According to an investigation by a US newspaper, more than three thousand children died in boarding schools.
In the United States, at least three times the number of children belonging to indigenous peoples died in boarding schools compared to the number reported by the administration, it turns out The Washington Post from an extensive investigation.
According to the report, more than three thousand children would have died in boarding schools, while according to a report published by the US administration earlier this year, there would have been around a thousand deaths.
Boarding schools aimed at assimilating indigenous peoples into the majority culture operated in the United States from the beginning of the 19th century until the 1970s. According to the administration, there were more than 400 such boarding schools.
According to a US administration report, there was a lot of physical and mental abuse and sexual abuse in boarding schools.
Speaking in one’s mother tongue and practicing one’s religion were forbidden in the institutions. The institutions were often run by churches, and there were also attempts to convert children to Christianity.
More than 800 buried near schools
In a year-long investigation, the Washington Post gathered evidence of the deaths of approximately 3,100 indigenous children in boarding schools between 1828 and 1970.
According to the Washington Post, more than 800 of the children were buried in cemeteries that operated in connection with schools or were located near them. According to the paper, this highlights the fact that in many cases the bodies of the children were never returned home to their families.
The causes of children’s death were, among other things, infectious diseases, malnutrition and accidents. According to the Washington Post, in some cases, abuse or mistreatment appears to have led to the children’s deaths.
Biden apologized to the era
Outgoing President of the United States Joe Biden issued a historic apology in October for the treatment of indigenous peoples in the United States. Biden called the era one of the most horrific in American history.
– I am officially sorry, as president of the United States, for what we did, Biden said at the time.
Biden emphasized that no apology can make up for what was lost because of the federal government’s dark boarding school policy.
Similar official apologies have also been made in Canada, where thousands of indigenous children also died in similar boarding schools.