbing, vandalism and other desecration,” said Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior.

These schools used “militarized” tactics to assimilate Native American children as young as 4-years-old in environments described in the report as fostering, “rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care.”

The report also acknowledges that the federal government used money from Indian Trust Funds to pay schools — even those run by religious organizations — to take children away without parental consent and force them into environments that were designed to destroy generational bonds by eliminating language and culture.

This means Native American tribes experienced their children being stolen while also being made to pay for the abuse designed to destroy their own existence. Those tribal trust accounts held money that was a result of territory cessions to the United States.

Haaland (Laguna) said the report is the first step in addressing the U.S. government’s role and responsibility for this era. She didn’t give any explicit support of financial reparations for tribes but didn’t shut down the possibility, either. She responded to a question about restitution by saying President Joe Biden, “fully understands the obligation of the United States to Indian tribes. He fully understands the federal trust responsibility to tribes.”

In the meantime, the next phase of the federal government response will be to take this research to the people and find ways it can assist with healing the generational trauma it caused through racist and genocidal policy.

“This has left lasting scars for all Indigenous people because there is not a single American Indian, Alaskan Native or Native Hawaiian in this country whose life hasn’t been affected by the schools,” Newland (Ojibwe) said.

Haaland announced the Interior Department will take part in a yearlong tour to listen to boarding school survivors and their families engaging in talks about the past. The department is committed to directing people to mental health and spiritual resources to help heal, she said.