More than 900 Native American children died while being forced to attend Indian boarding schools, reports the Washington Post, citing a new federal report released by the U.S. Department of the Interior on Tuesday, which urges the U.S. government to formally apologize for its systematic effort to assimilate the children and destroy their culture. Many of the children were buried in at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 former schools across the country, according to the report, which noted that the actual number of children who died and the number of potential burial sites are probably greater.
The new report, which builds on a May 2022 report, examined 417 federal boarding schools that operated from 1819 to 1969 across 37 states. In a year-long investigation published in May, the Washington Post found that at least 122 priests, sisters and brothers assigned to 22 boarding schools since the 1890s were later accused of sexually abusing Native American children under their care. Most of the documented abuse occurred in the 1950s and 1960s and involved more than 1,000 children. In Michigan, a boarding school survivor recalled the chilling sound of children crying. “I think the worst part of it was at night, listening to all the other children crying themselves to sleep, crying for their parents, and just wanting to go home,” the survivor said.
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