Deb Haaland's Report on Indigenous Children Deaths in US Boarding Schools

Much like in Canada, it also happened in the United States of America. At least 973 Indigenous children died while attending boarding schools run or supported by the United States government, a federal report has found. 

The report, released on Tuesday and commissioned by US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (right), found dozens of marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 US boarding schools that were established across the country. [According to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, hundreds of thousands of children were forcibly placed in boarding schools between 1869 and the 1960s].

The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death included sickness, accidents and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969, officials said. 

The schools were set up to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into white society, and survivors have described the inter-generational trauma their families and communities continue to experience as a result of the institutions. Children were often prevented from speaking their own languages and separated from siblings, and many were subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse.

On Tuesday, Haaland – the first Indigenous person to lead the US Department of the Interior – said the investigation aimed “to provide an accurate and honest picture” of what happened. 

“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”, she said in a statement. “The Road to Healing does not end with this report – it is just beginning”. 

Indigenous community leaders in the US and its northern neighbor Canada – which also operated similar forced-assimilation institutions for Indigenous children – have called on authorities to fund investigations into unmarked graves at the former school sites.

Religious and private institutions that ran many of the institutions received federal money as partners in the campaign to “civilize” Indigenous students, according to Tuesday’s report. 

The Interior Department officials offered eight recommendations for the US government, including “issuing a formal acknowledgment and apology… regarding their role in adopting and implementing national federal Indian boarding school policies”. 

They also urged Washington to invest in remedies for the system’s continuing effects; to establish a national memorial to acknowledge and commemorate all those affected, and to identify and repatriate the remains of children who died at the schools.

The deaths aside, white Americans would expect native Americans to be grateful because they have been civilized!