Tribes say the U.S. misappropriated funds to pay for Native American boarding schools

Two tribal nations filed a lawsuit Thursday saying that the federal government used the trust fund money of tribes to pay for boarding schools where generations of Native children were systematically abused.

In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the Wichita Tribe and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California said that by the U.S. government’s own admission, the schools were funded using money raised by forcing tribal nations into treaties to cede their lands. That money was to be held in trust for the collective benefit of tribes.

“The United States Government, the trustee over Native children’s education and these funds, has never accounted for the funds that it took, or detailed how, or even whether, those funds were ultimately expended. It has failed to identify any funds that remain,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed against Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education. A spokesperson for the Interior declined to comment on pending litigation.

In 2022, the U.S. Department of the Interior, under the direction of Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to run the agency, released a scathing report on the legacy of the boarding school era, in which Native children were stolen from their homes, forced to assimilate, and in many cases physically, sexually and mentally abused. Countless children died at the schools, many of whom were buried in unmarked graves at the institutions.

That report detailed the U.S. government’s intentions of using the boarding schools as a way to both strip Native children of their culture and dispossess their tribal nations of land.

The tribes are asking the court to make the U.S. account for the estimated $23.3 billion it appropriated for the boarding school program, detail how that money was invested, and list the remaining funds that were taken by U.S. and allocated for the education of Native children.

Last year, President Joe Biden issued a formal apology for the government’s boarding school policy, calling it “a sin on our soul” and “one of the most horrific chapters” in American history. But in April, the administration of President Donald Trump cut $1.6 million from projects meant to capture and digitize stories of boarding school survivors.