In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) after determining that Native American children were being removed from their homes and communities at a significantly higher rate that non Native American children. Data indicated that 25 to 35 percent of all Native American children were being placed in facilities (private and public) even when, in 85% of these cases, relatives were available and willing to care for them.

The stated intent of the ICWA is “to protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote stability and security of Indian tribes and families.” This legislation is a federal directive applying to all state custodial proceedings involving Native American children.

In 2022, Texas, Louisiana and Indiana, along with several individuals, sought to have the ICWA declared unconstitutional, arguing that Congress had overstepped its “plenary powers” in passing this legislation. In a 2023 decision (7-2) the Supreme Court rejected this challenge, ruling that the ICWA was consistent with congressional powers. (Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.) In his concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the ICWA “did not emerge from a vacuum.” Rather, it was a “direct response to the mass removal of Indian children from their families in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s by state officials and private parties.” The ICWA affirmed “the right of Indian children to grow in their culture; and the right of Indian communities to resist fading into the twilight of history.”

Gorsuch notes that social workers were often “ignorant of Indian cultural values and social norms,” penalizing Indian parents for living in poverty while citing their “poor housing, lack of modern plumbing and overcrowding.” An American Association of Indian Affairs study reported a 3-year-old Sioux girl “was removed from her family on the State’s belief that an Indian reservation is an unsuitable environment for a child.” Gorsuch states that Indian families “forced onto reservations at gunpoint” were later “told they lived in a place unfit for rearing their children.”

During the “Indian Wars” of the early to mid 1800s Native American children were often taught by missionaries and the wives of Army officers. The children remained with their families in Native American communities and continued to learn native languages as well as their traditional cultural ways of life.

Gorsuch writes that “by the 1870s the Federal government had darker designs” as “its goal turned toward destroying tribal identity and assimilating Indians into broader society.” Achieving those goals required, as one study noted, the “complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents.” And because the “warm reciprocal affection between parents and children” was “among the strongest characteristics of the Indian nature,” officials set out to eliminate it by “dissolving Indian families.”

This was the beginning of federally funded Indian boarding schools. Gorsuch reports that in 1879, Captain Richard Henry Pratt — founder of Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School, stated: “All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

When Indian families on reservations refused to surrender their children, Congress authorized the Secretary of the Interior to withhold their rations and/or other supplies. If economic coercion didn’t work the federal government resorted to abduction. A Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) report stated that officers would “visit” Indian camps with a detachment of men and “seize such children … willing or unwilling.”

A BIA study found that when alarmed parents took their children to the mountains or hid them in camps, “agents captured them like so many wild rabbits.” Fathers were described as “sullen,” mothers “loud in their lamentations” and the children “almost out of their wits with fright.”

Once at school, the resocialization process began. According to a BIA report, the children were stripped of their Indian names (some given Christian names, others only numbers) and clothing. Their hair was cut short, a mark of shame in many Native American cultures. Children were not allowed to speak their mother tongue or associate with members of their tribes so as to further “break up tribal association.” At the Carlisle school, children caught speaking native languages had their mouths washed out with a lye soap.

According to a 1881 Commissioner of Indian Affairs report, even “compliant children faced “rampant physical, sexual and emotional abuse, disease, malnutrition, overcrowding and lack of health care.” Given these brutal conditions, it’s hardly surprising that many children attempted to escape. Gorsuch cites a BIA report noting that school officials “believed a whipping administered soundly and prayerfully, helps greatly towards bringing about the desired results.”

Gorsuch states that in all its many forms over the past 150 years, “the dissolution of the Indian family has had devastating effects on children and parents alike” as it presented “an existential threat to the continued vitality of the Tribes.”

In 2022, the Department of the Interior (DI) released a report outlining the horrors of the 417 Federal Indian boarding schools that operated from 1819 to 1969. Records indicate that 18,624 children attended these schools, with at least 973 dying while in residence. The actual numbers are higher, as some records have been lost or destroyed. Just over half of the schools (210) were operated by religious institutions or organizations, with 80 administered by the Catholic Church and its affiliates.

The DI report concluded “The intentional targeting, removal and confinement of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children to achieve the goal of forced assimilation of Indian people was both traumatic and violent.”

Children in Alaska were taken by airplane to boarding schools hundreds of miles away. One survivor recounted her aunt’s sorrowful words years later: “… the village was so quiet because there were no children. No children in the village.” Another survivor said: “I think the worst part of it was at night, listening to all the other children crying themselves to sleep, crying for their parents and just wanting to go home …”

It’s worth remembering Richard Henry Pratt’s words: “All the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him and save the man.” Native American boarding schools were part of the government’s “darker designs” to do just that.

(George J. Bryjak lives in Bloomingdale and is retired after 24 years of teaching sociology at the University of San Diego. A list of sources accompanies this commentary online.)

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Sources

“Haaland v. Brackeen affirms the constitutionality of ICWA” (2023) June 15, American Bar Association, www.americabar.org

Hedgpeth, D. and S. Horwitz (2024) “More than 900 Native American children died in U.S. boarding schools,” July 30, The Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com “Indian Child Welfare Act” (2023) Child Welfare, www.childwelfare.gov

Kliewer, A, Mahmud, M. and Wayland, B. (accessed 2024) “‘Kill the Indian, save the man’: Remembering the stories of Indian boarding schools,” College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma, www.ou.edu

Newland, B. (2024) “Federal Indian School Initiative Investigation Report Vol II (2024) July, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, www.bia.gov

Spears, M. (2023) “‘A place of calm:’ Indian child welfare expert unpacks the historic Brackeen v. Haaland decision” June 23, The Imprint, https://theimprint.com

“Supreme Court of the United States – Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior, et al, petitioners, v. Chad Everet Brackeen, petitioners” (2023) Supreme Court, www.supremecourt.gov

Treuer, D. (2019) The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native Americans From 1890 To The Present, Riverhead Books: New York