Felix Clary
ICT + Tulsa World
MIAMI, Okla. — The Truth and Healing Indian boarding school bill has gotten further in the legislative process this year than previous years, passing through two major committees in each chamber of Congress.
The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act was first introduced to the Senate in 2023 by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. That version of the bill got support from only 26 senators, mostly Democrats.
In February, U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., and U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, introduced their version of the bill to the House, which may soon be heard on the House floor.
“As a matter of procedure, this new version of the bill is much further along than it has gotten any time in the past,” Wilson Pipestem, representative of the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told ICT and the Tulsa World.
The goal of the bill is to create a commission that would gather information and study what happened in the more than150-year era of federal policy intended to eradicate tribal cultures and languages. In many cases, the federal government forcibly removed or coerced Native children out of their homes, putting them into federally operated or church-operated residential boarding schools.
“Kill the Indian, save the man,” was the motto of Richard Henry Pratt, an Army officer who created the first boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Boarding schools in Canada and other states were modeled on Pratt’s vision.
On the Senate side, the bill unanimously passed the Committee on Indian Affairs. On the House side, it passed the Education and Workforce Committee on June 13 with a bipartisan vote of 34-4, according to Pipestem.
“Even though four Republicans voted against that bill, that is an excellent result that gets us another important step forward on this legislation,” he said at a recent United Indian Nations of Oklahoma conference in Miami, Oklahoma.
“Time is of the essence with this bill, because a lot of the boarding school attendees are elderly, and they’re passing away. There is a lot of information that we would like to get from them, so we can tell their stories right,” Pipestem said.
Natural Resources, the second House committee the bill was referred to, waived jurisdiction July 3. Only one more committee has jurisdiction over this legislation: Energy and Commerce. Pipestem said at the UINO conference that committee is likely to waive jurisdiction, as well, because its only interest would be a small provision related to funding. Waiving jurisdiction would make the legislation eligible to be heard on the House floor.
“There has been so much groundwork support from tribes, Native communities, and our allies, that Congress is hearing those pleas and responding well to them,” Pipestem said in an ICT and Tulsa World interview.
He said the bill has support from both Republicans and Democrats, so with the upcoming presidential election, he expects support from whomever is elected and believes the bill will be put into effect this year.
This bill could potentially have subpoena power, according to Pipestem, meaning any organization responsible for the abuse that occurred at the schools may be legally compelled to testify or provide documents for investigations or hearings. Under the most recent form of the bill in the Senate, a unanimous agreement among the commissioners is required, as well as a review from the Department of Justice, before subpoena power is exercised.
One day after the bill passed the Education and Workforce Committee, June 14, the U.S. Catholic Church issued a formal apology for its active role in 100 boarding schools. In a 181-2 vote, the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops approved their apology.
Oklahoma boarding school history
While some schools in Oklahoma were operated by the Catholic church, many were operated by the Protestant church, which has not yet issued a formal apology.
There were 76 boarding schools in Oklahoma, according to Department of Interior reports, which is more than any other state.
Many of the schools were initially opened by the then-five federally recognized tribes — Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee and Seminole — in an attempt to educate their children in a new society.
Bloomfield Academy was opened by the Chickasaw Nation in 1852 as a school for girls near Achille, Oklahoma. While it was funded primarily by the tribe, Protestant missionaries controlled the operations, hiring teachers from New England colleges. Much of the abuse at the Oklahoma boarding schools was committed by the hands of teachers and missionaries.
It was not uncommon for Oklahoma tribes to gain operation of a school for a short period of time. This was the case for Bloomfield when the Chickasaws took control of the school in 1876. The school shifted its focus from assimilation to the arts, theater, speech, music and dancing.
When the Curtis Act was passed in 1898, the government developed a state education system. By 1907, the tribes had to give up school operations to the state, and assimilation began again.
Unhealthy living conditions and sexual and physical abuse caused the death of many children, Pipestem said. For the healing aspect of the new bill, he said it comes with having an understanding of what happened.
“Finding where these children are that died at the schools, where they are buried, and getting to some resolution. There are many children whose stories have not been told, whose bodies have not yet been returned to their families and communities, and we have to reconcile somehow with what happened to cause the conditioning of our people,” he said.
This story is co-published by the Tulsa World and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Oklahoma area.
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