523 US schools forced Native American children to assimilate
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The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition found that 115 more institutions, up from the original 408 federally recognized schools, forced Native American children to assimilate into white culture.
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Red painted handprints on an empty spot in Albuquerque New Mexico on July 1, 2021, where a historical marker for Aboriginal children who died while attending boarding school nearby was removed. (AP)
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition uncovered 115 more institutions than the previous 408 federally recognized ones, increasing the total number of schools that forced Native American children to assimilate into White culture in the United States to 523.
Last May, a report from the US Department of the Interior revealed that more than 500 Native American children died in US government-run boarding schools at which students were physically abused and denied food.
Many were operational during the 19th to 20th century, with some still open to this day.
The team combed through hundreds of papers strewn among the National Archives, universities, tribal offices, and local historical societies to locate and map the schools as part of an effort to raise awareness about an often-ignored period in American history.
Samuel Torres, deputy chief executive of the coalition, remarked that whoever was responsible, whether the government or a church or religious group "thought it was acceptable to create these schools to remove Native children from their land, strip them of their language and reprogram them under a Manifest Destiny model."
Read more: Indigenous America: The US kills its victim and walks in its funeral
Tens of thousands of American Indian students attended these schools, and thousands of people are thought to have perished, according to the coalition.
There are fewer and fewer Native elders around to provide personal stories of their experience at the institutions but many who attended in the 1940s and 1950s are now in their 70s and 80s. Some were assaulted physically, emotionally, and sexually, scarring them forever.
The harmful legacy of boarding schools on Indigenous people is being exposed by the campaign as part of the federal government's wider, centuries-long plans to exterminate Native Americans and steal their territory. Many Native elders stated the reckoning was sparked in large part by the discovery in 2021 of over 200 unmarked graves of children who perished at a Canadian residential school.
Reawaking the US' painful history
Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians in DC, and VP of the Quinault Indian Nation in Washington state stated that the findings "ignited a reawakening" of the US' painful history.
"We’re getting to a place where they’re starting to pass away, and we want to make sure the truth is known and the truth is told, so there’s some measure of justice because we’re all impacted as Native people."
The healing coalition collaborated with Canada's National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to create a map identical to one created by the Canadian center.
Canada is also grappling with the legacy of abuse and neglect at its schools for Indigenous children.
From 1831 to 1996, thousands died at the schools, and many were subjected to physical and sexual abuse, according to an investigative commission that concluded the Canadian government engaged in "cultural genocide."
The coalition's list also included 105 schools run by missionary groups and churches. Coalition officials noted it is difficult to determine how such schools were supported because the data are housed in private archives of religious missions or church groups, and additional study is needed.
Nine were opened after 1969, which was outside of the time period reviewed by the Interior Department. According to the coalition, another formerly served as both a boarding school and a day school.
More than 500 children died at the boarding schools from malnutrition, tuberculosis, or typhoid, while investigators estimate the true number of casualties to be "in the thousands or tens of thousands."
Parents of the deceased children received news of the death long after the occurrence, and families were unable to travel to retrieve their bodies due to great distances.
Therefore, many were buried on school grounds, often in unmarked graves.
