Interior Department Leaders Revisit Legacy of Federal Indian Boarding Schools in Pennsylvania

Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Contact: Interior_Press@ios.doi.gov

CARLISLE, Pa. — Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Shannon Estenoz, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kathryn Isom-Clause traveled to Carlisle, Pennsylvania today as part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. Launched in June 2021 by Secretary Haaland, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative is the first comprehensive effort by the federal government to recognize the troubled legacy of past federal Indian boarding school policies with the goal of addressing their intergenerational impact and shedding light on past and present trauma in Indigenous communities.      

In operation from 1879 through 1918, Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the first off reservation boarding school in the continental United States. Over four decades, approximately 7,800 Native American children attended the school, far from their families, homes and communities. The school was a model for the federal government’s boarding school policies aimed at stripping Indigenous children of their languages, religions and cultures.  

The former campus of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School is located within the U.S. Army Carlisle Barracks, one of the nation’s oldest military installations. Secretary Haaland, Assistant Secretary Estenoz, and Deputy Assistant Secretary Isom-Clause joined Army leaders to tour the sites currently within the Carlisle Indian Industrial School National Historic Landmark, first designated by the Secretary of the Interior in 1961 and updated in 1985.    

The leaders also paid their respects at the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery, which is operated by the Office of Army Cemeteries, and contains the marked burial sites of many of the estimated 187 American Indian and Alaska Native children who died while attending Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The Army is continuing its work to honor the requests of family members and Tribes to “disinter” the human remains of children located in the cemetery – Secretary Haaland was last at Carlisle to attend a disinterment ceremony in 2021 at the invitation of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.     

Secretary Haaland, Assistant Secretary Estenoz, and Deputy Assistant Secretary Isom-Clause also spent time at Dickinson College today, including a roundtable discussion at the Center for the Futures of Native Peoples and tour of the College’s extensive Archives, to learn about its historical role with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and current work to educate students about its legacy. The College’s Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center is an online repository of digitized records about the boarding school that includes research material from the National Archives and other repositories.  

As part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, Secretary Haaland, Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland and Department leaders traveled to 12 communities across the country to provide American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian survivors the opportunity to share with the federal government their experiences in federal Indian boarding schools for the first time, including the horrors they experienced and the intergenerational trauma that ensued.   

As part of the Department’s work to acknowledge the legacy of these assimilation policies, in April 2024, the Department held Tribal consultation sessions to receive feedback on what role the National Park Service might play in interpreting and preserving the history of the federal Indian boarding school era. 

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