A new report identifies an additional 115 Native American boarding schools that were used to assimilate Indigenous children into white society.
The new list from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition brings the total number of schools to 523.
They identified an additional 11 in Arizona, which brings the total to 59. That’s the second highest in the country behind Oklahoma’s 95. New Mexico had the third most with 52.
These findings improve on a 2022 Department of the Interior report that identified hundreds of Native American boarding schools operated, funded or supported by the U.S. government.
NABS leaders told the Arizona Mirror that many of these additional schools were not federally supported but were instead operated by church institutions.