The social, emotional, spiritual, and cultural devastation from boarding school experiences have passed down to Native American individuals, families, communities and Tribal Nations today. The time for healing inter-generational trauma is now.

The truth about the US Indian boarding school policy has largely been written out of the history books, and we still don’t know how many students attended. Many have estimated that there were nearly 500 government-funded Indian boarding and day schools across the US in the 19th and 20th centuries, and NABS has identified 357 boarding schools alone. In boarding schools, Indian children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their native languages.

Truth. Healing. Justice. Reconciliation. These words carry different meaning for Americans today, depending on what side of history you hail from. If you’re Native American, you know that Justice in Indian Country cannot be fully realized without a major shift in our national narrative. Namely, that the U.S. has never accepted responsibility for its Boarding School experiment—the forced removal of our children, the prohibition of our language and culture, and the violation of our human, civil, and indigenous rights.