Investigation finds at least 973 Native American children died in US government boarding schools

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system, according to the results of an investigation released Tuesday (July 30, 2024) by officials who called on the government to apologize for the schools.

The investigation commissioned by Interior Sec. Deb Haaland found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children into white society. The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death included sickness and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969, officials said.

Additional children may have died after becoming sick at school and being sent home, officials said.

The findings follow a series of listening sessions held throughout the U.S. over the past two years in which dozens of former students recounted the harsh and often degrading treatment they endured while separated from their families.

“The federal government took deliberate and strategic action through 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,” Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, said in a Tuesday call with reporters.

“Make no mistake,” she added, “This was a concerted attempt to eradicate the quote, ‘Indian problem,’ to either assimilate or destroy native peoples all together.”

In an initial report released in 2022, officials estimated that more than 500 children died at the schools. The federal government passed laws and policies in 1819 to support the schools, the last of which were still operating in the 1960s.

The schools gave Native American kids English names, put them through military drills and forced them to perform manual labor, such as farming, brick-making and working on the railroad, officials said.

Former students shared tearful recollections of their experience during listening sessions in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Michigan, Arizona, Alaska and other states. They talked about being punished for speaking their native language, getting locked in basements, and having their hair cut to stamp out their identities. They were sometimes subjected to solitary confinement, beatings and the withholding of food. Many left the schools with only basic vocational skills that gave them few job prospects.

Donovan Archambault, 85, the former chairman of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, said beginning at age 11 he was sent away to boarding schools where he was mistreated, forced to cut his hair and prevented from speaking his native language. He said the experience led him to drink alcohol heavily before he turned his life around more than two decades later. He never talked about his school days with his children until he wrote a book about the experience several years ago.

“An apology is needed. They should apologize,” Archambault told The Associated Press by phone Tuesday. “But there also needs to be a broader education about what happened to us. To me, it’s part of a forgotten history.”

Haaland said she was personally “sorry beyond words,” but she suggested a formal apology should come from the federal government. She didn’t say if she would push President Joe Biden to issue one.

Interior Department officials also recommended that the government invest in programs that could help Native American communities heal from the traumas caused by boarding schools. That includes money for education, violence prevention and the revitalization of indigenous languages. Spending on those efforts should be on a scale proportional to spending on the schools, agency officials said.

The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded by $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials determined. Religious and private institutions that ran many of the institutions received federal money as partners in the campaign to “civilize” Indigenous students, according to the new report.

By 1926, more than 80% of Indigenous school-age children — some 60,000 children — were attending boarding schools that were run either by the federal government or religious organizations, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

The Minnesota-based group has tallied more than 100 additional schools not on the government list that were run by churches and with no evidence of federal support.

U.S. Catholic bishops in June apologized for the church’s role in trauma the children experienced. And in 2022, Pope Francis apologized for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with boarding schools in Canada. He said the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations.

Legislation pending before Congress would establish a “Truth and Healing Commission” to document and acknowledge past injustices related to boarding schools. The measure is sponsored in the Senate by Democrat Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and backed by Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — Donovan Archambault was 11 years old in 1950 when he was sent from the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana to a government-backed Native American boarding school in Pierre, South Dakota, where abusive staff forced him to abandon his community’s language and customs.

Archambault emerged bitter from the experience and said he drank alcohol for more than two decades before he finally pulled his life together, earning a master’s degree in education and serving as chairman of the Fort Belknap tribes.

“It was probably the most brutal time of my whole life,” Archambault recalled Sunday (Nov. 5, 2023), “and it all stemmed from the trauma we suffered in the Pierre Indian School.”

Decades after the last Native American boarding schools stopped receiving federal money, the traumas inflicted by the abusive institutions are getting belated attention through a series of listening sessions hosted by federal officials across the U.S.

For over 150 years, Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into the boarding schools, which systematically abused students to assimilate them into white society. Religious and private institutions ran many of the schools and received federal funding as partners in government programs to “civilize” Indigenous students.

Sunday’s event at Montana State University in Bozeman was the last of 12 stops on the “Road to Healing” tour by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico who has prioritized examining the trauma caused by the schools.

The effects of the trauma have rippled through generations, fueling alcoholism, drug addiction and sexual abuse on reservations, said Jennifer Finley, a council member for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes whose grandparents went to one of the boarding schools.

“When we talk about historical trauma I always think, ‘If only that’s all we had.’ But we have fresh traumas piled on top of it every single day,” she said.

The U.S. enacted laws and policies in 1819 to support the schools and some continued to operate through the 1960s. An investigative report released last year by the Interior Department identified 408 government-backed schools in 37 states or then-territories, including Alaska and Hawaii.

The schools renamed children from Native American to English names, organized them into military drills and compelled them to do manual labor such as farming, brick-making and working on the railroad system, according to federal officials. At least 500 children died at the schools, according to the report — a figure that’s expected to increase dramatically as research continues.

One of Haaland’s deputies, Rosebud Sioux member Wizipan Garriott, has described boarding schools as part of a long history of injustices against his people that began with the widespread extermination of their main food source — bison, also known as buffalo.

Tribes also lost their land base and were forced onto reservations sometimes far from their homelands.

Victims and survivors of the schools have shared tearful recollections of their experience during prior listening sessions in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Michigan, Arizona, Alaska and other states.

They told stories of being punished for speaking their native language, getting locked in basements and their hair being cut to stamp out their identities. They were sometimes subjected to solitary confinement, beatings and withholding food. Many left the schools with only basic vocational skills that gave them few job prospects, officials said.

Myrna Burgess, a Northern Cheyenne elder, said Sunday that she and her classmates faced escalating punishments for speaking their home language. First time they’d get hit with a ruler on the back of the hand. After a second offense they’d have to turn their hand over, to get hit on the palm. Another offense brought a strike to the back or head, she said.

“That was child abuse right there, but no one ever went to jail,” she said.

Archambeault said many of his classmates did not survive long enough to tell their stories and instead became victims of suicide, alcohol and violence that he traces back to the treatment they received at school.

A second investigative report is expected in coming months. It will focus on burial sites, the schools’ impact on Indigenous communities and also try to account for federal funds spent on the troubled program.

Montana had 16 of the schools — including on or near the Crow, Blackfeet, Fort Peck and Fort Belknap reservations. Most shut down early last century. Others were around recently enough that their former students are still alive.

A Native American boarding school school in the town of St. Ignatius on the Flathead Reservation was open until at least 1973. In southeastern Montana the Tongue River Boarding School operated under various names until at least 1970, when the Northern Cheyenne Tribe contracted it as a tribal school, according to government records.

The St. Labre school at the edge of the Northern Cheyenne continues to operate but has not received federal money in more than a century, according to government records.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has tallied an additional 113 schools not on the government list that were run by churches and with no evidence of federal support. By 1926, more than 80% of Indigenous school-age children — some 60,000 children — were attending boarding schools that were run either by the federal government or religious organizations, according to the coalition.

The coalition’s deputy chief executive, Samuel Torres, said Haaland’s tour was a positive first step in addressing the schools’ legacy. Next, he said, Congress must approve proposals to establish a truth and reconciliation commission, where survivors could continue airing their stories and the federal government’s role in the abuse could be further documented.

“Boarding schools lasted over 150 years. It’s going to take more than a couple of years of investigation,” Torres said. “It’s going to require generations. But this is where it has to start.”