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| Chemawa Indian School, Oregon |
U.S. Interior Report Fails to Reveal Deaths of Thousands of Native Children in 'Prison Camps' -- U.S. Boarding Schools
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, Jan. 12, 2025
Thousands of Native children died in U.S. boarding schools that were not reported by the U.S. Interior in its report, the Washington Post reveals. Suffering from malnutrition, diseases and abuse, the largest number of unreported children's deaths were at Chemawa Indian Training School in Oregon, followed by Haskell Indian Industrial School in Kansas. The largest number of deaths were at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
The U.S. Interior reported only 12 deaths at Rapid City Indian Boarding School in South Dakota. However, The Washington Post reveals there were 45 children that died there. At the Pine Ridge Boarding School, the Interior reported only 4 children died, when there are 10 documented deaths of children.
At St. Labre Indian Mission Boarding School in Montana, the Interior reported only one child died. However, thirty-three children are documented as dying there. The same Catholic boarding school was successfully sued by the Northern Cheyenne Nation for exploiting children in fundraising scams and funneling millions to the Catholic Church.
The year-long investigation by The Washington Post documented that 3,104 students died at boarding schools between 1828 and 1970, three times as many deaths as reported by the U.S. Interior Department.
At Hopi's Keams Canyon, children died from scarlet fever. In South Dakota, one Lakota youth died sleeping on the train tracks while running away from boarding school in Rapid City. Running away from Pierre boarding school in South Dakota, another Native child drowned, The Washington Post data reveals.
At Seneca boarding school in Oklahoma, children died of typhoid. Tuberculosis killed Dine' children in Shiprock, New Mexico. Measles took the lives of children at the Osage school in Kansas. Meningitis spread, killing Mescalero Apache children in New Mexico. At Jones Male Academy in Oklahoma in 1922, one child died of smallpox. The Spanish Flu spread through Chemawa in Salem, Oregon, in 1918, killing Aleut, Nez Perce and Blackfeet teenagers.
Sick and dying far from their families, tuberculosis took the lives of many children at Carlisle in Pennsylvania, and one was killed by a train while running away. In-nah-ilth-tah-hoze-hee died in July of 1888 from tuberculosis at Carlisle. At Armstrong Academy in Bokchito,Oklahoma, a child was poisoned in 1910. A Navajo youth froze to death in 1968 while running away from Crownpoint boarding school in New Mexico.
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| (Page 1 of 60) The Washington Post reveals that the Interior failed to report thousands of deaths in its report. This list shows the difference in the number of deaths reported by the DOI, Department of Interior, and the number of children's deaths documented by The Washington Post. The list continues at https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/native-american-deaths-burial-sites-boarding-schools/ |
On the Longest Walk northern route from coast to coast in 2008, walkers visited both Haskell and Carlisle and offered their respects to the children who died incarcerated, lonely and suffering. At Haskell in Kansas, the museum displayed the history in photos of children forced to work in the boarding school. They were underfed, sick with malnutrition, and imprisoned for running away. Haskell students told the walkers that children remain in the unmarked graves in the wetlands.
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(Photo) Haskell jail, where children were punished and imprisoned for running away and breaking the rules. "There were severe physical and emotional consequences applied to the children for failing to abide by these new rules. They were often subjected to inadequate food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Later, in the period from 1910-1933, they would have been incarcerated in the Haskell jail, but prior to its construction, fruit storage cellars were used to punish students," said Haskell Cultural Center and Museum. Jessica Lackey, member of the Cherokee Nation and the Wetlands Preservation Association described the reign of terror targeting Indian children beginning in the 1880s, including those who were brought here to Haskell Indian boarding school. Haskell Indian Industrial School began in 1884, as Indian children were forcibly removed from their families. Young Indian children were torn from their families and brought here. They were taught Eurocentric ways and were the targets of forced assimilation into the mainstream culture. The goal was to get rid of their Native American culture. “When they came to these schools, they weren’t allowed to speak their language. If they had long hair, it had to be cut. Often times they couldn’t associate with other family members that were at the schools with them. It was a very militaristic, harsh, system and a lot of them died,” Lackey said after the Longest Walk, in 2012. The wetlands were a place where boys were taught to become farmers, because that was what the school administrators wanted them to become. “But the wetlands were also a sanctuary, a site of resistance.” Lackey said the children often ran away to the wetlands to flee forced assimilation. Since the children’s parents were not allowed to come to the school or to stay in Lawrence because of racial prejudice, the families camped out here in the wetlands. “The kids would run away to their families.” “A lot of us believe that the wetlands are a final resting place of the children who ran away.” Lackey said the cemetery has about 100 grave stones. However, hundreds of children are still missing and unaccounted for from Haskell Indian boarding school. 'The Children who Never Came Home,' Longest Walk northern route at Carlisle  Carlisle Indian Industrial School, founded in Pennsylvania in 1879, was among the first boarding schools to systematically kidnap Native children from their families, cut their hair, and abuse them if they spoke their language. Forced into harsh labor, they were starved and tuberculosis, pneumonia, and other diseases spread rapidly. This pattern of systematic genocide continued, as is documented in the forced sterilization of Native American women by doctors at the Indian Health Service. Even after the forced sterilization was exposed in the 1970s, secretive medical research continued on Native victims who spoke little if any English. Johns Hopkins University has carried out vaccination experiments on both Navajo and White Mountain Apache children for the past 40 years at Indian Health Service hospitals on tribal lands in Arizona, with little information made available to the public. It is now documented on its website. |
Fort Defiance, Tse Ho Tso, by O’Sullivan, Timothy H., 1840-1882.Interior Failed to Report Boarding School Deaths on Navajo Nation
On the Navajo Nation, sixty-nine Dine' children died at the Fort Defiance Indian Boarding School. The number was drastically under-reported by the U.S. Interior, which said that only 13 children died there. More Dine' children died in boarding schools in Leupp, Tuba City, Ganado, Crownpoint, Mariano Lake and elsewhere on the Navajo Nation and the Interior did not report these deaths.
The children who ran away often died in the cold, and if they were captured they were imprisoned, starved and brutalized.
"In 1970, 11-year-old Johnson Kee West died after he fled the Kayenta Indian School in northern Arizona and tried to climb a snowbound mesa to get home. “Frozen,” the Navajo boy’s death certificate noted," the Post reported. |
| Albuquerque Indian School in New Mexico |
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| Paiute children as young as six were taken and forced into labor in southern Utah. Twelve unmarked graves of children were discovered at Panguitch Indian Boarding School in 2023. The school operated from 1904 to 1909 and was shut down due to rampant illness. |
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