To document deaths at Indian boarding schools and identify burial sites, The Post focused on 417 schools identified by the Interior Department as federally funded as part of the government’s 1819-1969 policy of forced assimilation.
The Post’s findings expand upon the Interior Department’s recent investigation, which documented 973 children who died. Because the agency declined to share names or details, it is unclear which of those students are included in the 3,104 documented by The Post. Deaths:
To tabulate deaths and find details on students’ names and causes of death, reporters reviewed thousands of reports filed by school officials, enrollment records, death certificates, census records, archived news reports and research by local historians. Official documents included annual reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Superintendents’ Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports, many available online from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The Post included in its tabulation only students who died at schools or at nearby hospitals or sanatoriums.
Student identifications are limited by misspellings or variations in how names were recorded. The name of a student’s tribe often referred to a broad tribal affiliation or a geographic area. For some children, only a first name was available. In some cases, students’ ages were listed in records only as estimates or not recorded at all. Many school records are illegible, missing or are in archives that are closed to the public.