The United States Congress is closer than ever to creating a federal commission to document the traumatic past of Indigenous boarding schools in the country — something activists have pushed for for years.
It would be called the Truth and Healing Commission and a bipartisan pair of representatives reintroduced it in the House last month. An identical bill already passed in the Senate previously.
The effort would not only give an official avenue for survivors to tell their stories — it would investigate the role the federal government played in the boarding schools.
Indigenous affairs reporter Gabriel Pietrorazio joined The Show to talk more about why this would be such a monumental step forward for many tribal communities and peoples.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Gabe.
GABRIEL PIETRORAZIO: Good morning, Lauren.
GILGER: OK, so tell us first, what exactly would this Truth and Healing Commission do?
PIETRORAZIO: Yeah, I think the concept of Truth and Reconciliation and Healing Commissions is kind of foreign to Americans here. Dozens of countries around the world actually use and turn to such commissions for what's called restorative justice work and sometimes even healing, as you mentioned. Most notably, like South Africa had created one in the fallout of apartheid, and then Canada more recently in 2008.
And they were the first really to create their own commission to address what they refer to as residential schools in Canada, which are the same as U.S. Indian boarding schools, just for the First Nations of Canada. And as part of the reconciliation efforts, the then Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in the House of Commons. And then years later, Justin Trudeau also apologized to survivors.
And so then a couple years after that, the late Pope Francis took this penitential pilgrimage to apologize for the Catholic Church's role in Canada for essentially running these residential schools. And what we've seen is this trickle-down effect that is leading to in the U.S. a boarding school apology under President Joe Biden, former president. And that led the —paved the way essentially for this commission to come forward to make it more mainstream and more popular in a lot of ways to accept wrongdoing and fault for running such institutions.
GILGER: All right, we'll talk more about that in a moment. But I want to back up for a minute, Gabe, and just talk about the history here. Remind us a little bit about what this was about. These boarding schools existed for generations, up until the 1970s. They were all over the country, including here in Arizona. And they were essentially like tools of assimilation, right?
PIETRORAZIO: Essentially, they started 1820s or so, give or take. It was about 150-year legacy. We talk about it as a campaign of assimilation. In Arizona, the latest counts show that at least 50 federal boarding schools were run here. That's federally run or federally funded. And that could include institutions like the Catholic Church, Jesuits, Episcopalians, things of that sort, Protestants
Second overall state behind Oklahoma, which tips the scale at about 80, give or take. And for context, we had about 417. That's according to numbers identified by the Interior Department to date of them. And they're still finding them. They're still finding records of new undiscovered boarding schools just because of the lack of record keeping, but also just the loss of history, as you mentioned, over generations ... generations of children were lost, these institutions.
The government found that, you know, about 1,000 confirmed deaths. The Washington Post found three times as many as part of their federal investigation. Their initiative under Deb Haaland, who was the former Interior secretary under Biden. And so there's still a lot of work to be done. The apology but also the boarding school federal investigation were just kind of like the stepping stones for a full on commission that would kind of air out all these issues.
GILGER: Right, OK. And that's what we're looking at in Congress now. So I mentioned advocates in Indian Country have been pushing for a federal effort like this for a very long time. Why didn't this happen until now? You talked about that apology ... from President Biden years ago, just a couple years ago here in Arizona. And you were there, right?
PIETRORAZIO: That's right. I think what I have heard over the last decade covering boarding schools is that some survivors thought this day would never come. That the government would never accept fault for what they did, for what they allowed to do these institutions onto Indigenous peoples and to effectively get away with it.
So this has been a discussion in Indian Country for decades, as you mentioned, generations, that there should be some sort of accounting for what has happened. That didn't really translate to Capitol Hill until the last decade or so. And that's where we kind of see these apologies from both Pope Francis, the late Pope Francis, and President Joe Biden have a lot of resonance for, you know, essentially to sway lawmakers who are on the sidelines about, "Oh, should I really support this?" You know, encourage them to be like this is justified, that there's some meaning to this.
GILGER: Yeah. And let's hear a little bit from the pope, the former pope and the former president about those apologies.
POPE FRANCIS: I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.
JOE BIDEN: I formally apologize as president of the United States of America for what we did. I formally apologize. That's long overdue.
GILGER: So, Gabe, what does it mean to folks here in Indian Country ... who you've talked to about this like that Congress is, is taking steps, getting closer to making this commission happen.
PIETRORAZIO: It's really important. And some people have dedicated their lives to this. A lot of people have dedicated their lives to making this happen. Then the National Boarding School Healing Coalition, one of the strongest advocates for this space, I actually spent some time when they were here at Gila River gathering boarding school survivor testimonies, the same place where Biden uttered that apology we just heard.
And time and again, we hear how important this is, that the government is taking an active look and focus and interest in telling the story, retelling and sharing this story of pain, of trauma, of intergenerational harm with people. And to show that, you know, this happened and, you know, to prevent it from happening again.
GILGER: Yeah. So let me ask you about the last part of what this commission would do that's in the title there. That healing part, right. Like this would put people in charge of, yes, investigating the past. Yes, documenting it in a kind of a formal way, but it would also hope to establish some kind of path to healing. What might that look like?
PIETRORAZIO: They talked about in the legislation, a couple of different committees that would effectively help facilitate such healing through gathering testimony and things of that sort. Earlier this month, the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to the Senate in support of the latest version of the bill, writing that the church is committed to transparency, listening and humility. And that they have a seat at the table, too, to help, you know, understand and unpack what has happened.
And one of the challenges that we're seeing is that there's this boat of contention over one of the things Congress can do is have subpoena powers, which would allow them to force people into Congress to testify, to hand over documents and things of that sort. And it seems, at least in the current version of the bill, that that wouldn't be taking place.
... And it was praised by the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops, saying that excluding that broad power would invite greater cooperative and transparent participation among all stakeholders, essentially. So there's kind of this tug and pull of we could do, you know, good restorative work that we could help repair families and understand what has happened. But there's also kind of give and take that how far could this commission effectively go if it is finalized?
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