Native American boarding school funding under scrutiny in lawsuit
Native American boarding school funding under scrutiny in lawsuit The lawsuit filed by the Wichita and Washoe tribes demands an accounting of an estimated $23.3 billion in misappropriated funds.
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US apologizes for the first time for abuses at Native schools
President Joe Biden formally apologized for the abuses committed against Native boarding school students over the past century.
Two tribal nations are suing the U.S. government for misusing trust funds meant for Native children's education to finance abusive boarding schools.
The lawsuit demands an accounting of an estimated $23.3 billion and details of how the funds were used.
The lawsuit follows Interior Department reports detailing abuses and deaths within the boarding school system.
Two tribal nations are suing the United States government, saying it misappropriated trust funds to finance the Federal Indian Boarding School program, using monies meant to support Native Nations to instead fuel a system of abuse that spawned generations of trauma, despair and social ills.
The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California say financing for the boarding school program included Native trust funds taken 'for the supposed purpose of providing money to support Native children's education.'
The tribes are demanding a federal accounting of an estimated $23.3 billion in funding taken from those funds, saying the government has never detailed how the monies were used. The lawsuit was filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where one of the boarding school system's most notorious campuses – the Carlisle Indian Industrial School – once operated.
'The United States took upon itself the sacred trusteeship over Native children's education – a trust responsibility that has remained unbroken for 200 years,' said Adam Levitt, founding partner of DiCello Levitt, one of four law firms representing the tribes, in a news release. 'At the very least, the United States has a legal and moral obligation to account for the Boarding School Program, including a detailed explanation of the funds that it took and spent.'
Federal trust responsibility 'was born of a sacred bargain,' according to the lawsuit. Through numerous treaties, Native Nations promised peace and ceded land; in exchange, the U.S. would provide for the education of their children.
'The land was ceded; the peace was a mirage,' the lawsuit said. 'And the primary victims of decades of ongoing statutory and treaty violations were the Native Nations' children.'
The lawsuit names Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the Interior Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education as defendants.
Alyse Sharpe, a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, told USA TODAY the agency as a matter of policy does not comment on litigation.
'The Department of the Interior remains committed to our trust responsibilities of protecting tribal treaty rights, lands, assets, and resources, in addition to its duty to carry out the mandates of federal law with respect to American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages,' Sharpe said.
A shameful chapter in US history
More than 18,000 children, some as young as 4, were shipped off to 417 federal boarding schools, many run by religious organizations, between 1819 and 1969. The system's detrimental effects were both immediate and long-lasting.
Under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the department's first Native American director, the agency released reports in 2022 and 2024 detailing the program's abuses, including death, forced labor and physical and sexual abuse. The investigation confirmed the deaths of at least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children in the boarding school system.
According to the lawsuit, the program sought to destroy children's links to their Indigenous families, language and cultural practices, depriving them of skills necessary to participate and succeed in their own communities, indoctrinating them into menial positions and more broadly breeding cycles of poverty, violence and drug addiction.
'The Boarding School Program represents one of the most shameful chapters in American history,' Serrell Smokey, chairman of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, said in the news release. 'Our children were taken from us, subjected to unimaginable horrors, and forced to fund their own suffering. This lawsuit seeks to hold the U.S. government accountable for its actions and to ensure that the truth is finally brought to light.'
The lawsuit says the program was not only 'a national disgrace' but violated the government's duty to provide Native children with an education, an obligation that continues today based on a 'unique and continuing trust relationship with and responsibility to the Indian people for the education of Indian children.'
'The Boarding School Program inflicted profound and lasting harm on our communities,' said Amber Silverhorn-Wolfe, president of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. 'We are seeking justice not only for the survivors but also for the generations that continue to suffer from the intergenerational trauma caused by these schools.'
Faith E. Gay of Selendy Gay, another firm representing the tribes, noted the Interior Department reports revealed not only the scale and scope of the government's actions but that key information related to program financing remains under federal control.
Those reports said the boarding school system was part of a pattern of forced assimilation policies pursued or allowed by the U.S. for nearly two centuries and recommended an official apology. President Joe Biden formally apologized for the program in October.
'The harm inflicted by the Boarding School Program endures in the broken families and poor mental and physical health of survivors of the Boarding Schools and their descendants,' the tribal lawsuit reads. 'It endures in the cycles of poverty, desperation, domestic violence, and addiction that were born of the Boarding School Program. It endures in the silence of lost language and culture, and … in the missing remains and unmarked graves of the children who died.'
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