Reckoning with the Devastating Legacy of Federal Indian Boarding School Policies

Dr. Ramona Klein was just seven years old in 1954 when she was taken from her family to a federal boarding school where her long hair was cut short, her intelligence questioned, and her Native identity systematically stripped. She was assaulted and humiliated—all in a US-​ ​government-sanctioned effort to assimilate her and other American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children into white society. The abuses were horrific, and the history is widely unknown. 

“I remember seeing my mother cry as she stood and watched six of her eight children board the big, green bus that took us to Fort Totten Indian Boarding School,” Dr. Klein testified to the House Subcommittee for Indigenous People of the United States. “That image is forever imprinted in my mind and heart.” 

Dr. ​Klein​ is an enrolled member of the Turtle Band of Chippewa and a board member of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS), a nonprofit focused on increasing public awareness and promoting healing from federal boarding schools. She is now 77 and is working with NABS through the US Department of the Interior to ensure these stories are remembered.

“I want people to know that this is part of contemporary history. It has happened in my lifetime,” Dr. Klein said. “The world needs to know this.” 

Her story is tragically common in the Native communities. For 150 years, from 1819 to 1969, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their homes, often by force or coercion, to one of more than 400 schools funded by the federal government.

Historians estimate that before colonization more than one million people lived in what is now North America and spoke more than 300 languages. By the dawn of the 20th century, only about 200,000 Native Americans remained. This was the result of long-standing, deliberate policies designed to strip Indigenous people of their land and culture so that white settlers could have control. 

Early colonizers called this the “Indian Problem.” Over the course of more than two hundred years, one US government-sanctioned policy after another decimated the Native population and forced survivors onto smaller and smaller parcels of land. In 1830, Native Americans were driven off their land by the Indian Removal Act, which was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson. Two decades later, the Indian Appropriation Act forced ​Indigenous people onto reservations, further stripping them of their land. Day schools were established to assimilate Native children, but policymakers did not think these schools went far enough to eradicate Indigenous culture. Thus, Federal Indian boarding school program policies were created.

These principles governing these schools were largely focused not on education, but on assimilation. Students were often required to adopt English names, forbidden from speaking their native languages, forced to convert to Christianity, and made to perform manual labor like brickmaking or farming. Resistance was met with violence. A US Department of the Interior report released in July 2024 found that at least 973 Native American children died in the schools, and a Washington Post investigation found that sexual abuse was rampant. 

“When a matron had me kneel on a broom handle with my arms outstretched while she hit me with the ‘Board of Education,’ which is a paddle, I distinctly remember thinking, ‘you’re not going to get the best of me.’ And today, I would say, ‘You’re not going to take my dignity,’” Dr. Klein recalled. 

Dr. Klein makes it clear that the impact of the experience was not isolated to those who lived it—it ripples through whole communit​ies​. The legacy of these abuses severed families, disrupted the sharing of culture​s from one generation to the next, and has contributed to broader stereotyping of Native Americans​. 

​​“The emotions, the abuse, the feelings of abandonment...​ my granddaughter said it manifests itself differently in each generation,” she said. “So it might have impacted me one way, but it impacts my daughters a different way, and it still impacts my granddaughter in yet a different way.” 

The policies that drove these abuses ended in 1969 after two damning reports highlighted the abuses taking place at the schools. To date, no official ​US ​government apology has been made, and no reparations have been paid. Most schools are now run by ​federally recognized ​tribes or by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Education.​ Today, they function as cultural education centers, and there is no forced attendance.

Fortunately, the schools policies were not successful in eradicating American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian cultures, and there are now 574 federally recognized tribes in the US and numerous efforts to preserve and restore cultural practices. On the 2020 Census, more than six million people identified as Indigenous.  

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the first American Indian person to serve in a presidential cabinet, launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2021. The initiative included an investigative report and accounting of the history and generational legacies of the schools. The initiative’s core aim is creating a path to healing and memorializing this period of American history.

“The federal government…took deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures, and connections that are foundational to Native people​,” Secretary​ Haaland said. “These policies caused enduring trauma for Indigenous communities that the Biden-Harris administration is working tirelessly to repair.…The Road to Healing does not end with this report—it is just beginning.” 

Part of that Road to Healing includes an oral history project which includes interviews conducted by NABS with funding from the Department of the Interior and support from the Mellon Foundation. Already underway, NABS is conducting video interviews with Indian boarding school survivors across the United States. The Department and other federal partners will then work to create a permanent oral history collection, the largest of its kind and an educational resource for tribes and for a broad public. 

Dr. Klein says recording oral histories is a healing act, in part because oral storytelling traditions are part of her heritage. She was among the first Native boarding school survivors to record her story. She says the deep trauma experienced by many survivors requires measures of care and trust to ensure participants feel empowered to share.  

Dr. Samuel Torres, ​d​eputy ​c​hief ​e​xecutive ​o​fficer for NABS, is overseeing the interview process. He says they have worked hard to create a deliberately Indigenous space for survivors to share their stories. Every aspect of the recording events ​is ​thoughtfully designed to create safety and comfort​​​. ​From the opening ceremonies, to the quiet rooms available for reflection after recordings, to the beading and food stations​—​the recording days are about building relationships and community. 

Participants “get to be in a space where they can be surrounded by relatives and held and cared for and honored while they’re going through some really challenging experiences of retelling what happened to them,” he says. “So, it feels sacred because it is sacred because we’re holding this in ceremony.” 

Dr. Klein has volunteered at every recording event NABS has conducted so far, helping to create the space that she says made her feel held as she shared. 

​​​“Even though it wasn’t the first time I talked about that, I felt as though another layer, another weight was lifted,” she says, “and also grateful that there is the opportunity to talk about that experience. Because I feel so strongly the world needs to know this. I feel so strongly about stopping that cycle.”​​ 

​​​​​She often spends time connecting with other survivors after their recordings. ​ 

​​“Some people have said, ‘I never cried. I talked about it before, but I never cried.’ Tears are healing,” she says. “Another person said to me, ‘It's the first time I have felt like I was heard.’ And that’s important, that people are heard.”