What were the horrors of Native American boarding schools?

Educators frequently renamed children with English names, cut off hair, prohibited the use of Native languages and religions, and demanded extensive manual labor. The report also found 53 burial sites at boarding school locations, with more expected to be found as investigations continue.

What was the tragedy of the Native American boarding schools?

While researchers say the known toll is still far from complete, there are at least hundreds of Native children who died while attending boarding schools. In site after site, children's bodies were stuffed into graves without regard for the burial traditions of their families or their cultures.

What were the atrocities at Indian boarding schools?

Many of these children experienced abuse, sexual assault, and punishment at the hands of the residential staff and were converted to various Christian religions. Hundreds of Indigenous children were killed at these schools, and those that survived were never the same.

What was the abuse in Indian residential schools?

For more than a century, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were forced to attend boarding schools. Those schools stripped children of their identities and cultures. Deaths are estimated to be in the thousands as they suffered abuse, neglect, beatings and forced labor.

What were the problems with Native American boarding schools?

Their own traditional religious practices were forcibly replaced with Christianity. They were taught that their cultures were inferior. Some teachers ridiculed and made fun of the students' traditions. These lessons humiliated the students and taught them to be ashamed of being American Indian.

The dark history behind Native American boarding schools in the US

How did Native Americans treat their children?

Unlike European children, Native American children were seldom struck or "spanked" when they disobeyed. Punishment usually involved teasing and shame in front of the rest of the tribe. At the same time, children who obeyed were praised and honored in front the tribe.

How did Native American boarding schools end?

The federal government shut many of them down in the 1930s, and the big story of Indian education became public school education. But some of [the boarding schools] continued, actually, at the demand of the Indian families, who used them as a poverty relief program for their families to survive the Great Depression.

What was the most abusive residential school?

Fort Albany Residential School, also known as St. Anne's, was home to some of the most harrowing examples of abuse against Indigenous children in Canada.

What happened to Native American kids?

There were more than 523 government-funded, and often church-run, Indian Boarding schools across the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. 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.

How Native American children endured brutal treatment in US boarding schools?

Students were forced to cut their hair, change their names, stop speaking their Native languages, convert to Christianity, and endure abusive disciplinary measures like solitary confinement. While many children returned to their families, more than 180 children died while attending the school.

What 3 things were the Indian children in boarding schools not allowed to do?

A group of boys in school uniforms, circa 1890. As part of this federal push for assimilation, boarding schools forbid Native American children from using their own languages and names, as well as from practicing their religion and culture. Clothes mending class, circa 1901. Laundry class, circa 1901.

Which tribe refused to send their children to the boarding schools?

In 1895, nineteen men of the Hopi Nation were imprisoned to Alcatraz because they refused to send their children to boarding school.

Why were Indian boarding schools stopped?

There were reports of physical, including sexual, abuse at the schools. Native children resisted. Some ran away, refused to work, and secretly spoke their languages. For years, Native communities protested for the right to educate their own children.

What happened to the Native American families who refused to send their children to a boarding school?

Chief Lomahongyoma and 18 other Hopi Indians were imprisoned on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay for refusing to send their children to government-run boarding schools and resisting the Bureau of Indian Affairs's efforts to force them to adopt farming practices that were inconsistent with their cultural values.

What would happen if Native American parents refused to send their children to boarding schools?

I have heard many first hand accounts of children taken away in handcuffs. Children were taken away violently by armed men. Their families were refused food for refusing to send their children to boarding school, where many children died of disease and abuse.

What happened to Native American children when they went to an Indian boarding school?

Tens of thousands of Native American children were removed from their communities and forced to attend boarding schools where they were compelled to change their names, they were starved and whipped, and made to do manual labor between 1819 and 1969, an investigation by the U.S. Department of Interior found.

Why did Indian parents send their children to school?

Although a majority of Native children were forced to attend these boarding schools, some parents chose to send their children because those were the only schools available to their children.

Do Native boarding schools still exist?

In the mid-20th century, many of these schools shut down due to reports of neglect and abuse, while those that remained made enormous changes. Four are still open today. Since Neconie and others attended, thousands of Native students have walked through the school's halls and dorms.

How many Native American children were removed from their families?

An estimated 25% to 35% of Native American children were removed from their families prior to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The Indian Child Welfare Act protects Indian children by prioritizing placement with extended families, within the tribe or with an Indian family.

What was the largest killer of children in residential schools?

Many of the students had diseases such as tuberculosis, scrofula, pneumonia and other diseases of poverty. Often, the students with tuberculosis were sent home to die, so the mortality rate of the boarding schools is actually greater than the number of children who died at those institutions.

What was the dark history of residential schools?

Because schools were often segregated by gender, many kids were also separated from their siblings (3). They were placed in uncomfortable, unsanitary conditions without proper medical care or sufficient nutrition. Worse yet, the children were subjected to emotional, physical and sexual abuse for years on end.

How many kids died trying to escape residential schools?

The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission says that over 3,200 indigenous children died while living in residential schools. Most were taken by disease, but nearly a dozen died while trying to escape.

How long did Native American boarding schools last?

The investigation found that from 1819 to 1969, the federal Indian boarding school system consisted of 408 federal schools across 37 states or then territories, including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii.

What was the last Native American boarding school closed?

In 1918, Carlisle Indian Industrial closed for good, but when the school closed, the institutions it spawned and the desire to obliterate Native cultures did not die with it.

What was the main goal of Native American boarding schools?

The purpose of federal Indian boarding schools was to culturally assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children by forcibly removing them from their families, communities, languages, religions and cultural beliefs.