Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, last month, the U.S. Department of the Interior released an investigative report on our country's Indian boarding school system. From 1819 to 1969, more than 400 of these schools operated across what today are 37 States. The Indian boarding school era is one of the darkest periods in American history and one that we as a nation have not properly reckoned with.

For nearly two centuries, the U.S. Government took Native American children as young as 6 from their families and sent them to boarding schools, but these schools were not solely for the purpose of teaching the children. They humiliated these children, and they harmed them. Indian children were forced to change their names, to cut their hair, to stop speaking their Native languages. They did military drills three times a week. Every day, they were assigned hours of grueling work that violated child labor laws: They had to raise livestock, sew clothes, work on the railroads. Those who resisted were punished with whippings and solitary confinement. Those who resisted were punished with whippings and solitary confinement. Often, older children were forced to punish the younger ones.

The conditions of these schools were awful: three to a bed, dirty water, no working plumbing. Disease and malnourishment were common. Physical and sexual abuse was rampant. We don't know how many children died at these U.S. Government-funded and -run schools, but the Interior Department estimates that the number is in the tens of thousands.

And all of this occurred for one reason--to steal Native land.

As far back as the 1700s, U.S. Government policy was officially to dispossess and break Tribes so their territories could be taken for American expansion. Erasing Native culture through assimilation was key to this.

As one official said, ``The love of home and the warm, reciprocal affection existing between parents and children are among the strongest characteristics of the Indian nature.''

So the Federal Government acted accordingly. The Departments of War and Interior oversaw this forced assimilation. Congress passed laws appropriating school funding to ``civilize'' Native children. When families refused to send their kids to these schools, Congress made the food rations that were negotiated in treaties contingent on their doing so. To fill the schools, the government enlisted religious organizations, paying them on a per-child basis. A majority of this money came from Federal Indian trusts--money that was supposed to help the Tribes--and the Supreme Court ruled that all of this was legal at the time.

The result of these actions was a multi-generational trauma for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities and families that continue to this day. Adults who attended boarding schools are more likely to have everything from arthritis to depression. They are three times as likely to have cancer. Studies have found worse health outcomes for the ancestors of people who went to these schools, and there are 53 known child burial sites and an unknown number yet to be discovered.

We can't undo this history, but we have to acknowledge it. That starts with examining the full scope of this atrocity unflinchingly, with clear minds and with fresh eyes. We need to keep investigating Indian boarding schools, and the findings should be taught in every school and be known by every future generation of Americans. As recommended in the report from the Department of the Interior, we must also support Native language revitalization. We cannot continue to neglect these programs and further erase Native culture.

We have to understand and undertake a path toward healing, not in the abstract but in a concrete and meaningful way. We must work hand in hand with Native communities on a respectful and restorative process. We have to empower these communities through increased Federal investments in Native healthcare and housing and economic development. We must reject our centuries-long pattern of Native suppression and, instead, begin one of reconciliation. We owe the survivors of the Indian boarding school era, their families, and their communities nothing less.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source