The Genocide of Native Americans

They have no idea how they got here. But the Native Americans do in fact know how they got her.

Thousands of Native American children died in government-funded boarding schools. The leading causes of death were rampant physical abuse, severe neglect, malnutrition, and exposure to infectious diseases.

Cultural Eradication:

   The primary goal of the boarding school
system was to "Kill the Indian, Save the Man". Children were forbidden from speaking their native languages,  and subjected to harsh disciplinary punishments if they did.

Abuse and Trauma: 
Survivors have documented widespread physical and sexual abuse by school staff, as well as solitary confinement and forced labor.

Disease and Poor Healthcare: 

Native children were placed in highly overcrowded dormitories with extremely poor sanitation. This, combined with meager rations, left their immune systems vulnerable to outbreaks of infectious diseases like tuberculosis and influenza.
Neglect and Exposure:
Due to inadequate funding and institutional neglect, many 
students lacked basic medical care. Dozens of children died while attempting to escape, often succumbing to exposure, harsh weather, or drowning.

For more than a century, Native American children           were taken from their homes and communities.

 The federal government created the system, which included more   than 400 schools across 37 states.

 The federal Government took deliberate and strategic actions   through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children   from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them   the languages, cultures and connections to their Ancestors.

 The federal government spent the equivalent of $23 billion in   today's dollars on the boarding school system from 1872 to 1968.

 A bigger system than imagined:

 Their were more schools and burial grounds than what have been   reported in the past. The portrait of the gruesome system,   including  oral histories that detailed decades of abuse and   maltreatment.

Tribal communities of today have given testimony to the horrid conditions they and their ancestors were subjected too.

 Their legacy reaches us today, and is reflected in the wounds people   continue to experience in communities across the United States."

 The number of boarding schools in the U.S. were previously under   reported  from 408 to 417, across 37 states or then-territories. The   number includes 22 schools in Alaska and seven in Hawaii.

 At least 983 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian   children died while attending schools in the system. The actual   number of children who died while attending Indian boarding   schools is likely greater.

 What Indigenous peoples across the country have known for       generations: That federal policies were to, obtain their territories,   and destroy their cultures and their  life-ways.

  There are at least 74 marked or unmarked burial sites at 66 of the     schools.

  The most important thing is that, the truths must be told about the   Federal Indian boarding school system.

  A report advocates spending on programs such as family   reunification, language revitalization, and Indian education –   programs intended to address the ways in which the boarding   school system that tore away lives, families and their livelihoods.

A national memorial to acknowledge the harm to tribes and individuals has been proposed.  It would serve not only tribal members, but would also help educate the broader population about the dark time in the country's history. 

 
  I have heard that Adolf Hitler based his concentration camps of   the American policy of forcing Native Americans onto small tracts   of lands, and to eradicate them. I myself am ashamed at how we   have treated Native Americans.