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Indian Boarding Schools' Traumatic Legacy, And The Fight To Get Native Ancestors Back

After discoveries of more than 1,300 bodies at Canada's residential schools, the U.S. is now facing a crucial moment of reckoning with its own history of Native American boarding schools.
This cemetery on the grounds of Carlisle Barracks holds the remains of students from the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

After the remains of more than 1,300 First Nations students were discovered at the former sites of Canada's residential schools earlier this year, the U.S. is now facing its own moment of reckoning with its history of Native American boarding schools. In response to these findings, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (a member of the Pueblo of Laguna) announced a Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to review "the troubled legacy of federal boarding school policies."

In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, efforts have been underway since 2016 to return the remains of Native children to their proper resting places. Carlisle was home to the first off-reservation Indian boarding school in the U.S. — Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Today, it's an army barracks,

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