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USA Today
3 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Native American boarding school funding under scrutiny in lawsuit
Native American boarding school funding under scrutiny in lawsuit The lawsuit filed by the Wichita and Washoe tribes demands an accounting of an estimated $23.3 billion in misappropriated funds. Show Caption Hide Caption US apologizes for the first time for abuses at Native schools President Joe Biden formally apologized for the abuses committed against Native boarding school students over the past century. Two tribal nations are suing the U.S. government for misusing trust funds meant for Native children's education to finance abusive boarding schools. The lawsuit demands an accounting of an estimated $23.3 billion and details of how the funds were used. The lawsuit follows Interior Department reports detailing abuses and deaths within the boarding school system. Two tribal nations are suing the United States government, saying it misappropriated trust funds to finance the Federal Indian Boarding School program, using monies meant to support Native Nations to instead fuel a system of abuse that spawned generations of trauma, despair and social ills. The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California say financing for the boarding school program included Native trust funds taken 'for the supposed purpose of providing money to support Native children's education.' The tribes are demanding a federal accounting of an estimated $23.3 billion in funding taken from those funds, saying the government has never detailed how the monies were used. The lawsuit was filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where one of the boarding school system's most notorious campuses – the Carlisle Indian Industrial School – once operated. 'The United States took upon itself the sacred trusteeship over Native children's education – a trust responsibility that has remained unbroken for 200 years,' said Adam Levitt, founding partner of DiCello Levitt, one of four law firms representing the tribes, in a news release. 'At the very least, the United States has a legal and moral obligation to account for the Boarding School Program, including a detailed explanation of the funds that it took and spent.' Federal trust responsibility 'was born of a sacred bargain,' according to the lawsuit. Through numerous treaties, Native Nations promised peace and ceded land; in exchange, the U.S. would provide for the education of their children. 'The land was ceded; the peace was a mirage,' the lawsuit said. 'And the primary victims of decades of ongoing statutory and treaty violations were the Native Nations' children.' The lawsuit names Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the Interior Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education as defendants. Alyse Sharpe, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, told USA TODAY the agency as a matter of policy does not comment on litigation. 'The Department of the Interior remains committed to our trust responsibilities of protecting tribal treaty rights, lands, assets, and resources, in addition to its duty to carry out the mandates of federal law with respect to American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages,' Sharpe said. A shameful chapter in US history More than 18,000 children, some as young as 4, were shipped off to 417 federal boarding schools, many run by religious organizations, between 1819 and 1969. The system's detrimental effects were both immediate and long-lasting. Under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the department's first Native American director, the agency released reports in 2022 and 2024 detailing the program's abuses, including death, forced labor and physical and sexual abuse. The investigation confirmed the deaths of at least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children in the boarding school system. According to the lawsuit, the program sought to destroy children's links to their Indigenous families, language and cultural practices, depriving them of skills necessary to participate and succeed in their own communities, indoctrinating them into menial positions and more broadly breeding cycles of poverty, violence and drug addiction. 'The Boarding School Program represents one of the most shameful chapters in American history,' Serrell Smokey, chairman of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, said in the news release. 'Our children were taken from us, subjected to unimaginable horrors, and forced to fund their own suffering. This lawsuit seeks to hold the U.S. government accountable for its actions and to ensure that the truth is finally brought to light.' The lawsuit says the program was not only 'a national disgrace' but violated the government's duty to provide Native children with an education, an obligation that continues today based on a 'unique and continuing trust relationship with and responsibility to the Indian people for the education of Indian children.' 'The Boarding School Program inflicted profound and lasting harm on our communities,' said Amber Silverhorn-Wolfe, president of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. 'We are seeking justice not only for the survivors but also for the generations that continue to suffer from the intergenerational trauma caused by these schools.' Faith E. Gay of Selendy Gay, another firm representing the tribes, noted the Interior Department reports revealed not only the scale and scope of the government's actions but that key information related to program financing remains under federal control. Those reports said the boarding school system was part of a pattern of forced assimilation policies pursued or allowed by the U.S. for nearly two centuries and recommended an official apology. President Joe Biden formally apologized for the program in October. 'The harm inflicted by the Boarding School Program endures in the broken families and poor mental and physical health of survivors of the Boarding Schools and their descendants,' the tribal lawsuit reads. 'It endures in the cycles of poverty, desperation, domestic violence, and addiction that were born of the Boarding School Program. It endures in the silence of lost language and culture, and … in the missing remains and unmarked graves of the children who died.'
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Sorry, not Sorry': Trump administration goes silent on boarding school history
Mary Annette Pember ICT The advancements made in the United States in recent years to officially face up to its ugly Indian boarding school history are being walked back under President Donald Trump. The Trump administration announced in April that at least $1.6 million in funding had been slashed for projects meant to capture and digitize the stories of systemic abuse of generations of Indigenous children in government-run boarding schools. Now questions are being raised about the removal of details from the White House website of President Joe Biden's historic apology for Indian boarding schools and his proclamation a few weeks later that the former site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School would become a national monument. SUPPORT INDIGENOUS JOURNALISM. CONTRIBUTE TODAY. Both announcements have been scrubbed from the website, which responds to links with an '404 error' message. The Carlisle proclamation appears to have been moved to a government web page described as 'Biden White House Archives.' 'This is historical material 'frozen in time,'' according to a statement at the top of the archived page with Biden's Carlisle proclamation. 'The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.' Related: Historic Apology: Boarding school history 'a sin on our soul' Other statements suggest some of the measures may have been rescinded by the Trump administration. An archived statement posted by outgoing Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Jan. 6, 2025, includes links to the apology and the Carlisle proclamation, with a warning note at the top. 'You are viewing ARCHIVED content published online before January 20, 2025. Please note that this content is NOT UPDATED, and links may not work,' the notice states. 'Additionally, any previously issued diversity, equity, inclusion or gender-elated guidance on this webpage should be considered rescinded.' ICT's requests for comment received no response from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, nor from press representatives from the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service and the Office of Army Cemeteries. 'A sin on our soul' The U.S. made great strides toward officially facing its Indian boarding school history during Biden's years in office, including a year-long Federal Indian Boarding School initiative launched by then-Interior Secretary Haaland, who is Laguna Pueblo and a descendent of boarding school survivors. As part of the initiative, Haaland traveled across the country on a 'Road to Healing' tour that gathered testimony from survivors and their families. The initiative also began the process of documenting the thousands of Indigenous students who were forced from their families and taken to boarding schools, which sought to wipe out Native people, culture and language. The Department of the Interior released two Indian boarding school investigative reports in 2022 and 2024. The final report included a series of recommendations for the government, starting with an apology. Biden issued the historic apology at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona on Oct. 25, 2024, in an emotional speech that brought tears to many in the crowd, describing federal Indian boarding school policies as 'a sin on our soul.' 'I formally apologize today as President of the United States of America for what we did,' he said. 'I apologize, apologize, apologize!' As first reported in The New York Times on May 1, the link to Biden's apology has been deleted from the White House website. Biden's apology could not be found on other government websites, either, although a chronological slide show of his presidency in the archives includes one photo of the event. Related: Honoring the children: Biden proclaims new national monument at Carlisle Biden followed up the apology with a proclamation in December 2024 designating the Carlisle Indian Industrial School site as a national monument. Although the proclamation is no longer on the White House website, an archived version remains and a description of the monument — which would be the 432nd site in the national park system — remains on the National Park Service website. Biden proclaimed the Pennsylvania school site a national monument under the Antiquities Act, which authorizes the president to declare, at his discretion, historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures and other objects of historic or scientific interest, as national monuments, safeguarding them from harm. According to Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization, about half of the country's national parks were first protected under the Antiquities Act, and they note that no court has ever overturned a president's monument designation. Earthjustice leadership says that nothing in the Antiquities Act authorizes the president to remove lands from a national monument, but the Yale Journal on Regulation published an opinion earlier this year that a general discretionary revocation power exists for the president that authorizes him to reverse the designation. According to the National Park Service, not all of the national monuments proclaimed by presidents over the past century are still national monuments. Eleven have been abolished by acts of Congress. Some of the designations were removed because resources for which the monument was originally established diminished or were determined to be of less significance, or because of mismanagement or other problems. 'Start with the truth' Questions remain whether the advances made in recent years for Indigenous people will last through the latest Trump administration. A string of federal layoffs cut off resources in the Indian Health Service, the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education, and other agencies that impact tribal communities. Tribal colleges and universities also faced cuts. Some of the cuts were rescinded by the Trump administration or by judicial orders, but reports continue to surface about problems accessing funds that should still be available. In April, the Trump administration announced the reduction of $1.6 million for the boarding school digitizing project. The cuts to the digitization project were among a string of grants canceled by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition lost more than $282,000, halting its work to digitize boarding school records. Also terminated was a $30,000 grant for a project between the Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and Alaska Native Heritage Center to record and broadcast oral histories of elders in Alaska. NABS and the other grant recipients received identical letters saying the grants "no longer effectuates the agency's needs and priorities," signed by Michael McDonald, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. "If we're looking to 'Make America Great Again,' then I think it should start with the truth about the true American history," said Deborah Parker, a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes and chief executive of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. This article contains material from The Associated Press. Our stories are worth telling. Our stories are worth sharing. Our stories are worth your support. Contribute today to help ICT carry out its critical mission. Sign up for ICT's free newsletter.
