WASHINGTON — The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs has advanced a bill to establish a federal “truth and healing” commission to examine Indian boarding school policies.
The bill is part of an effort to reckon with the United States’ history of government-run boarding schools that forcibly removed Native children from their homes. The schools subjected Indigenous youths to physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and last year a federal study identified hundreds of deaths of Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians associated with the schools.
More than 20 such facilities were based in Alaska, mostly run by religious orders. The federally operated Wrangell Institute, a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, was open 1932 to 1975.
James LaBelle Sr., who entered the Wrangell Institute in 1955 at age 8 and stayed 10 years, is board president of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. He has spent years advocating for the legislation and said he is encouraged by the bill passing committee on June 7 and hopes to see it signed into law.
“I’ve been waiting over 50 years for people to acknowledge and hear our stories, mine included,” he said in an interview. “I think it’s been long overdue.”
LaBelle spoke at an event in Wrangell last fall.
The 10-person federally appointed commission would investigate and document assimilation practices, human rights violations and efforts to terminate Indigenous languages and cultures that the bill said were “in furtherance of the motto to ‘kill the Indian in him and save the man.’”
The commission would also develop recommendations for resources and assistance the federal government should provide, and for establishing a nationwide hotline for survivors, family members or other community members affected by the policies. Additionally, it would propose recommendations to prevent the removal of Indigenous children by state social services, foster care agencies and adoption services.
Since its introduction last month, 28 senators — led by Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren — have signed on to the legislation. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the vice chair of the Indian Affairs Committee, is the only Republican co-sponsor so far.
“Fundamentally, this commission would provide a means to address the legacy and traumatic impacts of the Indian boarding school era on Native peoples and families,” Murkowski said at an Indian Affairs Committee meeting on June 7.
“The scope and gravity of harm inflicted by these policies and schools — which the federal government funded and supported — is oftentimes just difficult to understand,” Murkowski said. “But because the U.S. government implemented these policies, it’s now incumbent on us to document what happened and how some of these institutions attempted to literally destroy Native cultures and to develop recommendations to heal from these harms.”
The bill faces an uncertain future after failing to become law last congressional term. Kansas Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids led a companion bill in the House of Representatives last term that Alaska Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola co-sponsored. A spokesman for Peltola said she plans to sign onto the bill again when it is reintroduced in the House.
Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan is not a co-sponsor on the bill. A spokesman said he is still evaluating the legislation.
In the June 7 Senate committee meeting, Murkowski told the story of Sophia Tetoff, of St. Paul Island, who attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. She died 4,500 miles from her home in 1906 and her remains were not repatriated until 2021.
“We know that thousands of Native children attended these schools, but what we don’t know is how many did not return home,” Murkowski said. “Sophia was one of those children who did not come home.”
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