US report details church-state collusion on Native schools

KNAU News Talk - Arizona Public Radio | By Associated Press

Published May 16, 2022 at 5:56 AM MST

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This photo made available by the Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia shows students at a Presbyterian boarding school in Sitka, Alaska in the summer of 1883. U.S. Catholic and Protestant denominations operated more than 150 boarding schools between the 19th and 20th centuries. Native American and Alaskan Native children were regularly severed from their tribal families, customs, language and religion and brought to the schools in a push to assimilate and Christianize them.

Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia via AP, File

A new Interior Department report underscores how closely the U.S. government collaborated with churches in operating boarding schools for Indigenous children.

The federal government saw churches as useful in Christianizing Native children as part of a project to sever them from their culture, their identities and ultimately their land.

The role of churches forms part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report released Wednesday after a yearlong review that found Indigenous children were sent to at least 408 schools from 1819 to 1969.

Catholic and Protestant church groups ran many of the schools.