At Least 973 Native American Children Died at US Federal Boarding Schools
From 1871 to 1969, the U.S. forced Native to attend boarding schools, where they were deprived of their cultural identities.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of the Interior release a report showing that at least 973 Native American children died at U.S. federal-operated Indian boarding schools that “forcibly confined and attempted to assimilate Indigenous children.”
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The investigative report released by the U.S. Department of the Interior urges the U.S. government to formally apologize for the 150-year-long “deliberate and strategic actions” to assimilate the children and destroy their culture.
From 1871 to 1969, the U.S. government isolated Native children from their families and forced them to attend boarding schools, where they were deprived of their identities, languages and cultures.
The department was able to identify, by name, 18,624 Native children who attended boarding school, adding that it is not a comprehensive list.
Indigenous children, who died from “physical, sexual, and emotional abuse,” were buried at 65 school sites in at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites. Additional children may have died after becoming sick at school and being sent home.
It also estimates that the U.S. government appropriated more than US$23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, during the 150 years to run such schools and associated assimilation policies.
“I think the worst part of it was at night, listening to all the other children crying themselves to sleep, crying for their parents, and just wanting to go home,” The Washington Post reported, citing a boarding school survivor from Michigan.
