Indigenous boarding schools report is a warning against oppressive education policies
MSNBCMay 12, 2022
A report from the US Dept. of the Interior has found that over 500 students died while attending one of 408 federally-supported boarding schools for Native American, Alaskan and Hawaiian children.
The schools aimed to assimilate Indigenous children and operated between 1819 and 1969.
This report marks an important step in reorientating federal policy to counteract past horrors. The federal government has revealed and is taking responsibility for how cultural erasure and the forced assimilation into white culture has continued to affect indigenous communities. This will provide a valuable roadmap towards healing.
This is too little, too late. Unlike in Canada, the US government has never acknowledged how many children attended these schools that facilitated rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. The federal government has sidestepped accountability for decades by failing to declare how many children died or went missing or, even, how many of these institutions existed. A formal apology and reparations are long overdue.