BIA report details how federal government forcefully assimilated Native Americans for 150 years

05/23/2022 / By Mary Villareal

A report from the Bureau of Indian Affairs confirmed that the United States government has been using tools like erasing culture, pulling children away from parents and disregarding their emotional needs to force the assimilation of Native Americans and acquire their territorial lands.

These tried-and-true education policies have been in use for 150 years. The 106-page report detailed how the U.S. federal government “applied systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies in the Federal Indian boarding school system to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children through education.”

The BIA also said the government used the education of children to replace the Indians’ culture with their own. According to the report, this was considered to be the “cheapest and safest way” to subdue Indians, provide a safe habitat for the country’s white inhabitants, help the whites acquire desirable land and change the Indians’ economy so that they would be content with less land.

This information came to light when Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico and the first Native American to serve as cabinet secretary, requested an investigation into the loss of lives and lasting consequences of the Federal Indian boarding school system. (Related: Chemical genocide: Native American tribes were poisoned with mercury by mill industry.)

Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of Indian Affairs, wrote in a letter introducing the report that between 1819 and 1969, the United States operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states or then-territories, including schools in Alaska and Hawaii.

Newland also said the Federal Indian boarding school policy intentionally targeted children to assimilate them and take their territories.

Congress ended treaties with Indian tribes in 1871 and started using statutes, executive orders and agreements to regulate Indian affairs. Around that time, Congress also enacted laws to compel Indian parents to send their children to school and to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to issue regulations to secure the enrollment and regular attendance of eligible Indian children, whom the government considered their wards.

A 1969 Kennedy Report, which was cited in the current report, stated that many Indian families resisted the assault of the federal government on their lives by refusing to send their children to school.

Indian families coerced into sending their children to federal schools

However, under the Act of March 3, 1983, Congress authorized the secretary of the Interior to withhold rations, including those guaranteed by the treaties, to Indian families who refused to send their children to schools: No school meant no money or food for their families.

The report went on to say that “there is ample evidence in federal records demonstrating that the United States coerced, induced, or compelled Indian children to enter the Federal Indian boarding school system.”

The Department of the Interior then moved the children to off-reservation boarding schools without parental consent, and often in distant areas where they endured “rampant physical, sexual and emotional abuse; disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care.”

Once at boarding school, these children were given English names and clothing. Their hair was cut, and they were prevented from using their native language, religion and cultural practices. They were sorted into units to perform military drills and labor and were subjected to corporal punishment.

All these were intended to break family ties and prevent students from returning to reservations, producing intergenerational trauma.

In 1886, a boarding school in Kansas intentionally mixed Indian children from 31 tribes to disrupt tribal relations and prevent Indian language use. The Interior Department intended for graduates from different tribes to intermarry so they would use English as their children’s mother tongue.

The 2022 report also stated that Indian children died while under the care of the federal government or federally-supported institutions, which led to the breakup of Indian families and the erosion of tribes.

A recent investigation found over 500 deaths at 19 schools, although this number could be in the thousands or even tens of thousands. (Related: Massive child sacrifice gravesite shows that “indigenous” Native Americans were mass murderers.)

“Many of those children were buried in unmarked or poorly maintained burial sites far from their Indian Tribes… and families, often hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away,” the report said.

With the information that was uncovered, the report called for the promotion of Indian health research by funding scientific studies on its lasting health impacts. It also suggested recognizing the generations of children who experienced the Federal Indian boarding school system with a federal memorial.

Another report expanding the investigation is being planned to make recommendations for new funding and revitalization of tribal languages and cultural practices.

Watch the video below to learn more about the history of Native American boarding schools.

This video is from the high impact Flix and more!!! channel on Brighteon.com.