{"id":40657,"date":"2022-05-11T20:29:42","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T02:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/heartbreaking-and-undeniable-preliminary-review-of-federal-indian-boarding-schools-is-out\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:56:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:56:58","slug":"heartbreaking-and-undeniable-preliminary-review-of-federal-indian-boarding-schools-is-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/heartbreaking-and-undeniable-preliminary-review-of-federal-indian-boarding-schools-is-out\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Heartbreaking and undeniable\u2019 \u2013 preliminary review of federal Indian boarding schools is out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Teller Institute was one of more than 350 federally run boarding schools in the U.S. to assimilate Native American children. (Courtesy of the Museum of Western Colorado)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Department of the Interior has released the first part of its review examining the legacy of the federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. The investigation was ordered by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland last June.<\/p>\n

Haaland, the first Indigenous person to lead the department, said in a statement that the consequences of the federal boarding school policies \u201care heartbreaking and undeniable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado was home to five such schools<\/a>. They included the institution that has become Fort Lewis College<\/a>. In recent years, the school has taken steps to reckon with that history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The states with the most number of schools were Oklahoma with 76, Arizona with 47 and New Mexico with 43.<\/p>\n

The 106-page report<\/a> lays the groundwork to address the consequences of this \u201ctroubled\u201d legacy by looking at the history and gathering facts and data, according to the department. It highlights conditions Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children endured at these schools from 1819 to 1969, from abuse and overcrowding to forced labor and forbidding the use of Native languages and traditions.<\/p>\n

\"Interior
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks during a news briefing at the White House in Washington. (Evan Vucci\/Associated Press file)<\/span>onset<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Her voice breaking, an emotional Haaland shared Wednesday that her maternal grandparents \u201cwere stolen from their parents, culture and communities\u201d and forced into the boarding schools system, themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not new \u2026 to many of us as Indigenous people. We have lived with the intergenerational trauma of federal Indian Boarding School policies for many years,\u201d she said. \u201cWe must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past. Today is a critical step forward in that work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The department is launching a new yearlong initiative, called \u201cThe Road to Healing,\u201d where survivors of the system will have the opportunity to share their stories and connect with \u201ctrauma-informed support.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investigation was led by Bryan Newland, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the department, who said the system has left \u201clasting scars.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report also identified marked and unmarked burial sites at 53 different schools across the country. The department does not plan to make the exact location of those sites public for their protection, but added it expects the number to increase as it continues its investigation.<\/p>\n

The report offers a number of recommendations, including that the federal government needs to continue its investigation by identifying Federal Indian Boarding School attendees and documenting their experiences, support protection and preservation of sites, advance Native language revitalization and promote Indigenous health research.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colorado was home to five such institutions, including what became Fort Lewis College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2007,155,28,1097,561],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-culture-general","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-indigenous-people","tag-native-american"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84719,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40657\/revisions\/84719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40657"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}