This week the U.S. Interior Department released on the lasting consequences of the federal Indian boarding school system.

You might recall last June Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, announced the federal agency would investigate the extent of the loss of human life and legacy of the federal Indian boarding school system, a chapter of U.S. history many Americans know little to nothing about. 

This week鈥檚 report is the first of possibly many, and it deserves to be read by as many Americans as possible. 

Here are some of the investigation鈥檚 top-level findings:

• Beginning in the late 1800s, the federal government took Indian children from their families in an effort to strip them of their cultures and language.
• Between 1819 and 1969, the U.S. operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states (or then-territories), including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii. 
• Of those 37 states, New Mexico had the third-greatest concentration of facilities, with 43, trailing only Oklahoma and Arizona.  
• The schools 鈥渄eployed systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies to attempt to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education, including but not limited to the following: (1) renaming Indian children from Indian to English names; (2) cutting hair of Indian children; (3) discouraging or preventing the use of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian languages, religions, and cultural practices; and (4) organizing Indian and Native Hawaiian children into units to perform military drills.
• The Federal Indian boarding school system focused on manual labor and vocational skills that left American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian graduates with employment options often irrelevant to the industrial U.S. economy, further disrupting Tribal economies. 

Boarding schools in New Mexico got an early start.

Two years after the first boarding school, the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, opened in 1879, the Presbyterian Church opened the Albuquerque Indian School (AIS) for Navajo, Pueblo and Apache students. Later, the school transferred to federal control.

The Albuquerque Indian School merits several mentions in this week鈥檚 report, including five photos as I counted them of young Indigenous girls and boys in class, and of the building itself. 

I know a few details about AIS. Last year, New Mexico In Depth  that revisited the Albuquerque Indian School鈥檚 history within the larger context of the boarding school system. 

In addition to locating boarding schools across the country, this week鈥檚 report identifies at least 53 burial sites for children across this system 鈥� 鈥渨ith more site discoveries and data expected as we continue our research.鈥� The authors declined to identify where they are.

One of those burial sites is at the , a resting place for children and staff at the Albuquerque Indian School from 1882 through 1933. It鈥檚 been known in the city for decades. A 1999 study included it in a survey of known cemeteries and burial places across Albuquerque. After a lone marker commemorating the internment went missing, there wasn鈥檛 much to mark the burial site, save for makeshift memorials put there by community members. But after the news that a large unmarked burial site was found at a Canadian boarding school last summer, the city started a formal reconciliation process, working with leaders from tribes in the southwest, including Pueblo, Navajo, Apache and others, as well as with people who have a connection to the site.

The Interior Department report features images from other New Mexico boarding schools: Santa Fe Indian School; and in the west, Rehoboth Mission School, Tohatchi and Zuni. 

And it describes the forcible removal of Mescalero children, quoting U.S. Indian Agent Fletcher J. Cowart as he described attempts in the 1880s to take Mescalero and Jicarilla Apache children, resistance from chiefs and the tribal nations and his resorting to have Indian police forcibly remove the children from their homes.

It鈥檚 unclear how many Native children went to boarding schools. But the  estimated 鈥渉undreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families.鈥�

By 1900, 鈥渢here were 20,000 children in Indian boarding schools, and by 1925 that number had more than tripled,鈥� according to the group. 鈥淭hey suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government.鈥�

These atrocities were not a secret.

Our story last year highlighted that over the past century government reports sounded the alarm about the boarding schools, beginning with , which criticized the schools鈥� inadequate facilities and the removal of children from their homes. That report stressed repeatedly the need for relevant curriculum adapted to the culture of the children. 

Forty years later in 1969, the  came out, sounding more alarms.

The impacts of the boarding schools were profound. This new report describes cultural and familial disruption, and tribal erosion. It references a recent report that studied the physical health of now-adult boarding school attendees鈥� medical status, finding those who attended boarding schools are more likely to experience chronic physical disease, as well as increased risk for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression and unresolved grief.

鈥淭he combined direct and indirect results 鈥� show American Indians who attended boarding school have lower physical health status 鈥� than those who did not,鈥� according to researcher Ursula Running Bear, whose study was paid for by the National Institutes of Health.

Now, in 2022, we have another report.

As I read it, a quarter of the way through this sentence leapt out at me.

It鈥檚 a quote from the Kennedy Report.

Reading those words turned me introspective. I remember, as a young man, on occasion saying 鈥淢anifest Destiny鈥� when talking about this country鈥檚 history. It鈥檚 what I was taught in school in Georgia decades ago.

After living nearly 17 years in New Mexico, where I鈥檝e come face-to-face with the troubling, often horrific history tucked into the shadows by that phrase, I understand more fully the problem of saying 鈥淢anifest Destiny鈥� to describe how this country came to stretch from sea to shining sea. I knew about the broken treaties, the removal of entire nations from ancestral lands, the deliberate campaign to rob Native speakers of their languages 鈥� the list is long. I鈥檇 read about it in books and magazines, seen films and documentaries. But it鈥檚 one thing to read about it, removed from the blood and guts of the human toll, and another to see the effects first hand of more than a century of federal policies and discriminatory laws. To hear friends and acquaintances give an alternative telling of the continental expansion that impacted their great-great grandparents and succeeding generations, all the way down to their children 鈥� it makes a difference, putting a human face on the stories you read in books.  

Living in New Mexico has been part of my educational journey. It鈥檚 helped me unlearn what I learned in school. And I want to keep educating myself.

I hope all of us do. But from the political debate of the past few years, where so many seem unwilling to confront uncomfortable truths about this country, I鈥檓 unsure whether America is ready to learn this particular history 94 years after the groundbreaking Meriam report

For the sake of all of us, I hope I鈥檓 wrong. 

This story was published by New Mexico In Depth

Draped on a solitary tree nearby were orange tapestries, part of a community-built memorial dedicated to the gravesite near the former site of the Albuquerque Indian School. It went up after someone noticed a plaque missing that commemorated the cemetery for Zuni, Navajo and Apache students buried there between 1882 and 1933.

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How the plaque went missing is a mystery, and its absence might have escaped notice a few years ago.

But a discovery in May of 215 unmarked graves at an Indian boarding school in southern British Columbia has sparked heightened awareness of the history and legacy of boarding schools in the United States.

U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced in late June the agency would investigate the extent to which there was loss of human life in this country and the lasting consequences of boarding schools. The federal government, beginning in the late 1800s, took Indian children from their families in an effort to strip them of their cultures and language. It鈥檚 unknown how many Native children were affected over the decades, but, at a minimum, the numbers are .

In her announcement, Haaland described boarding school legacies of intergenerational trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, and disappearance and premature deaths.

What Haaland didn鈥檛 include was that the government never returned the right to educate their children back to tribes. Or that Native students continue to lag their peers in educational outcomes.

While the era of boarding schools eventually waned, Native students were largely shifted to state public schools, where tribes didn鈥檛 create the curriculum or oversee what their children learned in the classroom.

But in recent years tribes and Native American experts in Haaland鈥檚 home state have been demanding more control, saying they know best how to educate their children. They鈥檙e supported by the 2018 Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico court ruling that referenced the Indian boarding school system as an underlying factor in poor educational outcomes among Native students.

In 2018, then-chairman of the All Pueblo Council of Governors, Edward Paul Torres, bluntly described the importance of the moment to a joint session of the New Mexico Legislature.

Calling Yazzie/Martinez a 鈥渓andmark decision of monumental proportions,鈥� Torres said, 鈥淣ot since 1890 when the first Indian education policy was unveiled focused on assimilation have we had such an opportunity as we have today to redefine education that does not destroy who we are as a people.鈥�

Excavating History

Haaland announced the Interior Department boarding school initiative during the National Congress of American Indians Summit during which Chairman Wilfred Herrera (Laguna) described in detail how the schools 鈥渞ipped our Pueblo children 鈥� some as young as four years old 鈥� from the arms of their mothers, stripping them of tender parental care and compassion; many unable to return home until the completion of their studies.鈥�

A member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico whose own grandparents were subjected to the U.S. residential boarding school system, Haaland, is in the history and legacy of boarding schools.

But for anyone who wanted to know, that history is well documented. The federal government opened the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1879, the first of many boarding schools that became home to Indian children taken from their families. Two years later, the Presbyterian Church opened the Albuquerque Indian School for Navajo, Pueblo and Apache students, transferring control to the federal government in 1884. It was one of many boarding schools that would open in New Mexico.

The goal was to force Native people to shed their cultural identities, language, and spiritual traditions.

Over the past century government reports sounded the alarm about boarding schools. criticized their inadequate facilities and the removal of children from their homes, stressing repeatedly the need for relevant curriculum adapted to the culture of the children.

Over the following decade, the federal government mostly shifted responsibility for educating Native children to state public schools.

But that didn鈥檛 herald an embrace of Indian culture

鈥淭here is not one Indian child who has not come home in shame and tears after one of those sessions in which he is taught that his people were dirty, animal-like, something less than a human being,鈥� the said of public schools when speaking before the U.S. Senate subcommittee on Indian Education that produced the of 1969.

Nor did public schools empower tribes to share control of education, despite precedents of successful tribal programs in the 1800s.

The Choctaw of Mississippi and Oklahoma , sending numerous graduates to eastern colleges, the Kennedy Report noted. And during the same period, the Cherokee tribe controlled a school system that produced 100% literacy. 鈥淎nthropologists have determined that as a result of this school system, the literacy level in English of western Oklahoma Cherokees was higher than the white populations of either Texas or Arkansas,鈥� the authors of the reports observed. But those Cherokee and Choctaw school systems were abolished in 1906 when Oklahoma became a state.

More recently, the late state Judge Sarah Singleton cited boarding school history in the Yazzie/Martinez court decision. And undergirding the Yazzie/Martinez decision implicate them as a key factor in poor educational outcomes today.

The document describes a sufficient education as one in which Native students are able to effectively participate in both their tribal cultures as well as non-Native settings. Essential to that is language.

鈥淟anguage is the necessary means that provides for the full understanding of the indigenous customs and laws of the Pueblo people,鈥� the document states, drawing from testimony of Regis Pecos, a former governor of Cochiti Pueblo and co-director of the Santa Fe Leadership Institute at the Santa Fe Indian School.

The current public school system is a continued effort at assimilation, one that makes for a fragile existence for tribes today, Pecos said in an interview.

鈥溾�� our identity, that comes with language and culture and the knowledge of our history and governance and our music, our connections to since the time of origin or creation or emergence, you know, those are all fragile today because of the intentionality of the policies and laws, conceived to assimilate us, to disconnect us from our homelands,鈥� he said.

Today, New Mexico鈥檚 Indigenous students, who make up about 34,000, or 11% of New Mexico鈥檚 K-12 student population, lag behind their New Mexico peers in reading, math, high school graduation and college enrollment. The Yazzie/Martinez decision suggests those outcomes mostly stem from decades of underspending and neglect by New Mexico, shattering the perception that blame rests on children and their families and instead on a systemic failure.

The ruling 鈥渆xposed that Native children attend systemically under-resourced schools that fail to provide essential educational programs and services and ignore students鈥� diverse strengths and needs,鈥� noted the authors of the Pathways to Education Sovereignty: Taking a Stand for Native Children.

A way forward

The Yazzie/Martinez decision has brought into sharp focus a long simmering debate about how best to educate Native American children.

New Mexico has passed laws since the 1970s intent on providing culturally relevant education and language programs to Native children, most notably the Bilingual Multicultural Education Act of 1973, and the of 2003. It鈥檚 these laws that Singleton pointed to as an existing state blueprint for adequate education, if only they were followed.

The decision described as ideal an educational framework that draws on decades of Native scholarship about the needs of Indigenous students: a culturally relevant curriculum that centers the knowledge, perspectives, and lived realities of a student鈥檚 ethnic or racial group; Native language instruction; recruitment of Native educators and a collaborative relationship between state and tribal governments.

Native leaders would go a step further, urging that tribes be empowered to control the education of Native students.

鈥溾�here is still the need for that change of mind, and that is to give deference to the Indian leaders,鈥� Pecos said, 鈥溾�� who have built their own programs and systems based on what they know to be in their best interest of their children and their people.鈥�

Models for successful Native-led education exist, Pecos said, like the Keres Children鈥檚 Learning Center, which teaches traditional language courses to kids in Cochiti Pueblo; college readiness programs for Native Americans such as the Summer Policy Institute; and K-12 schools such as the Santa Fe Indian School, which under Pueblo leadership was established when the Albuquerque Indian School was closed in the 1980s.

鈥淭hese are all Indigenous knowledge-based programs, not built by the universities but built by our own Native faculty,鈥� Pecos said.

The has been offered up by Native American leaders and endorsed by tribes as a blueprint on how to move the state into compliance with the Yazzie/Martinez court order. The blueprint calls for increased tribal control and consultation over education, community-based education created by tribal communities, commitment to culturally relevant and Native language education, and development of a Native teacher pipeline. And it for permanent, year-over-year funding for Native students, language programs and tribal education.

Native leaders the framework is a long-overdue comprehensive approach, but so far, state leaders continue a practice of piecemeal reform, at most.

At the advent of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham鈥檚 administration, the Legislature in 2019 took up how to respond to the Yazzie/Martinez court order that the state rectify the poor education provided to so many of its kids. Lawmakers pumped enormous amounts of new funds into education. But gave short shrift to legislation that would shift resources to Native-led education.

Then, just a year later, in March 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic roared to life, the state unsuccessfully petitioned the court to agree the problem had been remedied, a move roundly condemned by the plaintiffs in the case, who say there鈥檚 still a long way to go.

The change of mind Pecos and others speak of 鈥� 鈥� is made more likely when powerful people show proper respect to the country鈥檚 history, starting with investigating boarding schools and their legacy in tribal communities. That pushes those stories into the public鈥檚 consciousness. Like Haaland鈥檚 high-profile initiative to identify isolated and forgotten burial grounds for children, which has already spurred the City of Albuquerque to action.

In the wake of renewed scrutiny of the 4-H park, Albuquerque鈥檚 volunteer Commission on American Indian and Alaska Native Affairs launched an investigation into the history of the park and what should be done today to care for the burial ground.

City officials are reaching out to tribal communities to gather their input and make recommendations.

While the gravesite was discovered in the course of building the park, its existence wasn鈥檛 a secret.

When the Albuquerque Journal reported a baby鈥檚 skull had been found during construction of the park, an area resident, Rudy Martinez, told the Journal he鈥檇 found bones there when he was a kid in the early 1950s. The newspaper ran a large photograph of Martinez examining bones.

And Ed Tsyitee told the Journal he鈥檇 been the caretaker for the cemetery for thirty years, until he retired in 1964. Tsyitee, a member of Zuni Pueblo who lived in Albuquerque, said the burials would have been made because 鈥渢here was no way to take them home in those days.鈥� Most would have been students, he believed, buried in military style clothing.

The newspaper later of the Albuquerque Indian School to put a fence around the burial ground.

Why that didn鈥檛 occur is unknown. A plaque was laid in the ground instead.

Now that plaque is missing. A separate marker at a nearby public art sculpture, laid in 1995, and tapestries hung in a tree are the only evidence of a little-known burial ground.

Commissioner Lorenzo Jim (Dine/Navajo) would like to see a designation for the site that could potentially limit access to honor its history. Jim said at a commission meeting on July 16 that the task requires care. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a piece of land, and again, involving our children, so making it sacred is important.鈥�

This article was originally published by .