History

• Starting in the late 1800s, thousands of Native American children were forced to leave their families and their tribes to live in boarding schools, funded by the U.S. government. Many of these children, who were basically imprisoned in these schools, suffered from various types of abuse and were forced to do grueling labor. Children were sometimes forced to stand single file for hours, without making any movement, as a form of punishment. The budgets at these schools were so small that many children died of starvation and disease from lack of food and medical supplies. Students were sometimes forced to work at nearby farms or homes of white families to help pay for the salaries of the school's staff members.
  
  

Locations

• The first of these schools was located in Pennsylvania and opened its doors in 1878 in an abandoned military post. Indian children who were accused of slaughtering white settlers were sent there and forced to stay. A similar school opened in Florida soon after, where 72 Apache Indians were forced to remain for a year. After the year was up, 22 of the students were persuaded to stay. More than 500 other schools were opened along the way, far from any Indian reservations, to keep children away from other Native Americans. More than 100,000 Native Americans attended these schools throughout the years.
  
  

Significance

• The negative way that the majority of Native Americans see the public school system in America today is thanks to the terrible things that happened in these boarding schools. The Native American language was lost to the majority of the students, since they were not allowed to speak it in the schools, and this cut into the heart of Native American communities. Many Native Americans feel that their culture has still not healed from what happened to the members of their tribes in these schools during these bleak times.
  
  

Effects

• Today Native Americans are still living with the effects of what happened in boarding schools. Many have come forward to reveal the abuse they suffered while attending these schools. Six members of the Sioux nation have filed a class-action lawsuit against the United States for their suffering and for the thousands of others who were mistreated. Native American activists are working to address the abuse suffered by so many. The Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 helped to end Native American children being taken from their tribes, but as late as the 1970s, thousands of children were being removed from their families by lawyers, doctors and social workers. The Boarding School Healing Project is working to document all of this so that Native American elders can heal and the younger generations will have a chance at better lives.