(NewsNation) — The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative‘s latest report found that more than 970 Native American children died in federal boarding schools between 1819 and the 1970s.
The final report catalogued not only the 417 institutions‘ details, but the details of children attending as part of a three-year investigation into the “troubled” and “violent” history of FIBS.
The first-of-its-kind investigation’s findings include:
- Institutions existed in 37 states or then-territories
- At least 973 American Indian, Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian children died in these facilities
- There are at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites across 65 schools
1,025 institutions — that did not meet the investigation’s four criteria — were also noted in the report.
“As we have learned over the past three years, these institutions are not just part of our past. Their
legacy reaches us today, and is reflected in the wounds people continue to experience in communities across the United States,” Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said in the report.
The schooling system aimed to “culturally assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children by forcibly removing them from their families, communities, languages, religions and cultural beliefs,” according to the DOI.
The Indigenous Foundation estimates that at least 60,000 children were forcibly taken and enrolled in these schools, “given Anglo-American names, bathed in kerosene, given military-style clothing in exchange for their traditional clothing, and their hair would be shaved off for the boys and cut into short bob styles for girls.”
The full report is available at this link.