In the United States, at least 50 graves have been found in about 400 former schools for tribal children. Research, the first part of which Released on Wednesday By the US Department of the Interior, currently underway. As a result, Minister Debb Hollande writes, the figures could rise. Previously, in Canada Made similar discoveries⁇

It is a network of 408 boarding schools spread across 37 U.S. states, created between 1819 and 1969 to forcibly integrate the children of indigenous peoples. Anonymous graves of children who died in boarding schools were found in these 53 schools. So far, more than 500 children have died in 19 boarding schools, but the death toll could rise to “a thousand or ten thousand”.

The investigation revealed that the boarding schools had visionary means of integrating the tribal people through education. For example, children with an Indian name were given a different English name, their hair cut, and teachers encouraged them to speak their mother tongue if not English. In addition, the boys were integrated into units to carry out military exercises.

Follow-up research

This school system, the researchers write, ultimately focused on children’s physical activity. Education was “largely inappropriate for the industrial American economy,” thus “further destabilizing the economies of indigenous communities.”

In the second part of the survey of the Ministry of the Interior, a list of marked and unmarked graves in boarding schools will be established. It will also examine how much boarding schools have received from the federal government over the years, and look at the contemporary effects on the victims’ relatives and their communities. It is unclear whether the next of kin is likely to receive compensation.

read more: Aborigines in Canada know: many more children are buried near schools