WARNING: This story has disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. The National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline in Canada can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.
Mary Annette Pember
ICT
The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California have filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. government seeking a full accounting of monies spent running Indian boarding schools.
The tribes want the U.S. to account for the estimated $23.3 billion — adjusted for inflation — appropriated for the boarding school system, detail how the money was invested and list the remaining funds that were taken by the U.S. and allocated for the education of Native children.
The suit was filed May 22 in U.S. district court for the middle district of Pennsylvania. The location of the filing is especially poignant, since it is near the former site of the notorious Carlisle Indian Industrial School, according to Adam J. Levitt, one of the attorneys representing the tribes.
“Carlisle Indian boarding school is a key focal point for the century-and-a-half tragedy [of Indian boarding schools,” Levitt told ICT.
Carlisle, founded in 1879, was among the first federally run Indian boarding schools and served as a model for hundreds of others in the United States and Canada.
According to the lawsuit, the federal government used the trust fund money of tribes to pay for boarding schools where generations of Native children were systematically abused. By its own admission, the federal government used funds raised by forcing tribal nations into treaties to cede their lands. That money was to have been held for the collective benefit of tribes.
Civil actions against the U.S. must be filed within six years after the right of action first accrues, according to the Tucker Act. But the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled in 2018 in a suit filed by the White Mountain Apache Tribe that mismanagement of trust funds had no such limit.
The boarding school lawsuit was filed against the U.S. Department of the Interior, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education, both of which operate under the Department of the Interior. Interior officials did not respond to an email request Thursday from ICT seeking comment.
The harm endures
The strongly worded lawsuit says the U.S. government has never accounted for the funds it took or provided details on how the funds were spent. It also has filed to identify any funds that remain.
But generational damages remain, the suit notes, in families where children were forcibly removed from their homes and placed into boarding schools as part of a government plan of forced assimilation.
“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,” according to the lawsuit. “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 the quiet desperation of so many survivors and their descendants, families that carry scars down through generations. It endures in the missing remains and unmarked graves of the children who died.”
Native children were cut off from their families, culture and language, and many died in the boarding schools without ever returning home.
The system “deprived those children of the skills necessary to prosper and participate in Native Nations’ communities, indoctrinated the children into servile positions, and condemned Native Nations to cycles of poverty, violence, and drug addiction.”
It also violated the government’s obligations to provide services to the children.
“Beyond being a national disgrace, the boarding school program was an undeniable violation of the United States’s longstanding, explicit, and ongoing obligations (including, but not limited to, obligations guaranteed by treaty and statute) as trustee tasked with providing Native children’s education,” according to the lawsuit.
‘Shameful chapter’
Tribal leaders and attorneys involved with the lawsuit say the government must be held accountable.
“The boarding school program represents one of the most shameful chapters in American history,” said Serrell Smokey, chairman of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California in a press release issued by attorneys representing the tribes.
“Our children were taken from us, subjected to unimaginable horrors, and forced to fund their own suffering,” Smokey said. “This lawsuit seeks to hold the U.S. Government accountable for its actions and to ensure that the truth is finally brought to light.”
Amber Silverhorn-Wolfe, president of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes in Oklahoma, said the damages continue from the boarding school system.
“The boarding school program inflicted profound and lasting harm on our communities,” Silverhorn-Wolfe said, according to the press release. “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.”
Attorney Faith E. Gay, who is also representing the tribes in the suit, noted that the 2022 and 2024 Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative reports issued under the leadership of then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland revealed the scale and scope of the government’s actions.
“Before these reports, key information relating to the boarding school program was hidden from the public and remains under the United State’s exclusive control,” she said in the press release. “As our claims allege, the time has come for our country to account for the significant harm inflicted on Native children in violation of our treaties and statues.”
Last year, President Joe Biden issued a formal apology for the government’s boarding school policy, calling it “a sin on our soul” and “one of the most horrific chapters” in American history. But in April, the administration of President Donald Trump cut $1.6 million from projects meant to capture and digitize stories of boarding school survivors. And Biden’s apology has since been deleted from the White House website.
Attorneys said there has never been a trust lawsuit tied to the United States’ actions concerning Native education.
“The admission of wrongdoing and a presidential apology are not enough,” according to the lawsuit.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.