Home Christian News Department of Interior Releases First Report Detailing US Indian Boarding Schools

Department of Interior Releases First Report Detailing US Indian Boarding Schools

The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative report pointed to previous reports explaining that the government divvied up reservations among “major religious denominations.”

Those religious institutions and organizations were able to nominate new governmental liaison agents and direct educational and other activities on the reservations. They also were given tracts of reservation land to use for educational and missionary work and, at times, paid per capita for each Indigenous child who entered the schools they operated.

Several Catholic groups and Protestant denominations also have called for the United States to establish a Truth and Healing Commission similar to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which issued its final report on its own residential school system for Indigenous children in 2015.

They’re joined by lawmakers, who reintroduced the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States Act last year.

The act would create a commission to investigate, document and acknowledge the past injustices of U.S. boarding school policy. A U.S. commission also would develop recommendations for Congress to help heal the historical and intergenerational trauma passed down in Native families and communities and provide a forum for boarding school survivors to share their experiences.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Parker reiterated the call for a Truth and Healing Commission.

“We must be able to locate church and government records beyond the Department of Interior’s reach,” she said.

Other speakers outlined next steps for the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.

Newland said the next volume of the initiative’s report will approximate the total number of children that attended boarding schools, the amount of federal support for this system and the total number of marked and unmarked burial sites at schools. It also will attempt to identify the names, ages and tribal affiliations of children interred at those burial sites.

And Haaland announced the launch of “The Road to Healing,” a yearlong tour of the country to give American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian survivors of the federal Indian boarding school system the opportunity to share their stories. It also will help connect communities with trauma-informed support and facilitate the collection of oral histories.

“This is not new to us,” Haaland said.

“It’s not new to many of us as Indigenous people. We have lived with the intergenerational trauma of federal Indian boarding school policies for many years. But what is new is the determination in the Biden-Harris administration to make a lasting difference in the impact of this trauma for future generations.”

This article has been updated.

This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.