The actual death toll of native American children in US boarding schools is at least three times higher than the government’s official count, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
From 1819 to the 1970s, hundreds of Indian boarding schools were established across the US with the aim of forcibly assimilating native children into European settler culture. This included the forced conversion of children to Christianity.
The investigation found that between 1828 and 1970, 3,104 indigenous students died at these schools, which is thrice the number reported by a recent government assessment. The schools, described by experts as having conditions similar to “prison camps,” were sites of high mortality, with children dying from disease, malnutrition, accidents, and sometimes under mysterious circumstances.
Many of the children who died were buried in cemeteries near the schools, often far from their families and tribes. The bodies of these children were rarely returned home. As time passed, poor record-keeping has made it difficult to pinpoint the full extent of the deaths, with some gravesites either hidden, neglected, or paved over. The Post’s findings were drawn from “hundreds of thousands” of government documents.
President Joe Biden sparked widespread attention in October when he issued a historic apology for what he called one of the nation’s “most horrific chapters”: the forced removal of Native American children from their homes and their placement in these often abusive institutions. His apology followed a government report that documented the deaths of nearly 1,000 children, though the actual number was believed to be much higher.
The Biden administration has since committed to significant support for Native American communities, investing in tribal autonomy, protecting sacred ancestral lands, and tackling gender-based violence. However, Native Americans remain among the poorest groups in the US, a direct result of centuries of marginalization.
In Canada, where more than 4,000 children are thought to have died or disappeared from similar residential schools, a government commission condemned the institutions as “cultural genocide.”