President Fawn Sharp of the National Congress of American Indians wrote to Pope Francis, requesting the Catholic Church to work with Native American tribes to get all archives about federal Indian boarding schools in the United States.

“I invite His Holiness and the Catholic Church to work with the National Congress of American Indians to open all records related to Federal Indian boarding schools so that someday soon American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian peoples may host an apostolic - and maybe even apologetic - journey to our tribal lands here in the United States,” Sharp said in the letter on Monday.

Sharp stated that the Pope's visit to Canada has motivated him to deliver an apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for its role in the cultural genocide perpetrated by Canada's residential school system. He described this as the start of a new chapter for truth and reconciliation.

Read next: 500+ indigenous children died in US-run schools: Report

He noted that the Catholic Church is suppressing information about federal US Indian boarding schools that could lead to the discovery of truths.

Sharp said cooperation is the only way to hold abusers accountable or reconcile with the Catholic Church.

The US Department of the Interior released findings from a study in May, revealing that the US operated 408 federal Indian boarding schools and that over 500 Native American children perished in 19 of them.

The Interior Department anticipates that the number of deaths will rise as the investigation progresses.

Native Americans testify to abuse 

Native American tribal elders and ex-students testified in Oklahoma about the sexual and physical abuse they endured in US boarding schools. The abuse included and was not limited to beatings, whippings, sexual assaults, forced haircuts, and racist slurs and nicknames.

The elders, coming from various states and tribes, were united on common experiences in the boarding schools designed to snatch the indigenous communities of their cultural identities, "assimilating" them into White America.

In a report released by the department, 400 boarding schools were identified as present between the late 18th century into the last 1960s, though most of them are closed today, with the existing ones holding different missions. 

Riverside is one of the oldest, and it has some 800 students enrolled at it from 75 tribes across the country today.