The U.S. Department of Interior’s report on its three-year investigation into federally funded Indian boarding schools — documenting the many Native American children who suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse in that system — shows the key role Christianity played in destroying tribal identity and family ties.
The Interior Department confirms that 973 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died in these schools. By the year 1900, 1 out of 5 Native American school-age children attended a boarding school.
Completing an initial study released in May 2022, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative’s second and final report lists 417 Indian boarding schools established between 1819 and 1969. Religious institutions or organizations ran more than half — 210 of 417 — of federal Indian boarding schools. The breakdown shows 80 were Catholic, 134 various Protestant and four other denominations (Independent, nonsectarian missionary, and the United Brethren in Christ). The numbers don’t add up because many operated under multiple religious or organizational affiliations. Oklahoma had 87 boarding schools, more than any other state.
More than 18,600 children who entered the system have been identified by name, although those in many other institutions, such as orphanages, asylums and sanatoriums, were not included in the report. Almost 300 children who died have yet to be identified. Only 53 marked burial sites and 21 unmarked sites have been located.
Congress passed a series of statutes authorizing the Interior Department to issue land patents to religious institutions and groups to use for religious or school purposes. These included the Indian Appropriation Act of 1909, which authorized the the Department of Interior to issue unrestricted land patents to religious institutions already engaged in religious or school activities on reservations. In 1922, Congress enacted yet another statute to issue land patents of up to 160 acres to such religious groups.
The report estimates that the federal government spent more than $23 billion in today’s dollars between 1871 and 1969 to run the boarding school system, much of these tax dollars necessarily going to religious institutions.
Indian School Superintendent John B. Riley urged the secretary of the Interior in 1886 to use public funds to enroll Indian children in boarding schools operated by religious institutions “to lead these people, whose paganism has been the chief obstacle to their civilization, into the light of Christianity.” The residential schools assimilated the children by forcing them, often in abusive ways, to turn their backs on their culture, languages and religions. “The assimilation methods used in federal Indian boarding schools were physically all-encompassing, from the pain of being stripped and ‘cleaned’ upon arrival, to the erasure of Native foods, and having their hair cut,” the report states.
Volume I of the investigation described the public-private relationship between the United States and religious institutions, which, the second report notes to its credit, “might face constitutional challenges today.” Based on available U.S. government records, the Department concludes that the United States supported at least 59 different religious institutions and organizations to operate or support schools in the Federal Indian Boarding School System.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, announced the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in June 2021 to recognize “the troubled legacy” and address intergenerational impact on “the traumas of the past.” The Interior Department also completed “The Road to Healing,” a historic 12-stop tour to provide Indigenous survivors the opportunity to disclose their experiences in Federal Indian Boarding Schools for the first time to the federal government..
Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland makes eight recommendations: To “acknowledge, apologize, repudiate and affirm” its national policy of forced assimilation; to “invest in remedies to the present-day impacts of the Federal Indian Boarding School System” (including family preservation, violence prevention, and to redress Indian education, such as First American language revitalization); to build a national memorial; to identify and repatriate children (or their remains) who never returned; to return former federal Indian Boarding School sites to Tribes; to tell the story of Indian Boarding schools and to invest in further research and advance international relationships.
Boarding school survivors have urged Congress to create a Truth and Healing Commission and for a presidential apology for widespread mistreatment of Native American children at the boarding schools.
“Secretary Haaland deserves praise for ensuring the federal government undertook this investigation and listening tour,” says FFRF Co-President Dan Barker, a member of the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) Tribe. “This is an important beginning, with a roadmap for the federal government. But where are the investigations and moral reckonings from the many Christian denominations that used religion as a weapon against Indigenous children stolen from their families?”
After the Washington Post earlier this spring documented pervasive sexual abuse by priests against Native American children at boarding schools, the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops issued a formal apology in June over the church’s role in inflicting a “history of trauma.” However, the report did not specifically mention sexual abuse. The Jesuits agreed to pay $166 million to about 500 boarding school survivors in 2011, mainly in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation serves as the nation’s largest association of freethinkers, with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, and works as a state/church watchdog to safeguard the constitutional principle of separation between state and church.
