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Tags: native american | boarding schools | funding | children | interior department

Report: $23B to Start 'Healing' From Indian Boarding Schools

By    |   Tuesday, 30 July 2024 07:57 PM EDT

The Interior Department has called for some $23 billion in federal funding to begin a "healing" process for those affected by the Indian boarding school system that pulled Native American children from their homes and communities for more than a century, NPR reported on Tuesday.

A three-year investigation concluded that the number of Native American children known to have died in the system is higher than previously acknowledged. The report confirmed that at least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died while attending schools in the system, with the actual number who perished while attending the schools likely greater.

For the first time, the federal government accepted responsibility for its role in creating the system, which included more than 400 schools across 37 states.

The report estimated that the federal government spent the equivalent of $23 billion in today's dollars on the boarding school system from 1871 to 1969, and urged spending an equivalent amount toward rebuilding families and communities.

The report urged spending on programs such as family reunification, language revitalization, and Indian education — programs meant to address the ways in which the boarding school system harmed tribal communities.

"The federal government — facilitated by the Department I lead — took deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of Indian affairs, added, "As we have learned over the past three years, these institutions are not just part of our past. Their legacy reaches us today, and is reflected in the wounds people continue to experience in communities across the United States."

Among the additional proposed initiatives are a national memorial to "acknowledge and commemorate" the experiences of tribes, a plan to return the land on which the boarding schools were located to government or tribal ownership, and for the U.S. government to issue a formal apology, according to NPR.

Brian Freeman

Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.

© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.


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The Interior Department has called for some $23 billion in federal funding to begin a "healing" process for those affected by the Indian boarding school system that pulled Native American children from their homes and communities for more than a century, NPR reported.
native american, boarding schools, funding, children, interior department
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2024-57-30
Tuesday, 30 July 2024 07:57 PM
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