Investigation Uncovers Abuse of Indigenous Children at Government Schools
A newly-released Interior Department report resulting from an initial investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland highlighted the abuse of many of Native American children at government-run boarding schools they were forced to attend between 1819 and 1969.
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A newly-released Interior Department report resulting from an initial investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland highlighted the abuse of many of Native American children at government-run boarding schools they were forced to attend between 1819 and 1969, reports the New York Times. The report highlighted instances of beatings, withholding of food and solitary confinement and also uncovered burial sites at more than 50 of the former schools.
Approximately 19 federal Indian boarding schools accounted for over 500 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian child deaths, with that number expected to grow. The report, put together by Bryan Newland, the agency’s assistant secretary for Indian affairs, concludes that further investigation is needed to better understand the lasting effects of the boarding school system on American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Assimilation was only one of the system’s goals, the report said; the other was “territorial dispossession of Indigenous peoples through the forced removal and relocation of their children.” There were 20,000 children at the schools by 1900; by 1925, the number had more than tripled, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
