Indian Boarding Schools
WHAT ARE INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS?
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has a history of US Indian boarding schools, including a primer and a curriculum on U.S. Indian Boarding Schools, which includes the map below.
Watch short video excerpts from PBS The American Experience: "We Shall Remain: Wounded Knee" (children taken away from their families, and the impact the education system had on the children and their families). PBS has also produced a two-hour film and accompanying website Unspoken: America's Native American Boarding Schools.
Scholar Maggie Blackhawk sees the roots of this policy in an 1846 Supreme Court decision United States v. Rogers, in which the Court established the "plenary power doctrine."
To the right is the poem Indian Boarding School: The Runaways by Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa).
Indian Boarding School_ The Runaways by Louise… _ Poetry Foundation.pdfNative American Rights Fund: Boarding School Healing
(voices of survivors)
MSNBC: Native American Boarding School Survivors Share Their Stories
Native News Online: Indian Boarding Schools - A Dark Chapter in History
PBS Newshour: Schools tried to forcibly assimilate Indigenous kids. Can the U.S. make amends?
GOVERNMENTS OF U.S. & CANADA CONFRONT THE HISTORY
CANADA CONFRONTS HISTORY
In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the history of assimilation policies in the boarding schools, and a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined that the schools were part of "a conscious policy of cultural genocide." In March 2022, Pope Francis issued an apology for the Catholic Church's role. For more information
article in the New York Times on the Pope's apology
National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, which includes history & the apology in various languages
June 2021 discovery of unmarked graves of children
USA CONFRONTS HISTORY
In June 2021, Sec’y of the Interior Deb Haaland announced federal investigation & the announcement & official memorandum outlining the process.
We will update this site once Secretary Haaland's report is released. Meanwhile, we encourage you to read the Statement from the Mitchell Museum at the bottom of this page and to check the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition website.
You can also watch Secretary Haaland talk about the intergenerational trauma caused by boarding schools.
HEALING, EDUCATION & TAKING ACTION
Part of healing is acknowledging and learning more about the history specific to boarding schools as well as broader American Indian history and culture. To guide your learning, we encourage you to explore resources from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which includes a curriculum on U.S. Indian Boarding Schools and Facing History and Ourselves' resources for teaching about Canada's residential schools (which may be a model for a future curriculum for US boarding schools).
Another part of the healing process is returning the remains of children who died at boarding schools to their communities. Explore those stories below.
A third part of healing is taking action. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition asks us to urge our elected officials (Rep. Schneider, Sen. Duckworth & Sen. Durbin) to support pending legislation “THE TRUTH AND HEALING COMMISSION ON INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOL POLICIES IN THE U.S. ACT” (H.R.5444 AND S.2907). At DHS, we will have paper petitions that you can sign, but you can also make a phone call or contact them through their websites. See our Take Action page.
Statement by the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian (MMAI) on Indian Board Schools in the United States and Canada (sent via email July 27, 2021)
On July 17, 2021, the remains of nine Rosebud Sioux children were returned to their ancestral grounds on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation for burial. The children died nearly a century earlier in the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, one of the United States’ many forced boarding schools designed to eradicate indigenous culture. In May, the unmarked graves of 215 children were identified at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada. The announcement sparked international outcry and brought new attention to a devastating truth and loss felt by Native peoples in the United States and Canada today. The forced assimilation and attempted eradication of Native people through compulsory “residential schools” with a policy of “kill the Indian, save the man” resulted in the loss of life, the loss of a generation of relatives, language speakers, and culture bearers.
With that, we applaud U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, for beginning the conversation to hold the United States government accountable through the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. The Department of the Interior will identify boarding school sites, locations of known and possible student burial sites located at or near school facilities and identify the children and their tribal affiliations to bring them home to their families.
Our hearts continue to be with the First Nation communities in Canada and Native American communities here in the United State as mass graves continue to be uncovered at residential schools that were created to destroy the vast cultures of indigenous communities by ripping children from their communities and forbidding them from practicing their culture. It is important for the United States and Canada to finally take responsibility for their past brutal policies and actions.
When the time is right, after the healing process for the numerous communities that continue to be impacted by this traumatic history, MMAI will use its platform to give boarding school survivors a voice in educating the public. In the meantime, we will advocate for the resources needed for communities to start the healing process.
For more information on the history of Native American Boarding Schools, please visit The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition website.
-MMAI Staff & Board