Forced Assimilation and Abuse: How US Boarding Schools Devastated Native American Tribes | News

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) – The White House says President Joe Biden will apologize on Friday on behalf of the U.S. government for his 150-year campaign to destroy Native American culture, language and identity by forcing children into cruel Native American boarding schools.

More than 900 children have died in government-funded schools, the last of which closed or was transferred decades ago. Their dark legacy continues to be felt in Indigenous communities, where survivors struggle with generational trauma from the torture, sexual violence and hatred they endured.

Biden is expected to formally acknowledge and apologize for the federal government’s role during a speech at the Gila River Indian Community near Phoenix.

A Closer Look at the Federal Boarding School System:

150 years of forced assimilation

Congress laid the foundation for a nationwide boarding school system for Native Americans in 1819 under fifth U.S. President James Monroe, passing legislation known as the Indian Civilization Act. It was supposed to be aimed at stopping the “final extinction of the Indian tribes” and “instilling in them the habits and arts of civilization.”

Central to these efforts was the breakdown of Native families and the severing of intergenerational bonds that had sustained their culture even as they were forced onto reservations.

Over the next 150 years, government and religious institutions, supported by taxpayer money, operated at least 417 schools in 37 states. School staff sought to deprive Indigenous children of their traditions and heritage. Teachers and administrators cut their hair, forbade them to speak their native language, and forced them to do manual labor.

By the 1920s, the majority of Native school-age children—about 60,000—attended boarding schools, which were run by either the federal government or religious organizations, according to the National Coalition to Heal Native American Residential Schools.

The greatest concentration of schools was observed in states with the largest indigenous populations: Oklahoma, Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota and the Dakotas. But there were schools in every region of the United States, and students, some as young as four years old, were often sent to schools far from their homes.

The last of the schools opened in 1969, the same year a Senate report declared the residential school system a national tragedy. It turned out that they were severely underfunded, had low academic performance and had a “primary emphasis” on discipline and punishment.

The policy of forced assimilation was finally and officially abandoned with the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. However, despite this policy shift, the government never fully explored the residential school system until the Biden administration.

Survivors speak out about violence

A nationwide overhaul of the system was launched in 2021 by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the nation’s first Native American cabinet secretary.

She and other Internal Affairs officials conducted listening sessions for two years on and off reservations across the U.S. to allow school survivors and their families to tell their stories.

Former students have spoken out about the harmful and often degrading treatment they suffered from teachers and administrators while separated from their families. Their descendants spoke of trauma that was passed down through generations and manifests itself in relationship breakdowns, substance abuse and other social problems that plague the reservations today.

Among them were Haaland’s grandparents – they were taken from the community when they were 8 years old and forced to live in a Catholic boarding school until they were 13.

“Make no mistake: This was a concerted effort to eradicate the quote ‘Indian Problem’ – either to assimilate or completely destroy Indigenous peoples,” Haaland said in July when the agency’s investigation was released. The agency’s main recommendation was an official apology from the government.

Unmarked graves and repatriations

At least 973 Native American children died in institutions. They included approximately 187 Native American and Alaska Native children who died at the Carlisle Industrial School in southeastern Pennsylvania. It is now home to the US Army War College. Its officials are continuing the repatriation effort: Just last month, the remains of three children killed at the school were unearthed and returned to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana.

During the investigation, the Ministry of Internal Affairs found marked and unmarked graves in 65 boarding schools. Causes of death included disease and abuse. More children may have died off campus after they became sick at school and were sent home, officials said.

The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded by a total of $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials found. The religious and private institutions that operated many of the schools received federal money as partners in the campaign to “civilize” Indigenous students.

More than 200 government-supported schools had a religious affiliation. The Boarding Schools Coalition has identified more than 100 additional schools not on the government list that are run by churches without any evidence of federal support.

US Catholic bishops apologized in June for the church’s role in the trauma the children suffered.