Trump admin makes major cuts to native American boarding school projects

WASHINGTON: At least $1.6 million in federal funds for projects meant to capture and digitize stories of the systemic abuse of generations of Indigenous children in boarding schools at the hands of the US government have been slashed due to federal funding cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration.

The cuts are just a fraction of the grants canceled by the National Endowment for the Humanities in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s deep cost-cutting effort across the federal government. But coming on the heels of a major federal boarding school investigation by the previous administration and an apology by then-President Joe Biden, they illustrate a seismic shift. “If we’re looking to ‘Make America Great Again,’ then I think it should start with the truth about the true American history,” said Deborah Parker, CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. The coalition lost more than $282,000 as a result of the cuts, halting its work to digitize more than 100,000 pages of boarding school records for its database. Parker, a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes in Washington state, said Native Americans nationwide depend on the site to find loved ones who were taken or sent to these boarding schools.

Searching that database last year, Roberta “Birdie” Sam, a member of Tlingit & Haida, was able to confirm that her grandmother had been at a boarding school in Alaska. She also discovered that around a dozen cousins, aunts and uncles had also been at a boarding school in Oregon, including one who died there. She said the knowledge has helped her with healing. “I understand why our relationship has been the way it has been. And that’s been a great relief for myself,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of years very disconnected from my family, wondering what happened. And now I know — some of it anyways.”