Is U.S. ready to listen to Indian boarding schools survivors and descendants?

Sometimes, it is possible for Republican and Democratic forces to work together to get a piece of legislation, started by one government, passed into the next, because it is the right thing to do.

Now, this does not happen often, but the effort to do so may offer a bit of hope for the soul and spirit of America.

Alaskan Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has re-engineered a previous bill on the need to start a truth and healing commission, which would travel America to listen to the voices of Native American survivors and intergenerational survivors of the 523 Indian boarding schools that took children away from their families, homes and communities in order to “kill the Indian, save the man,” or assimilate and Christianize them into white American society.

U.S. Captain Henry Pratt, head of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, is credited as the one who used to phrase, which accurately describes the brutal forced assimilation practices used both in Canada and the United States.

Senate bill would invite nation to reckon with harm to Native Americans

American boarding schools were initially run by the U.S. War Department in the early 19th Century, tens of thousands of children attended, but we don’t know an accurate number, because no one has kept track.

Tanya Talaga

American boarding schools were initially run by the U.S. War Department in the early 19th Century, tens of thousands of children attended, but we don’t know an accurate number, because no one has kept track.

The U.S. government and people have never reckoned with what the boarding schools did to generations — this omission means the truth of how America was founded, and the intergenerational harm caused to families broken by a system created to destroy them, has not been heard and dealt with.

Canada started the process to listen to the survivors and intergenerational survivors of Indian Residential Schools, after former Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in 2007, for the Canadian government’s role in creating and funding what we call Indian Residential Schools.

It has now been 10 yeas since Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission finished its work and released 94 Calls to Action or recommendations on how to move forward, or, reconcile with Indigenous peoples after 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their families and forced to attend the so-called schools. The TRC called this a “cultural genocide.”

Murkowski has been a ‘lone wolf’ among Republicans

In one of former President Biden’s last acts, he apologized to Native Americans for the boarding school era, calling it “one of the most horrific chapters in American history.”

Then President Donald Trump was elected, and it looked like everything done in the last Congress was wiped out.

But then new legislation appeared, brought forward by Sen. Murkowski, and also pushed by multiple Senate Committee on Indian Affairs (SCIA) members and other senators as cosponsors, according to Hannah Ray, the SCIA communications director.

“This reintroduction builds on the earlier bill from the 118th Congress (S.1723), which made historic progress by passing the Senate, and underscores that addressing the dark history of Indian boarding schools remains a priority,” Ray said.

It’s now ready to be heard on the Senate floor but no date has been yet set for this to occur.

Murkowski has been a bit of a lone wolf in her Republican pack. She stood up to President Trump earlier this year when he changed the name of Mount Denali back to Mount McKinley — a name not used in Alaska since before 1975.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, speaks during the Alaska Oil and Gas Association's annual conference on Aug. 28, 2024, in Anchorage, Alaska. (Ellen Schmidt/Las Vegas Review-Journal/TNS)

Denali is the name the Koyukon Athabascans have used, long before the name McKinley ever entered the mix — to refer to the largest peak on North America.