A year-long investigation by The Washington Post documented that 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970, three times as many as reported by the U.S. Interior Department. More than 800 of those students are buried in cemeteries at or near the schools they attended, underscoring how, in many cases, children’s bodies never were sent home to their families or tribes. Children were beaten and harshly punished if they did not adhere to strict rules in the classroom and in the fields, laundry rooms, kitchens or workshops where they often were forced to spend half their days. “These were not schools,” said Judi Gaiashkibos of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose relatives were sent to Indian boarding schools. “They were prison camps. They were work camps.”
Causes of death included infectious diseases, malnutrition and accidents. Dozens died in suspicious circumstances, and in some instances the records provide indications of abuse or mistreatment that likely resulted in children’s deaths. The findings show gaps in the federal government’s accounting of what happened to Native American children who were wrested from their homes in the name of assimilation. Many tribes — long denied the chance to mourn and bury their dead — are seeking to find their ancestors’ remains and return them home. The schools were part of a sprawling system of more than 400 facilities created by the U.S. government, some in partnership with churches, religious orders and missionary groups, to target Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children. The Biden administration has sought to bring attention to the legacy of boarding schools. In Canada, where at least 4,100 students at residential schools are believed o have died or gone missing, school survivors have been paid billions in compensation, and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 declared the schools a form of “cultural genocide.” Legislation to establish a similar commission in the U.S. passed the Senate on Friday, but it did not reach the House for a floor vote. President Biden apologized in October for “one of the most horrific chapters in American history.”
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