Beginning with the Civilization Fund Act of 1819 and formalized by Captain Richard Henry Pratt’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School (1879), the federal government — often in partnership with religious orders — forcibly removed an estimated tens of thousands of Native children from their families and placed them in residential schools designed to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Children’s hair was cut, languages forbidden, and physical and sexual abuse documented. The Interior Department’s 2022 Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative report identified at least 973 child deaths across 408 schools and acknowledged the policy as cultural genocide.

Why it’s been targeted

South Dakota’s Executive Order 2022-02 (Governor Kristi Noem, April 2022) restricted “inherently divisive concepts” in K-12 schools; the state Department of Education subsequently found that the 2018 Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings — the state’s Native-history standards developed with tribal educators — may violate the order. Oklahoma HB 1775 (2021) has produced similar chilling effects on boarding-school instruction. Educators in both states report self-censorship.