The lawsuit filed by the Wichita and Washu tribes requires accounting for an estimated $23.3 billion in misused funds.
We are the first to apologize for abuse at our home schools.
President Joe Biden has formally apologized for the abuse committed against students at native boarding schools over the past century.
- Two tribal nations are suing the US government for misusing trust funds aimed at educating native children to fund abusive boarding schools.
- The lawsuit requires an estimated $23.3 billion in accounting and details of how the funds were used.
- The lawsuit follows a detailed Home Office report of abuse and deaths within the boarding school system.
Two tribal nations are suing the US government, saying it has diverted the trust fund to fund the federal Indian boarding school program.
Wichita and related tribes and Washu tribes in Nevada and California say funding for the boarding school program includes a native trust fund that was deemed “for the supposed purpose of providing money to support the education of native children.”
The tribes are requesting a federal accounting of an estimated $23.3 billion for funds obtained from these funds, stating that the government has never detailed how the money was used. The lawsuit was filed last month in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Pennsylvania. There, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, one of the most infamous campuses in the boarding school system, was once run.
“The United States has deprived us of our sacred trust in the education of native children. This is a trust responsibility that has not been broken for 200 years,” says Adam Levitt, founding partner of Dicello Levitt, one of the four tribe’s representative law firms. “At the very least, the United States has a legal and moral obligation to explain boarding school programs, including a detailed explanation of the funds it has taken and spent.”
The federal trust’s liability “born from a sacred bargain,” according to the lawsuit. Through numerous treaties, Indigenous peoples have promised peace and transferred land. In exchange, the US provides education for children.
“The land was handed over. Peace was a mirage,” the lawsuit said. “And the main victims of decades of ongoing statutory and treaty violations were Indigenous children.”
The lawsuit appoints Secretary of Home Affairs Doug Burgham, Ministry of Home Affairs, Indian Affairs Bureau and Indian Education Bureau as defendants.
Home Affairs spokesman Alyse Sharpe told USA Today because he had not commented on the lawsuit as a policy issue.
“The Department of the Interior remains committed to its trustworthy responsibility to protect tribal treaty rights, land, assets and resources, in addition to its obligation to carry out federal law duties with regard to American Indians and native tribes and villages in Alaska,” Sharp said.
A shameful chapter in American history
Over 18,000 children were shipped to 417 federal boarding schools, many being run by religious organizations between 1819 and 1969. The harmful effects of the system were immediate and long-term.
Under the department’s first Native American director, Home Secretary Deb Haaland, the agency released reports in 2022 and 2024 detailing program abuse, including death, forced labor, physical and sexual abuse. The investigation confirmed the deaths of at least 973 American Indians, native Alaska, native Hawaiian children in the boarding school system.
The program destroys children’s links to Indigenous families, language and cultural practices, deprives them of the skills they need to join and succeed in their own communities, and inculcates them into a more widespread breeding cycle of poverty, violence and drug addiction.
“The boarding school program represents one of the most shameful chapters in American history,” Serel Smokey, chairman of the Washoe tribes of Nevada and California, said in a news release. “Our children have been taken away from us, exposed to unimaginable fears and forced to fund their own suffering. The lawsuit attempts to hold the US government accountable for its actions and ensure that the truth is finally revealed.”
The programme not only was a “national stigma,” but also violated the government’s obligation to provide education to Indigenous children, according to the lawsuit. This is an obligation that continues today based on “a unique and continuous trust and responsibility with Indians for the education of Indian children.”
“The boarding school program has caused serious and lasting harm to our community,” said Amber Silverhorn Wolff, president of Wichita and associated tribes. “We want justice not only for survivors, but also for generations who are suffering from the intergenerational trauma caused by these schools.”
Faith E. Gay, another company representing the tribe, said the Interior Department’s report revealed not only the size and scope of government actions, but also the critical information related to program funding is under federal control.
These reports suggest that the boarding school system is part of a pattern of enforced assimilation policies pursued or permitted by the United States for nearly two centuries, and encourages official apology. President Joe Biden officially apologized for the program in October.
“The harm caused by the boarding school program endures broken families and poor mental and physical health of the boarding school and its offspring survivors,” the tribal lawsuit reads. “It endures a cycle of poverty, despair, domestic violence, and addiction that emerges from boarding school programs. It endures the silence of lost language and culture, and…bears the missing ruins and unmarked graves of deceased children.”
