Tribes seek accounting of Native funds used for boarding schools
Two tribes want the federal government to explain where $23.3 billion for boarding schools came from, including money tied to Native trust funds.
Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California are asking a federal judge to force the government to account for the money used to run the boarding school system that removed Native children from their families for more than 150 years. The case, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, centers on Carlisle, Pennsylvania, site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
The tribes say the government's estimated $23.3 billion in boarding school spending leaves out forced child labor, money taken from Native trust accounts tied to land sales and broader economic harm caused by pulling children out of homes, communities and tribal life. The lawsuit seeks a full accounting of what records exist, who controlled the money and whether funds were drawn directly from tribes as the system expanded across the country.
The U.S. Department of the Interior launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2021. Interior released the first volume of its investigative report in May 2022 and a second, final volume on July 30, 2024. The later report expanded the record to include deaths, burial sites, participation by religious institutions and federal dollars spent to operate the schools. Interior's initial analysis identified more than 500 known child deaths at about 19 federal boarding schools, with more expected.
In Apache County and across the Navajo Nation, boarding school trauma still shapes family structure, language loss and distrust of institutions. Arizona had 59 Indian boarding schools at the height of the era, and nearly 50 American Indian boarding schools operated across the state, with many in Navajo country. One of the clearest local reminders is the Theodore Roosevelt Indian Boarding School at Fort Apache, which opened in 1923, was first intended to serve Diné children and by the 1930s enrolled mostly Apache students.
President Joe Biden issued a formal apology for the boarding school system on Oct. 25, 2024, at Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.
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