At least 973 indigenous children died in the U.S. government’s abusive residential school system, according to an investigation released Tuesday by officials who called on the government to apologize.
The investigation commissioned by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools set up to forcibly assimilate Native children into white society. The investigation results did not specify how each child died, but the causes of death included disease, accidents, and abuse over a 150-year period that ended in 1969, authorities said.
The investigation comes after a series of counseling sessions across the United States over the past two years in which dozens of former residents recounted the harsh and often degrading treatment they endured while separated from their families.
“The federal government — with the help of the department I lead — has taken deliberate and strategic steps through federal residential school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and dispossess them of their language, culture and the connections that are fundamental to Indigenous people,” Ms.me Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the nation’s first Indigenous cabinet secretary.
Painful memories
In an initial report released in 2022, officials estimated that more than 500 children had died in schools. The federal government passed laws and policies in 1819 to support schools, the last of which were still operating in the 1960s.
The schools gave Aboriginal children English names, subjected them to military drills and forced them to do manual labor, such as farming, brick making and working on the railroads, authorities said.
Former residents shared tearful memories of their experiences at sessions in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Michigan, Arizona, Alaska and other states. They described being punished for speaking their native language, being locked in basements and having their hair cut to erase their identities. They were sometimes placed in solitary confinement, beaten and deprived of food. Many left the school with only basic job skills that offered few job prospects.
Donovan Archambault, 85, of the Fort Belknap Native American Reservation in Montana, said he was sent to residential schools starting at age 11 and was abused, forced to cut his hair and prevented from speaking his native language. He said he drank heavily before turning his life around more than two decades later and never discussed his school years with his children until he wrote a book about the experience several years ago.
“An apology is necessary. They should apologize,” Archambault said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. “But there also needs to be a broader education about what happened to us. To me, it’s part of a forgotten history.”
The new report does not specify who should issue the apology on behalf of the federal government, saying only that it should be delivered through “appropriate means and officials to demonstrate that it is being made on behalf of the people of the United States and be accompanied” by bold, actionable policies.
Recommendations
Interior Department officials have recommended the government invest in programs that can help Indigenous communities heal from the trauma of residential schools. That includes money for education, violence prevention and Indigenous language revitalization. Spending on those efforts should be proportionate to the $23 billion in inflation-adjusted spending on schools, they said.
The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded by $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials said. Religious and private institutions that operated many of the institutions received federal money as partners in the campaign to “civilize” Native students, the new report said.
By 1926, more than 80 percent of school-age Native children — some 60,000 children — attended boarding schools run either by the federal government or by religious organizations, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
The Minnesota-based group identified more than 100 additional schools not on the government list that were run by churches, with no evidence of federal support.
In June, U.S. Catholic bishops apologized for the church’s role in the children’s trauma. And in 2022, Pope Francis apologized for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with residential schools in Canada. He said the forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, separated their families, and marginalized their generations.
Legislation pending before Congress would establish a “Truth and Healing Commission” to document and acknowledge past injustices related to residential schools. The measure is sponsored in the Senate by Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and supported by Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
“It is time for the federal government to take responsibility for its harmful policies,” Mr.me Murkowski in the Senate last week.
“Our commission will provide an Indigenous-led process for communities to share their stories, share truth and continue healing.”