Stewart Indian School is a museum, now, but for most of its existence, it was also where hundreds of Native American children were brought to assimilate them into a culture that was not their own.
“The Boarding School Program represents one of the most shameful chapters in American history,” said Washoe Tribal Chairman Serrell Smokey. “Our children were taken from us, subjected to unimaginable horrors, and forced to fund their own suffering. This lawsuit seeks to hold the U.S. Government accountable for its actions and to ensure that the truth is finally brought to light.”
The Washoe and the Witchita tribe in Pennsylvania have filed a lawsuit May 22 against the federal government seeking an accounting of the $23.3 billion adjusted for inflation and appropriated by the U.S. Government for the Boarding School Program. That includes the funds removed from the Native Nations’ Trust accounts used to pay for the program.
The Wichita and Washoe have something in common besides being plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Stewart was modeled on the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
“The United States, for nearly as long as it has existed and to the present day, has taken upon itself through treaties and statutes solemn trust responsibilities over the education of Native Nations’ children,” the filing begins. “These promises were often made in exchange for land and peace. The land was ceded; the peace was a mirage. And the primary victims of decades of ongoing statute and treaty violations were the Native Nations’ children.”
The lawsuit contends that the U.S. government used the Native Nations’ own funds to implement the Boarding School Program.
Stewart Indian School operated from 1890 to 1980, according to its website.
Filed in the U.S. District court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania the lawsuit contends that the government has never accounted for the funds it took from the trust and has yet to identify the funds that remain.
“The Boarding School Program was aimed at the complete eradication of Native culture,” said attorney Richard Fields, founding partner of Fields Han Cunniff. “Given the immense harm caused by this program, it is clear that a reckoning is necessary. We are proud to stand alongside the Wichita, Washoe, and affiliated tribes in their fight for what is right.”
According to the lawsuit, at least 18,624 native children, with 973 deaths documented found in graves at the schools. By 1926, 80 percent of native children were enrolled in a boarding school as part of a national policy.
“At times as much as 95 percent of the funding purportedly used for the boarding schools came from Native Nations’ Trust fund monies, raised by selling native land to the United States and held in trust by the United States for the native nations’ collective benefit,” according to the lawsuit.
The tribes are seeking disclosure of the value of the land ceded and the amount of Native Nations’ funds taken for the boarding school program and the labor expended by the children in the 417 schools across 37 states between 1819 and 1969.