Forced Indian School Report

 

(Pupils at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pennsylvania, in 1900.)

A Second and Final US Federal Government Report released yesterday (July 30, 2024) by the US Department of the Interior states that 973 Native American Children who died at the Indian Boarding Schools they were forced to attend have been identified in Mass Graves (53 Marked Graves and 21 Unmarked Graves) across the US.

These are just a handful of the 50,000 Native American Indian Children found in the Mass Graves.

The Report acknowledge that many more Native American Indian Children attended these Schools 250,000 but the Report could only Identity 18,624 Native American Indian Children attending these Schools due to poor Record-Keeping and the Overt Destruction of Records by those who ran and oversaw these Schools.

There were 417 Indian Forced Boarding Schools inside the US (run by the US Federal Government, 37 US States and US Territories, different Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church) from 1819 to 1998 to “beat the Indian out of them.”

The United States spent $32 Billion Dollars in 2024 Dollars to run these Forced Indian Schools from 1819-1969 (after 1969 the US Federal Government stopped paying for them.)

The Final Report includes 8 Recommendations for the Federal Government ncluding:

Issuing a formal acknowledgment and apology from the U.S. Government regarding its role in adopting and implementing National Federal Indian Boarding School Policies;

Investing in remedies to the present-day impacts of the Federal Indian Boarding School System; 

Establishing a National Memorial to acknowledge and commemorate the experiences of Indian Tribes, individuals, and Families affected by the Federal Indian Boarding School System;

Identifying and repatriating Remains of Children and funerary objects who never returned from Federal Indian Boarding Schools;

Returning Former Federal Indian Boarding School Sites to Tribes;

Telling the story of Federal Indian Boarding Schools to the American People and Global Community; 

Investing in further research regarding the present-day health and economic impacts of the Federal Indian Boarding School System; and

Advancing International Relationships in other Countries with similar but their own unique histories of Boarding Schools or other Assimilationist Policies.

(The last recommendation refers to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.)