Only recently, the legacy of Federal Indian boarding schools was a national secret everywhere, that is, but in Indian Country.  Now such  truths – about the violence, the rapes, the orchestrated plan to seize Indigenous lands – has many Americans grappling to understand such tucked-away atrocity.  Instead of discounting the deaths of Native children at these schools, there is now an investigation underway in search of more graves, more bodies, and yet, even more details.  “It has taken generations for us to get to this point of public truth and accountability,”  said Deb Parker, the Tulalip policy advocate leading a coalition of survivors and descendants on a historic reconciliation campaign that spans nearly two centuries.  But such reach for closure and  healing can only be met with more answers.

The Department of the Interior’s Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, Bryan Newland released a report this week that effectively makes the case for future probing.  The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report is some 100 pages of insider analysis driven by his legal background, his former role as a tribal chairman, and more distinctly, his direct ties to boarding school survivors.  A citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan, Newland spoke of the personal toll of carrying out a coordinated examination of these schools, an assignment ordered last June by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.  “It’s been an exhausting and emotional effort to confront this horror on a daily basis,” Newland said at a press conference upon announcing his findings, Wednesday.  But if such hardships were reflected anywhere, it was in his deeply reported overview which dropped just enough below victimization to bring fresh focus to perhaps one of the most ruthless and overtly racist plans ever plotted – a twin policy first idealized by Thomas Jefferson: Indian territorial dispossession by way of Indian assimilation, or better stated, by way of outright extermination.  It’s a depressing saga, and Newland, Haaland, Parker and so many others who were weepy on Wednesday were right to be depressed about it.

The emotional burden of the Federal Indian boarding school system has long been understood, though the finer details of the colonial framework is lesser known, particularly in the role education played in the seizure of tribal territories.  At the end of treaty-making in 1871, which also marked a period of economic recovery after the Civil War, Congress passed a slew of desperate education laws designed to permanently break-up Native families – what would then advance the twin policy objective.  As many as 150 land cession treaties carried education clauses.  The later pacts such as the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty between the U.S. and the Oceti Sakowin (the Great Sioux Nation), read more like a mandate:  “In order to ensure the civilization of the Indians entering into this treaty, the necessity of education is admitted.” 

Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Bryan Newland releases his report on Federal Indian boarding schools, Wednesday, at the Interior Department.  Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

Newland emphasized that such education agreements were weaponized on Indigenous Peoples, and not by government terrorism alone but paired with an unprecedented relationship with organized religions.  Treaty funds from land cessions made with Native nations were largely used by the federal government to try and erase tribes through a network of boarding schools, many led by churches.

“For example, between 1845 and 1855, while over $2 million was spent on the Federal Indian boarding school system, Federal appropriations accounted for only 1/20th, of $10,000 per year, of the sum, with Indian trust fund monies supplying the rest,” the report states. 

It is the first time the federal government has officially examined and listed these schools: 408, across 37 states (or then territories), and comprising a total of 53 burial sites at 19 schools, though more graves are likely to be detected. And there is more work to do.  Congress has appropriated $7 million to continue the investigation and two bills in the House and the Senate aim to deliver a full inquiry into the Federal Indian boarding school network akin to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.  That process resulted in the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history – $1.9 billion in reparations.  But what justice might look like for U.S. survivors and descendants of Indian boarding schools remains unclear.  Unlike Canada, there is no legal recourse due to statute of limitations in place here in America.  

Appendix C, Federal Indian Boarding School Maps Department of Interior

Other recommendations: 

• Here's the full report
• And here's a comprehensive list and collection of maps that provide a state-by-state count of identified Federal Indian boarding schools
• I also just added to the Indigenously Bookshelf Dr. Denise Lajimodiere's Stringing Rosaries, a title she gifted to Secretary Haaland following Wednesday's press conference
• And for you wonky types, here's the 1969 Kennedy Report that is mentioned throughout Newland's report, a decades-old Senate investigation that was among the first to come to the conclusion that the legacy of Indian education is a true national tragedy. 

Boarding School Survivors: Share Your Story With Congress

Request for Supportive Testimony for H.R. 5444

 "I am so glad you wrote an informative newsletter on the topic [of abortion].  Thank you for taking a stand.  I am a supporter of you and Indigenously more than ever!"

Barbara, Lenape homelands