Missing children, unmarked graves, unanswered questions: Washington's Native American boarding schools

A new report from the U.S. Department of the Interior documents the atrocities carried out over the course of close to 150 years at government maintained and supported Native American boarding schools.

The report lists 417 schools across 37 states and U.S. territories, including 17 boarding school sites in Washington state. It confirms that close to 1,000 children died while attending federally operated or federally supported boarding schools and identifies 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 different school sites.

“You hear the old stories of children being beaten, starved, or other abuses, and it’s pretty widely known in our community that many children did not return from those boarding schools,” explained Deborah Parker, a citizen of the Tulalip tribes and chief executive of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. “Some died from diseases. Others, it doesn’t say where the children were sent or how they died.”

In one case, Parker said a box containing a child’s bones was sent from the Tulalip Boarding School to the U.S. Department of the Interior. The box included a letter asking federal officials not to tell the parents of the deceased child of the delivery. Those parents apparently did not know their child had died.

“We were able to get those remains back to Tulalip,” Parker said. “For many, we still wonder where those children are. We have some unmarked graves. We don’t know which children are in those unmarked graves. There are still so many unknown questions.”

Parker worked with federal officials on the Department of Interior report, which included the review of approximately 103 million pages of federal records.

She is now pushing for Congress to approve the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding Schools Policy Act, which would create a federal commission to conduct a formal inquiry about the policies of U.S. boarding schools, including testimony from boarding school survivors, and issue findings and recommendations. Versions of the act are working their way through both the House and the Senate.

Parker said the two-volume report completed by the Department of Interior under its first-ever Native American secretary, Deb Haaland, is an important first step, but many questions remain about what happened to Native children who attended boarding schools and were never seen or heard from again.

She recalled a trip she took to the Navajo Nation as part of the Department of Interior’s “Road to Healing” in 2023. During that trip, an elder stood and addressed Haaland and the others assembled to hear their boarding school stories and memories.

The Navajo man said he and his brother were sent to a Native American boarding school as children. He left when he was 12 and was sent home. His brother never returned. His mother passed away still looking for her lost son.

“I want to find my brother,” the man said. “Where’s he at? Where’s he buried?”

What followed, Parker recalled, was silence.

Afterward, she approached the man and asked to hear more about his brother, what he was like, when was the last time the two had contact. Parker was accompanied to the event by her own 12-year-old son.

“There’s a sense of sadness, there’s a sense of desperation for justice because time is ticking,” Parker said. “The elders who now have these stories about forced assimilation, some of them have passed on, and they’re worried they won’t be able to be reported in history telling their story. Their story matters. It’s largely been written out of history books.”

Parker said she believes the creation of the Truth and Healing Commission would help Native and non-Native people tell the complete story, find the remains of those still missing, and help bring closure for people still impacted by the erasure of Native culture that was facilitated by boarding schools across the country.

She said the after-effects of boarding school trauma have contributed to lingering issues within Native communities, such as high rates of suicide, drug addiction, and abuse.

Without understanding the extent of that trauma, non-Native groups get a false sense of who Native Americans are, Parker said.

“Because who we are is an incredibly beautiful, strong people who have a strong culture and identity. We have our languages. We are keepers of this land. We are keepers of knowledge that reaches deep and far into this earth and beyond,” she said. “If we’re going to tackle some of these issues as Native peoples, we need our neighbors to understand what has taken place. When we have knowledge, that is the strength of this country, when we tell the truth.”

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