The United States released the “Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative” investigative report (in-depth observation)
The U.S. Department of the Interior has released the first volume of the investigation report of the “Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative” project. The report shows that the federal government has used boarding schools to forcibly relocate and resettle Indian children to achieve the dual goals of cultural assimilation and deprivation of Indian people’s land, resulting in the death of many children. Analysts pointed out that this is a dark chapter in the history of human rights in the United States, and it is also a key incriminating evidence of systemic racism and human rights problems in the United States.
Beginning with the Indian Civilization Fund Act of 1819, the United States formulated and implemented a series of laws and policies to establish Native boarding schools throughout the United States. The report shows that from 1819 to 1969, 408 Native boarding schools were established in 37 states in the United States. Boarding schools were militarized and resorted to a number of genocidal practices, including organizing children for military training, changing Indian children’s names to English, cutting Indian children’s hair, and banning Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians language, religion and cultural practices. These schools focus on manual labor education, leading to a disconnect between Aboriginal employment options and the industrialized economy.
The report revealed a shocking set of data: at least 500 Indian children died in boarding schools. That number could be higher, in the thousands or even tens of thousands, as investigations continue. NBC noted that this is the first time in U.S. history that Indian boarding school deaths have been counted, but “it’s far from a complete number.” “The U.S. government doesn’t even know how many Indian students went to these schools, let alone how many actually died there,” said Preston McBride, a historian of American Indian boarding schools, in his In the four boarding schools studied, more than 1,000 students died. He estimated that the total number of boarding school deaths could be as high as 40,000, “essentially every boarding school has a cemetery and almost every boarding school has a fatality”. North Cheyenne researcher Martha Small pointed out that there are more than 210 graves in the Chemawa Indian School cemetery in Oregon, most of which are children. “This is genocide.”
According to McBride’s study of letters to students, parents and administrators, the causes of these children’s deaths included illness, abuse and more. According to Al Jazeera, in these boarding schools, if children speak their language or behave according to their cultural traditions, they face severe punishment, including solitary confinement, humiliation, whipping, fasting, slapping, etc. Forced to punish young children. Corporal punishment, including whipping, was given to children when they ran away and were caught. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted people of Indian descent as saying that students in these boarding schools were also used as a labor force, and many children died at a very young age.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Harlan said in a statement that the consequences of the boarding school policy’s separation of families, cultural genocide, and intergenerational trauma for generations are heartbreaking. evidence”. “Our children deserve to be found,” said Deborah Parker, chief executive of the National Coalition for Indian Residential School Therapy. “We will not stop working until America fully recognizes the genocide committed against Native children.”
More than just boarding schools, the genocide of Indians in the United States has not stopped for hundreds of years. The Indian population plummeted from 5 million at the end of the 15th century to 237,000 at the beginning of the 20th century. “The U.S. government’s war against the Indians was fundamentally different from other conflicts of the nation’s time. For the Indians, it was a war of genocide,” said Jeffrey Ostler, a professor of history at the University of Oregon.
(Washington Newspaper)