DOI’s final Indian Boarding School report includes new data, next steps

Trigger Warning: This story contains information about Indian Boarding Schools that may be distressing and disturbing for some individuals. Please proceed with caution and prioritize your mental and emotional well-being. If you need support, consider speaking to a mental health professional by calling 988, texting the Crisis Text Line at 741741, or reaching out to a trusted person in your life.

(NATIONAL) The Department of the Interior continues to work to provide transparency and healing for Indigenous communities affected by Federal Boarding School Policies. With the release of the second and final part of the Federal Boarding School Initiative investigative report, new information about these dark times in our nation’s history is now publicly available.

The recent report states that at least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died during their time at these schools. 

Tribal identification has not been completed for 238 of the students. The lost children who have been identified include Navajo (136), Apache (91), Sioux, Assiniboine (67), Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi (51), Paiute, Shoshone, Bannock (42), Five Tribes Choctaw (38), Pueblo (34), Alaskan (31), Pima, Maricopa (23) and Five Tribes Cherokee (18). 

The full list is available here. 

Additionally, 74 marked and unmarked burial sites have been identified at 65 different school locations.

"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," said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. "The Road to Healing does not end with this report—it is just beginning."

The report includes the identification of an additional six Indian Boarding Schools in Oklahoma, bringing the state’s total to 87. It was the most populous state for Indian Boarding Schools by far.

“My boarding school experience at Seneca – the most traumatic thing for me was being separated from my family, from my siblings,” a participant of The Road to Healing Oklahoma said, per the report. “And the years that you’re separated, you never get back. The days that you’re separated they don’t return, but you learn to live. You learn to become part of the trauma. You don’t understand it. I know many days, even now, I don’t understand why I had to go through what I went through. And healing is a long entire life process.”

To conduct the investigation, staff at the Department of the Interior, along with federal contractors, reviewed more than 103 million pages of federal records. The report now lists 417 institutions as Boarding Schools, located in 37 states or territories across the US.

Between 1871 and 1969, the federal government allocated the equivalent of $23.3 billion in Fiscal Year 2023 inflation-adjusted dollars for these boarding school institutions and other assimilation policies. 

“For the first time in the history of the United States, the federal government is accounting for its role in operating historical Indian boarding schools that forcibly confined and attempted to assimilate Indigenous children,” Assistant Secretary - Interior Affairs Bryan Newland said. “This report further proves what Indigenous peoples across the country have known for generations: that federal policies were set out to break us, obtain our territories, and destroy our cultures and our lifeways.”

The report also includes eight recommended actions for the Federal Government to promote healing. These recommendations include an official acknowledgment and policy from the US government, the creation of a national memorial for the tribes and individuals impacted by the boarding school policies, and the identification and return of the remains of children who died while at the boarding schools to their respective Tribes.

In addition to the investigation, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has been traveling around the country to hear the stories of survivors and provide trauma support through the Oral History Project.