Secretary Haaland Announces Major Milestones for Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative

U.S. Department of the Interior

The Department of the Interior today announced next steps on the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, launched in June 2021 by Secretary Deb Haaland as the first-ever comprehensive effort by the federal government to recognize the troubled legacy of past federal Indian boarding school policies with the goal of addressing their intergenerational impact and shedding light on past and present trauma in Indigenous communities.   

The Department also launched an oral history project to document and make accessible to the public the experiences of generations of Indigenous then-children who attended the federal Indian boarding school system. Through a grant from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and with funding from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is currently interviewing survivors for what will be a collection of first-person narratives. The Department and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, part of the largest museum, research and education complex in the world, are partnering to explore how best to share with the public the history of the federal Indian boarding school system and its role in U.S. development, with a proposed focus on the never-told-before experiences of survivors. 

Read more from the U.S. Department of the Interior.