An investigation by the U.S. Interior Department has found evidence of burial sites at 53 boarding schools for Native American children, according to a government report released Wednesday.
The investigation, launched last June to address the troubled history of the government-run boarding schools, is the broadest official accounting of how many Native children died while attending the institutions. The U.S. government operated or assisted some 408 boarding schools for Native Americans in 37 states between 1819 and 1969, the report found.
The Interior Department said Wednesday the burial sites it identified were both marked and unmarked, and that it anticipated the number to rise. So far the investigation has found that at least several hundred children died while attending the schools, but the report noted that further investigation was expected to reveal “the approximate number of Native American children who died at Federal Indian boarding schools to be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”
