Federal report finds burial sites and details abuse among Native American children at government boarding schools
Thousands of Native American children forced to attend at least 408 schools across 37 states as part of a federal government boarding school programme suffered beatings, hunger, manual labour and other forms of violence over several decades, according to a report issued by the US Department of Interior.
The report also identified burial sites at more than 50 of the former schools, a figure that the agency expects to grow as it continues its investigation into the Federal Indian Boarding School Inititive that lasted from 1869 through the 1960s.
The investigation discovered at least 19 schools accounted for the deaths of more than 500 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first-ever Indigenous cabinet secretary, said the investigation has revealed the “heartbreaking and undeniable” consequences of the federal government’s agenda, including intergenerational trauma caused by family separations and the eradication of languages and cultural practices that have echoed through families for decades.
Secretary Haaland’s grandparents were “stolen from their parents’ cultures and communities and forced to live in boarding schools,” she said on 11 May.
“Many children like them never made it back to their homes,” she said. “This is not new to us. This is not new to many of us.”
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