In the last two years, Canada and several U.S. states have begun to recognize their histories with Native American boarding schools, institutions that set out to “assimilate” Native American children into westernized U.S. ways of life by stripping them of Indigenous tradition and culture.
What would start with a small number of schools following the Indian Civilization Fund Act in 1819 would eventually grow to more than 350 “government-funded, and often church-run” schools across the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.