US finds 500 Native American boarding school deaths so far

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A first-of-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools that for over a century sought to assimilate Indigenous children into white society has identified more than 500 student deaths at the institutions so far, but officials say that figure could grow exponentially as research continues.

The Interior Department report released Wednesday expands to more than 400 the number of schools that were known to have operated across the U.S. for 150 years, starting in the early 19th century and coinciding with the removal of many tribes from their ancestral lands. It identified the deaths in records for about 20 of them.

The dark history of the boarding schools — where children were forced from their families, prohibited from speaking their Native American languages and often abused — has been felt deeply across Indian Country and through generations.

Many children never returned home, and the Interior Department said that with further investigation the number of known student deaths could climb to the thousands or even tens of thousands. Officials say causes included illness, accidental injuries and abuse.



FILE - A makeshift memorial for the dozens of Indigenous children who died more than a century ago while attending a boarding school that was once located nearby is displayed under a tree at a public park in Albuquerque, N.M., on July 1, 2021. The U.S. Interior Department is expected to release a report Wednesday, May 11, 2022, that it says will begin to uncover the truth about the federal government's past oversight of Native American boarding schools. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/religion-education-native-americans-cbd724ae4e423c788089ef98cec4315a

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[chowder66]

1. My heart hurts for them. I'm glad this is being worked on.

[Goonch]

2. Pupils at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Pennsylvania, c. 1900

[niyad]

6. That being one of the worst.

[wnylib]

15. It was also the first, I think.

Look at the number of children and the size of the school. How could they all fit inside?

[niyad]

18. It was. An appalling, horrific place.

[wnylib]

21. I don't doubt that for a minute.

I have been aware of these abusive "schools" for a long time. Heard from two Native women about k
It and read Canada's Truth and Reconciliation report on them many years ago. The US created the first schools and Canada modelled theirs after ours.

I have read about some of the US schools before this, but there has not been nearly as much info on the US schools as the Canadian ones until Secretary Haaland started investigations here. Without her, the US would have continued to ignore and hide information about these abusive, annihilation actions against Native children.

[SomewhereInTheMiddle]

23. I live in Carlile ...

I am not defending the school that existed here at that time. I think the policy and practice of forcing children from their families was shameful.

But I can also tell you that the building in the back of the photo is not the schoolhouse. I have been in that house. It still exists. It is now, and I believe was then, faculty or administrative housing. The schoolrooms and the student dorms were elsewhere on the post.

The site has been a military school of one sort or another since 1751. From 1879 through 1918 it was repurposed as the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. After that it returned to being a military school and since 1947 has been the US Army War College.

It is a horrible thing that any of these students died so far from home. But the number needs more context before we can understand the scope of the issue. 500 students sound like a big number. But that is out of how many total relocated students over the course of 150 years? How does that compare to the mortality rate among the same age for First American kids living at home? How does that compare to the mortality rate at the more prestigious boarding schools for the scions of the wealthy elite of the same time period?

I assume it is worse. I assume the conditions and lack of proper care led to more deaths than in comparable populations. But just showing a single number (500 or even 5000) does not demonstrate that.

I am not excusing the atrocities. I am criticizing the article for not giving us the necessary context.

[myccrider]

24. I had a Hopi Indian friend in the late 60s...

who was forced into one of those schools during elementary school. He was a few years older than me, so he would have been in the school in the mid to late 50s. He never said what the name was but he said they were punished if they spoke their native language, sometimes with whippings on the buttocks and legs, sometimes with isolation. He said it was horrible. He almost never got to see his parents.

He eventually moved back to the reservation. I went to see him a couple of times. He had a very nice family but their living conditions weren’t great, even in the mid 70s. No indoor plumbing-an outhouse and a pump/spigot for water in the backyard.

I’m not completely surprised by this revelation.

[czarjak]

12. Haunting. Just doing God's will of course.

[wnylib]

16. The concept was developed by a military officer.

Congress took it up, allocated funds, and then farmed out the actual work to private agencies by government contract. The vast majority were operated by churches, although a few were secular organizations.

[Tetrachloride]

3. A friend who has passed on may have been a survivor.

I will ask the family soon or later.

She was the last native speaker of her band.

[llashram]

4. not surprised

in the least...genocide was the order of the day. Assimilate or die.

[wnylib]

17. But assimilation did not happen.

The children did learn some basic educational subjects, but the menial work that they did in the schools and when hired out to families (money to the school staff, not the children) did not preepare them for jobs.

Most did not assimilate to the dominant Euro-American society which did not accept them. They were alienated by the schools from their own cultures. They did not fit in anywhere.

[llashram]

20. yeah I know

and many died. That is indisputable. From the very first "after the savages" uttered by the conquerors of America, they DID NOT assimilate. Out of millions of First Americans facing the conquerors of America, how many were left after the genocidal push to kill all the "savages" fighting for their land? The First Americans, they was robbed...and killed and assimilated.

[H2O Man]

5. Recommended.

I used to talk with Paul's sister about her experiences. Brutal.

[PurgedVoter]

7. My tears flow

This was genocide.

[Raster]

8. Without. A. Doubt.

[usaf-vet]

9. For folks living in Wisconsin. Boarding Schools Seasons. 1900-1940.

For additional reading sources that address at least three Wisconsin Tribes.

See this book.

https://tinyurl.com/BoardSchoolSeasons

[bluboid]

10. my question is -

is that why the Pope seemed to act so embarrassed when Biden visited Rome a few months ago??? I wonder if they discussed it - didn't see any reference to it in the news - but didn't dive deep.

[shrike3]

19. A variety of entities ran U.S. Boarding schoolls.

Which is not surprising, because the U.S. Christians were historically white and protestant.

The U.S. government itself ran some schools. Christian churches, which of course included Catholics, ran others.

I saw the footage between Biden and the Pope. The Pope did not look embarrassed to me.

https://www.theindigenousfoundation.org/articles/us-residential-schools

The Native American assimilation era first began in 1819, when the U.S. Congress passed The Civilization Fund Act. The act encouraged American education to be provided to Indigenous societies and therefore enforced the “civilization process".

The passing of this act eventually led to the creation of the federally funded Native American Boarding Schools and initiated the beginning of the Indian Boarding School era. The duration of this era ran from 1860 until 1978. Approximately 357 boarding schools operated across 30 states during this era both on and off reservations and housed over 60,000 native children. A third of these boarding schools were operated by Christian missionaries as well as members of the federal government. These boarding schools housed several thousand children.

[niyad]

11. There were over 200 recorded deaths at Carlisle, the first of these horrors, alone.

There are numerous videos about these horrors, both here and in Canada. Heartbreaking.

"Kill the Indian to save the man."

[Bayard]

13. Another dirty secret from our past with indigenous people

These kids had their identities taken away entirely--even their names. They were legally kidnapped, and families often never knew what happened to them.

Yes, it was genocide, like the rest of America's war on Native peoples.

[Mawspam2]

14. Once the GQP takes power, this is another chapter...

...of US history that will vanish and be banned from classrooms and textbooks. The Ministry of Misinformation will never allow past crimes to be spoken of.

[ampm]

22. Nevada checking in

How about the schools here in Nevada? Please don't forget the churches, had a lot about what happened to them. The missions in California are another place that needs looking into. They sent my Grandfather to Haskel when he was a child, and he never regained his roots. It was upon his death that he told my mother who he was. Yet the archives, in Washinton DC, have no record of him and I hold his school record. So yes just the beginning

[Demovictory9]

25. K&R

[artemisia1]

26. A similar atrocity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage_Indian_murders