Biden to create Indian boarding school national monument to mark era of forced assimilation
HARRISBURG, Pa. — President Joe Biden plans to designate a national monument at a former site Indian boarding school in Pennsylvania to honor the resilience of Native American tribes whose children were forced to be present the school and hundreds of similar abusive institutions.
The White House said Monday that Biden would announce the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument during a summit of tribal leaders on Monday.
By the time it closed in 1918, more than 10,000 children attended the infamous Carlisle Indian Industrial School, including Olympian Jim Thorpe. They came from dozens of tribes that pursued forced assimilation policies designed to erase Native American traditions and “civilize” the children so they would better fit into white society.
The children were often taken against their parents’ will, and an estimated 187 American Indian and Alaska Native children died at the Carlisle facility, including from tuberculosis and other diseases.
Continuous efforts are being made to return the remains of the children, who are buried on the school grounds, to their homeland. In September, the remains of three children who died in Carlisle were exhumed and returned to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana.
At least 973 Native American children died according to a study by the Ministry of Home Affairs on government-funded Indian boarding schools that had been operating for more than 150 years.
During a series of public listening sessions on reservations in recent years organized by the Ministry of Home Affairs, survivors from the schools recalled being beaten, forced to cut their hair and punished for using their native language.
The forced assimilation policy officially ended with the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. But the government never fully explored the boarding school system until the Biden administration.
Biden in October apologized on behalf of the US government for the schools and the policies that supported them.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose grandparents were taken to boarding schools against their families’ wishes, said no action could adequately address the damage caused by the schools. But she said the administration’s efforts have made a difference and that the new monument would allow the American people to learn more about the administration’s harmful policies.
“This trauma is not new for Indigenous people, but it is for many people in our country,” Haaland said in a statement.
The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded with a total of $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials determined. Religious and private institutions that ran many schools received federal money as partners in the assimilation campaign.
Monday’s announcement marks the seventh national monument to be created by Biden. The 25-acre site will be managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Army. It is now the site of the US Army War College.
Native American tribes and conservation groups are pushing for more monument designations before Biden leaves office.
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.