U.S. and Canadian schools are finally being held accountable for what’s been called a “genocide.”
You may have read about the hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children who were taken from their homes and forced to attend boarding schools, created to “civilize the savage.” Many died at the schools, and those who survived have been suffered from PTSD after being separated from their families and culture. Here’s what you should know about the schools and their lasting impact.
Some background: For over 150 years, Indigenous children were forced to attend residential boarding schools established as part of the Civilization Fund Act of 1819. The schools sought to “assimilate our children,” says Christine Diindiisi McCleave, head of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. Those who attended were forbidden from speaking their Native languages, prohibited from praying in their traditional ways and stripped of their traditional clothing, McCleave said.
“You have a way of life you have already embraced,” said Bessie Smith, who attended a boarding school in Arizona. “And then it’s so casually taken away. It’s like you are violated.”
A federal investigation: The recent discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at similar schools in Canada has prompted the U.S. to investigate the history of its own boarding schools. Last month, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced an initiative to search the grounds of former facilities and recover the remains of children. “We must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past no matter how hard it will be,” said Haaland, the first Native American to head the department.
McCleave called the move the “beginning of finding those answers” that her organization’s been chasing for years: “How many schools, how many children, how many died or went missing?”
Laying them to rest: Experts say an investigation is bound to uncover more burial sites, and efforts to locate the unmarked graves of children who died at schools across the country are already underway. Earlier this month, the bodies of nine Lakota children buried at a school in Carlisle, Pa. were disinterred and buried in a ceremony on a tribal reservation in South Dakota.
