US to review the history of indigenous boarding schools: Deb Haaland | Human Rights News

The Secretary of the Interior launched a 150-year study of U.S. practices to eradicate the tribal identity and culture of Native Americans.

The federal government will investigate the oversight of Native American boarding schools and work to “discover the truth about the loss of human lives and lasting consequences” of organizations that forced hundreds of thousands of children from their families and communities over the decades. , U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced Tuesday.

Unprecedented work will include completing and reviewing decades of records to identify past boarding schools, finding known and possible burial sites in or near schools, and revealing students ’names and tribal ties.

“To address the intergenerational impact of boarding schools in India and promote spiritual and emotional healing in our communities, we need to shed light on the unspeakable traumas of the past,” Haaland said.

Haaland explained the initiative as a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe in New Mexico and the first Native American as a Cabinet Secretary because he reported the initiative at the group’s mid-year conference to members of the American Indian National Congress.

He said the process will be long, difficult and painful, and will not undo the heartache and loss suffered by many families.

Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the United States enacted laws and policies to establish and support Indian boarding schools across the nation. They have been taking indigenous children from their communities for more than 150 years and forced them into boarding schools focused on assimilation.

Haaland spoke about the federal government’s attempt to eradicate tribal identity, language, and culture, and the past continued to show through long cycles of trauma, violence and abuse, premature deaths, mental disorders, and substance abuse.

The recently found traces of children Buried in the site of the largest Indigenous school in Canada, this interest has increased in this heritage, both in Canada and in the United States.

In Canada, more than 150,000 First Nations children They had to go to state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to integrate them into society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and were not allowed to speak their languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 were reportedly killed.

-After reading about unmarked graves in Canada, Haaland told his family story in an opinion piece recently published by the Washington Post.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched a U.S. probe after reading reports of an unmarked grave in Canada that contained the remains of 215 indigenous children. [File: Evan Vucci/AP Photo]

Haaland wrote that it is “the product of these horrific policies of assimilation” and said that at the age of eight, “mothers and grandparents stole their families.”

He cited statistics from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition that by 1926, more than 80 percent of school-age Indigenous people attended boarding schools run by the federal government or religious institutions. In addition to providing and raising awareness of the resources, the coalition has been working to gather additional research on U.S. boarding schools and the deaths that many say are very wrong.

Interior Department officials said that in addition to trying to shed light on the loss of life in boarding schools, they will work to protect school-related burial sites and consult with tribes on how best to do so while respecting families and communities.

As part of the initiative, the agency’s final staff report is due by April 1, 2022.

Haaland recounted in her speech that her grandmother was loaded on the train with other children from her village and sent to the boarding school. He said the “dark history” of these institutions has haunted many families too much and that the agency is responsible for reviving that history.

“We need to find the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences of these schools,” he said.