Mary Annette Pember
ICT
Congressional efforts to create a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies got another boost this week, leaving the Senate poised to consider a bill to investigate the history and trauma of Native boarding schools.
Just one week after a U.S. House committee advanced a bill another step toward a vote by the full House, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs advanced a Senate version of the legislation to the Senate floor for consideration.
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The move marks the furthest the bill has ever made it in the legislative process. A companion bill in the U.S. House also moved to the House floor for a vote on June 13.
“This bill is long overdue, and our Indian boarding school relatives and survivors deserve to be recognized,” said Ruth Anna Buffalo, Mandan Hidatsa Arikara Nation, who is board president of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
“By passing this historic legislation, we honor the spirits of the children, their relatives and tribal communities while acknowledging their enduring strength and resilience,” she said. “This is a significant step towards healing our nations.”
The bill’s advancement was announced Thursday, June 20, by U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawai’i who chairs the committee, and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, who is the committee vice chair. The legislation was authored by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts.
“For more than a century, the federal government’s Indian boarding school policies and practices sought to destroy Native languages, cultures, and identities,” Schatz said in a statement. “The committee has heard from and reflected on over 100 comments from survivors, descendants, tribal leaders, tribal citizens, advocates, religious organizations, local governments, and experts about the need for Congress to act and help address the intergenerational impacts of the shameful history of Indian Boarding Schools.
“It’s long past time that we reckon with this painful history,” he said. “Now that this bill is ready for floor action, I look forward to moving it through the Senate quickly.”
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—U.S. boarding school truth inches forward
Murkowski urged the Senate to act quickly to get the legislation into law before the end of the year.
“It is the responsibility of the U.S. government to come to terms with the dark legacy of the Indian boarding school era, and to help all those affected to find healing,” she said in a statement. “That’s why I introduced legislation with Senator Warren to create this formal truth and healing commission. By acknowledging past wrongs and actively working toward transparency and justice, we can begin to rebuild trust with Indigenous communities who still feel the repercussions of these federal assimilationist policies.”
Warren likewise urged the Senate to move quickly in passing the bill.
“For over a century, the cruel Indian boarding school policies ripped children from their homes, and forced them into schools where they faced abuse, neglect, trauma, and even death,” Warren said in a statement. “A Truth and Healing Commission will help us fully investigate the effects of these policies and propose ways to heal the harms caused. Today marks a critical step toward passing my bill to create that commission.”
A version of the bill recently passed through the markup phase in the House Education and Workforce Committee.
The Senate bill, known as S. 1723, would create a five-member Truth and Healing Commission and three advisory bodies: a 15-member Survivors Truth and Healing Subcommittee, a 19-member Native American Truth and Healing Advisory Committee, and a 17-member Federal Truth and Healing Advisory Committee. Certain members of the commission and the survivors subcommittee would be cross-appointed to leadership positions on the different advisory bodies.
Candidates for all positions on the commission, committees and subcommittees would be nominated by Native communities.
An amended version of S. 1723 passed out of the committee, reflecting extensive bipartisan review, analysis, and debate om comments from the administration, Native people and communities and faith groups. The committee prepared a comprehensive committee report reflecting the feedback.
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