American Indian boarding schools were boarding schools established in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to educate Native American children and youths according to Euro-American standards. The government paid religious societies to provide education to Native American children on reservations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) founded boarding schools based on the assimilation model of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. While some Native Americans agreed to send their children to the schools to learn English, many children were forcibly removed from their families.

Children were usually immersed in European-American culture through appearance changes with haircuts, were forbidden to speak their native languages, and traditional names were replaced by new European-American names (to both "civilize" and "Christianize"). The experience of the schools was often harsh, especially for the younger children who were separated from their families. In numerous ways, they were encouraged or forced to abandon their Native American identities and cultures. Discipline was harsh, sometimes cruel. Children could have their mouths washed with lye soap for speaking their native language or be locked in a cell for trying to go home. Many became ill and died at the school without ever seeing their families again. Others survived and returned to their tribes, forever changed.

The number of Native American children in the boarding schools reached a peak in the 1870s, with an estimated enrollment of 60,000 in 1873. Investigations of the later twentieth century have revealed many documented cases of sexual, manual, physical and mental abuse occurring at such schools.

The white people, who are trying to make us over into their image, they want us to be what they call “assimilated,” bringing the Indians into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life and our own cultural patterns. They believe we should be contented like those whose concept of happiness is materialistic and greedy, which is very different from our way.

We want freedom from the white man rather than to be integrated. We don't want any part of the establishment, we want to be free to raise our children in our religion, in our ways, to be able to hunt and fish and live in peace. We don't want power, we don't want to be congressmen, or bankers ... we want to be ourselves. We want to have our heritage, because we are the owners of this land and because we belong here.

The white man says, there is freedom and justice for all. We have had ‘freedom and justice," and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this.

– From the 1927 Grand Council of American Indians