A new national report includes a series of recommendations from the U.S.’s top Indian Affairs official to promote healing from the forced assimilation of American Indian and Alaska Native children.
Twenty-two of the 417 federal Indian boarding schools that operated in the United States in the 1800s were in Alaska, according to an investigative report the U.S. Department of the Interior released on Tuesday.
Local research has found more evidence of boarding schools than the federal report did. Research from the Alaska Native Heritage Center shows there were more than 100 government-funded, church-run Alaska Native boarding schools in Alaska from the late 1800s through the 1960s.
The report documents the U.S. government’s role in operating the federal Indian boarding school system in which American Indian and Alaska Native children were removed from their families and forcibly assimilated from the 1800s through the 1960s.
Nearly 1,000 children died at such schools, the report said. Many living Alaskans have memories of abuse and cultural assimilation at such schools.
Assistant Interior Secretary Bryan Newland included several recommendations in the report, such as acknowledging, apologizing for and repudiating the forced assimilation policy. Other steps Newland recommended include: investing in culturally based community-driven healing efforts; building a national memorial to the board school experiences; returning the remains of children who died at the schools and never returned home; and returning the school sites to tribes at their request.
The news from the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative comes as Alaska lawmakers push for more investigations and more healing.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is the vice chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and has led a bipartisan effort with U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, to create a Native-led commission tasked with revealing the full scope of what took place at boarding schools. In a statement, she said she welcomed the report.
“These findings affirm my resolve to get the Truth and Healing Commission legislation signed into law,” Murkowski said in the statement. “The more we understand the truth about this era, the more we are able to help all those affected find healing.”
In a text, Murkowski said the report is more than just words, but the stories of real Alaskans.
“It was particularly impactful to read some of the specific Alaska anecdotes throughout the report, including excerpts from Alaskan survivors on the road to healing. Their stories bring life to the harsh realities that these children faced— being stripped from their traditional clothing, becoming violently ill from being fed spoiled food, and facing acts of sexual abuse and physical harm,” she wrote, in part.
The commission would provide a platform for survivors to share their experiences and receive national acknowledgement. The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act has 32 cosponsors.
It also has the overwhelming support of Alaska Legislators, who nearly unanimously OK’d a resolution backing it that was sponsored by Rep. CJ McCormick, D-Bethel. House Joint Resolution 17 supports the commission and acknowledges the trauma Indian boarding schools inflicted on Indigenous communities in Alaska and across the country.
McCormick, who is from Bethel, said reports such as this one hit close to home.
He said the report made him think of boarding schools like the Moravian Children’s Home near Bethel. “Thinking about it in the context of rural Alaska, knowing how remote some of these schools are, it’s just really scary and very just sad to know that there might be hundreds of other children … who are perhaps killed, and lay somewhere like in an unmarked place that no one will ever know about,” he said.
McCormick said he was struck by the amount of money that went into operating these schools — nearly $32 billion in today’s dollars. He said it is now up to lawmakers to think of ways to put equal measure into healing the harm.
“As time goes on and more comes to light, I’m finding out people I’ve known my whole life have experienced things that I never knew about them, or never knew they were subjected to,” he said.
“​​It’s really, really striking, I think, how many people that I know who have gone on to be community leaders or really anything for that matter, that they had to endure that.”
Alaska Quakers have formally apologized for the state’s boarding schools; former Gov. Bill Walker did as well.
