The Trump administration is making major cuts to research projects that investigated abuse at Native American boarding schools. The move marks a shift in the executive branch.
Projects meant to capture and digitize records and stories of systemic abuse at those boarding schools are losing at least $1.6 million due to the cuts.
Under President Joe Biden, the Department of the Interior launched the investigations and last year announced findings that about 1,000 Native American children died in the system.
The new cuts are just a fraction of the grants canceled by the National Endowment for the Humanities under the Trump administration.
Earlier this month, a letter to a coalition that had received a grant said the funds it received no longer matched the administration's priorities.
For 150 years the U.S. removed Indigenous children from their homes and sent them away to the schools, where they were stripped of their cultures, histories and religions, and beaten for speaking their native languages.
At least 973 Native American children died at government-funded boarding schools, according to an Interior Department investigation launched by former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. Both the report and independent researchers say the actual number was much higher.
The forced assimilation policy officially ended with the enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. But the government never fully investigated the boarding school system until the Biden administration.
In October, Biden apologized for the government's creation of the schools and the policies that supported them.
Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo citizen who's running for governor in New Mexico, described the recent cuts as the latest step in the Trump administration’s “pattern of hiding the full story of our country.” But she said they can't erase the extensive work already done.
“They cannot undo the healing communities felt as they told their stories at our events to hear from survivors and descendants,” she said in a statement. “They cannot undo the investigation that brings this dark chapter of our history to light. They cannot undo the relief Native people felt when President Biden apologized on behalf of the United States.”
