The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, headquartered in Anadarko, and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California filed a legal complaint last week to hold the United States accountable for the federal Indian boarding school system and its policies. It was made against the Department of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and the Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education.
The lawsuit highlights the "misuse" of money that was held in trust for tribal nations when they ceded their lands in forced treaties and was used to assimilate Native youth.
Adam Levitt, an attorney who helped with the legal complaint, said it took about two years to drill down the issue and frame it in the right way.
"The U.S. government has a trust obligation to the Native nations, and we're talking about what we believe is the misuse, loss or other unfortunate dissipation of billions and billions of dollars that were earmarked and intended for the Native nations," Levitt said in an interview with KOSU. "And accounting is something that will first shine the necessary light onto exactly what happened here."
The tribes are requesting a detailed itemization of the money the US appropriated for the federal Indian boarding school program and policies, which totals about $23 billion in today's inflation-adjusted dollars, and how that money was allocated from the Native Nations' Trust accounts. They also seek to know how the financial amount collected from "Indian child labor both for institution operations and through the Outing System to non-Indian Families."
"This isn't just a Native American tragedy," Levitt said. "This is an American tragedy because Native American history is American history."
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where the Carlisle Indian Industrial School once operated and was a place where some Indigenous students walked on, including two Wichita students: Alfred Charko and Kate Ross.
This is a class action case, which means it represents litigation on behalf of tribal nations that are "similarly situated."
Tasha Mousseau is the vice president of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. She said she feels pride in knowing the Wichita Executive Committee unanimously voted to enter into the litigation and be a voice for this fight.
"I'm very proud of us and our relatives in Washoe as well," Mousseau said. "Neither of us are the largest tribes in America, or even maybe the most notable. And those aren't the reasons we did it. It was the right thing to do."
Mousseau explained the impacts of the boarding schools can still be felt today in the graduation rates of Native American students. She said Indigenous youth were part of an educational system that was weaponized against them.
"This litigation is going to highlight the very systematic way in which this atrocity was done to our people," she said. "And I think there's healing from that when we're able to have that validation, when a lot of times Indigenous issues and people are invisible."
The legal complaint can be found here.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
