The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is a non-profit organization that raises awareness and implements healing procedures to combat the atrocities committed by the U.S. Indian boarding school system ran by the federal government and local churches. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, known as the first U.S. government-ran boarding school, opened on November 1, 1879, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The school closed in 1918 and was later repurposed for military use.  

Established in 2012, NABS has spent the past 13 years addressing the generational traumas caused by the boarding school system. 

According to their website, NABS was fiscally sponsored by the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) until becoming financially independent in 2015. 

Furthermore, in August 2023, NABS established an online digital map which showcases the more than 520+ locations of the U.S. boarding schools. The information is free and available to the public. 

That same year, NABS collaborated with the U.S. Department of the Interior to create a permanent oral history collection of survivor testimonies which is also available to the public. “Telling my story has been a weight lifted off my shoulders. The world needs to know,” said Dr. Ramona Charette Klein, federal boarding school survivor (1954 to 1958) and NABS Board 1st vice-president.

Dr. Ramona Charette Klein is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. 

O’odham Action News has been monitoring NABS since 2024 when the organization held a legislative briefing in February of the same year regarding Senate Bill 1723/H.R. 7227, otherwise known as a bill to establish a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. 

As of December 2024, the bill is currently being “held at the desk” of Congress, which means the bill has not passed in the either the House or Senate and will resume when leadership feels the time is appropriate. It is essentially a temporary pause, not a rejection.  

In 2024, NABS conducted 168 interviews with U.S. boarding school survivors and attendees from Oklahoma, Alaska, Minnesota, Utah, Michigan, North Dakota, Montana and Hawai’i.

Nearly 1,000 Indigenous relatives attended the opening/closing ceremonies in the nine states NABS visited in 2024. Serene Thin Elk (Yankton Sioux Tribe) is the director of Indigenous Mindfulness for NABS.

As part of their policy and advocacy procedures, NABS also collected and showcased administrative records from U.S. boarding schools for public viewing via their NABS home website. 

Earlier this year, O’odham Action News located the names of 10 young people listed from the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community that were registered in the Carlisle boarding school database, which dates to August 1, 1899. 

“We believe that expanding access to these records is essential for raising public awareness of these issues and ultimately driving a national movement toward truth, justice, and healing,” said Fallon Carey (Cherokee Nation) NABS Digital Archives manager. 

In December, NABS collaborated with the National Institute of Health (NIH) Tribal Health Research Office (THRO) to host the Federal Indian Boarding School Healing Summit, an event which highlighted efforts from NABS and NIH to address the atrocities caused by the Indian Civilization Act and federal government’s Indian boarding school policies.

“We continue to value our strength among the relationships that we have built within our communities, across political parties, and most importantly among each other. We will continue to seek truth, justice, and healing, continuing to stand in solidarity with you,” said Deborah Parker (Tulalip Tribes), chief executive officer for NABS.