HARRISBURG, Pa. — President Joe Biden designated a national monument at a former Native American boarding school in Pennsylvania on Monday to honor the resilience of Indigenous tribes whose children were forced to attend the school and hundreds of similar abusive institutions.
The White House announced the creation of the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument as Biden hosted a summit of tribal leaders.
More than 10,000 children passed through the notorious Carlisle Indian Industrial School by the time it closed in 1918, including Olympian Jim Thorpe. They came from dozens of tribes under forced assimilation policies that were meant to erase Native American traditions and “civilize” the children so they would better fit into white society.
The children were often taken against the will of their parents, and an estimated 187 Native American and Alaska Native children died at the institution in Carlisle, including from tuberculosis and other diseases.
“Designating the former campus of the Carlisle School, with boundaries consistent with the National Historic Landmark, as a national monument will help ensure this shameful chapter of American history is never forgotten or repeated,” Biden said in his proclamation for the monument.
There are ongoing efforts to return the children’s remains, which were buried on the school’s grounds, to their homelands. In September, the remains of three children who died at Carlisle were disinterred and returned to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana.
At least 973 Native American children died at government-funded boarding schools that operated for more than 150 years, according to an Interior Department investigation.
During a series of public listening sessions on reservations over the past several years hosted by the Interior Department, survivors of the schools recalled being beaten, forced to cut their hair and punished for using their native languages.
The forced assimilation policy officially ended with the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. But the government never fully investigated the boarding school system until the Biden administration.
Biden in October apologized on behalf of the U.S. government for the schools and the policies that supported them.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose grandparents were taken to boarding schools against their families’ will, said no single action would adequately address the harms caused by the schools. But she said the administration’s efforts have made a difference and the new monument would allow the American people to learn more about the government’s harmful policies.
“This trauma is not new to Indigenous people, but it is new for many people in our nation,” Haaland said in a statement.
The schools, similar institutions and related assimilation programs were funded by a total of $23.3 billion in inflation-adjusted federal spending, officials determined. Religious and private institutions that ran many of the schools received federal money as partners in the assimilation campaign.
Monday’s announcement marks the seventh national monument created by Biden. The 25-acre site (10 hectares) will be managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Army. It’s now the site of the U.S. Army War College.
Native American tribes and conservation groups are pressing for more monument designations before Biden leaves office.
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
