A newly published report dives deeper than ever before into US Indian boarding schools - a system where hundreds of Native children died and thousands more were disenfranchised from their families and communities.
Among other things, it identifies 74 burial sites at 417 institutions across the nation.
The “boarding school era” runs from the late 1800s through the 1960s, meaning some survivors of boarding school practices are still living with the ramifications in the year 2024.
Adjusted for inflation, the report estimates the United States government appropriated $23.3 billion between 1871 and 1969 to fund the Indian boarding school system and associated assimilation policy.
While unclear where precisely these students are from, there are 33 tallied deaths among tribal members with communities found in South Dakota’s borders, as well as 28 more assigned to general “Sioux” backgrounds.
Additionally, there are nearly three dozen boarding school sites in South Dakota, and three have known burial sites. Those include the now-defunct Crow Creek Agency Boarding School, the Rapid City Indian School, and the Red Cloud Indian School, which now operates as Mahpiya Luta.
Among other things, the report recommends the federal government issue a formal apology for its role in implementing the boarding school system, as well as establish a national memorial to boarding school victims.
Additionally, it advocates returning boarding school lands to local tribes, and to repatriate the remains of students who lost their lives in these facilities.
This represents the last of two investigative reports from the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. It was published by the US Department of Interior and can be found online in its entirety here.
