Native American tribal elders who used to attend government-financed Indian boarding schools in the United States have testified about the physical and emotional abuse they endured at the hands of U.S. authorities in a system designed to strip Indigenous Americans from their culture and identity. 

At an Oklahoma gathering, attended by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Native American survivors of the school institutions came from different states to reveal the types of abuse they suffered including beatings, whippings, sexual assaults, forced haircuts, and verbal abuse. 

Despite their old age and different tribe, they all had several things in common: surviving a torrent of abuse aimed at destroying their native culture through brutal means while some were just eager to be finally heard after decades of being ignored. 

The schools have been described as similar to military academies in their regimentation and strictness. In many cases, the police were called to force parents to send their children to school. Food was also denied to families as another way to force them to surrender their children.

The problem is the perpetrators were consecutive U.S. administrations who either oversaw the abuse or kept silent in the aftermath by not ordering a committee to form an inquiry. Both are and will continue to be culprits until real accountability and justice is served. 

It took this long to get the ball (somewhat) rolling because U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland herself is the first Native American serving at a top level in a U.S. administration. 

Haaland pledged to spend a one-year tour of the country to hear the natives’ accounts first hand and in Oklahoma, she met with the survivors at Riverside Indian School, which is the nation's oldest federally operated boarding school system for Native Americans.

Telling a crowd of several hundred people that the government-backed school system had touched every indigenous person she has spoken to.

Following her short remarks, some elderly survivors took turns telling their accounts of the atrocities they endured in their youth, their stories had a similar pattern with almost all of those who took to the stage, speaking about being separated from their parents at the age of four or five. 

Brought Plenty, a Standing member of the Rock Sioux tribe who resides in Dallas, recounted the years she spent at an Indian boarding school in South Dakota, where she was forced to cut her hair and not speak her Native language. She also recalled being forced to whip other children and being punished herself if she did not obey orders. “What they did to us makes you feel so inferior,“ she said, “you never get past this. You never forget it“. 

Another tribal elder by the name
of Neconie, who still lives in Oklahoma, recalled the abuse he faced as a small child and being beaten if he cried or spoke his native Kiowa language when he attended Riverside “school” in the late 1940s and early 1950s. “Every time I tried to talk Kiowa, they put lye in my mouth,“ he said. “It was 12 years of hell.“

Dorothy WhiteHorse, 89, also a Kiowa who attended the Riverside “school” in the 1940s, spoke about the different cultural practices she was forced to learn. She also recalled how she was one of the luckier ones as older Kiowa women who were serving as housemothers in the dormitories allowed her to speak her Native language and treated her better. “I was helped,“ Whitehorse said. “I’m one of the happy ones.“

But Whitehorse had troubling memories as well, including the time she said three young boys tried to run away from the boarding school but got caught in a snowstorm. All three children froze to death she said. “I think we need a memorial for those boys“ she added.

Lawrence SpottedBird, the chairman of the Kiowa tribe, said it was far overdue that the federal authorities stop "whitewashing the brutal history" of the boarding school system.

Last year, the horrific conditions at the Indian boarding schools system triggered international outrage and disgust when tribal leaders in neighboring Canada announced the discovery of the unmarked graves of 215 children at the site of the former Kamloops “residential school for indigenous children”. 

In May and following much pressure from the indigenous people in the U.S. Haaland, published an initial report on the Interior Department's ongoing investigation into the events that occurred at the boarding schools in the U.S. 

At least 500 Native American children are known to have been killed at such schools, but as more research is conducted the death toll is widely believed to reach into the thousands or tens of thousands.

The schools were the centers of forced assimilation that began in the early 1800s and continued through the 1970s, with the stated aim of wiping out Native American culture.

Unlike the U.S., Canada held a full investigation into its school system in what is referred to as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The U.S. administration has never acknowledged how many children attended such schools, how many children died or went missing from them, or even how many schools ever existed.

Until recently, the federal government had not been open to examining its own direct role in the troubled history of Native American boarding schools. That changed after people who know about the torture were given high administration posts.

The interior department’s report includes a list of the boarding schools in some states or territories that operated between 1819 and 1969 that had a housing component and received support from the federal government. Oklahoma for example had the most, 76, followed by the states of Arizona with 47 and New Mexico with 43. All three states still have a significant Native American population.

In May, as part of a U.S. government probe found 53 "marked or unmarked burial sites".
The preliminary findings noted that "the federal policies that attempted to wipe out Native identity, language and culture continue to manifest in the pain tribal communities face today, we must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past."

Activists and researchers say about half the schools were run for the government by or supported by churches. Many children were abused at the schools, and tens of thousands were never seen again.

The report noted that "rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse" took place at the schools and is well documented,”

The next goals of the investigation are to estimate the number of kids who attended the schools and just as important is finding more burial sites as well as identify how much federal funds went to churches that took part in the school system, among other issues.

Many who survive nationwide are said to be hesitant about recounting their traumatic past and then trust the same governance whose policies were to eradicate their tribes and, later, assimilate them under the disguise of providing education. 

Experts say the first report in May on the investigation had barely scratched the surface of what needs to be examined. 

The Interior Department identified more than 98 million pages of documents that may relate to the boarding school system that still need to be evaluated. Tens of millions more pages at regional branches of the National Archives and Records Administration must also be examined.

Deborah Parker, head of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition that's assisting the Interior Department in its investigation, said "our children had names. Our children had families. Our children have their own languages, our children had their own regalia, prayers, and religion before Indian boarding schools violently took them away."