Editor’s Note: This story contains sensitive subject matter, including stories involving childhood punishment that some readers may find upsetting.

The 432nd site in the National Parks System database will be the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

On December 9, President Joe Biden announced that a national monument is to be built within the next 3 years to honor and commemorate the Indigenous lives lost due to the U.S. boarding school atrocities which began in the early 19th century. Biden issued a proclamation and made the announcement at his final White House Tribal Nations Summit. 

Between 1879 and 1918, more than 7,800 Indigenous children attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The school was built with a mission to “kill the Indian” to “save the Man” by forcibly assimilating Indigenous youth to abandon their tradition and culture to adopt Euro-American values and culture. Many remain buried on school grounds, and over the last few years, some have been disinterred and taken back home to tribal land for reburial.

The Carlisle school’s tenure as a Federal Indian boarding school ended in 1918, at the end of World War I. At that time, the U.S. government turned the school into a hospital to care for wounded soldiers. After its closing, the school’s legacy as being the model for boarding schools continued as more than 417 Indian boarding schools in 37 States and then-territories over the course of the next century opened. The boarding schools during the post-WWI era were not operated by the federal government, but by local churches and other religious organizations.

Today, the Carlisle Barracks is an active Army installation which still includes the buildings and structures of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

“For the survivors of the schools, and for the families and Tribes whose children were taken from them, the trauma and violence inflicted by the Federal Indian boarding school system have had profound effects across multiple generations, and those impacts continue today,” said President Biden in his proclamation. 

In 2022, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland released their investigative report, “Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative,” which revealed their findings regarding the traumas boarding schools caused from 1819 to 1969. 

This year, O’odham Action News has been following Biden’s and Haaland’s U.S. boarding school system work.

Last July, the Interior Department released volume 2 of its Federal Indian Investigative Report, which revealed more Indigenous children lost to the horrific tragedies. 

This past October at the Gila River Crossing Community School in Laveen, Biden and Haaland were both in person as Biden gave a formal apology to Indian Country on behalf of the United States for the U.S. boarding school system. 

During its investigation for this story, O’odham Action News identified 10 young people listed from the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community that were registered in the Carlisle boarding school student database, which dates to August 1, 1899. 

The names of the students and their ages at the time they were enrolled at the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School are as follows:

• J. Henry, age 19
• P. Ogle, age 18
• H. Jackson, age 15
• H. Jose, age 19
• L. Juan, age 17
• E. Ramone, age 14
• M. Stuart, age 18
• J. Thomas, age 16
• K. Thomas, age 16
• J. Vavages, age 15

In his proclamation, Biden stated the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument will be managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Army. Both will collaborate with local and neighboring tribal nations on the creation and operation of the monument, which will be a 24.5-acre monument held within the 520-acre boundary of Carlisle. 

“With the designation of the Carlisle School as a National Monument, we take a significant step in preserving and learning from this part of our nation’s history,” said Rachel Jacobson, assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment.

Access to the planned monument site is currently restricted as plans are underway. 

Presently, the “Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act” is a bill headlined by the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS), an organization at the front lines of capturing the stories of survivors and their descendants. 

If the bill passes, it will conduct investigations, continue to hold public and private gatherings with survivors and descendants, continue to locate Indigenous children, and publish their final reports to the public. 

O’odham Action News will continue to monitor the monument’s construction as well as the “Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act” when it comes up for a vote. 

The Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center is a free website which contains sensitive information regarding the school’s history. https://carlisleindian.dickinson.edu/index.php/nation/pima-salt-river

If you or someone you know is a descendant of SRPMIC students that were at the Carlisle Boarding School, and feel comfortable sharing your story with us, please reach out to OAN Managing Editor Dalton Walker at 480-362-3281 or by emailing Dalton.Walker@SRPMIC-NSN.GOV.