PHOTO: Courtesy of IllumiNative
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American Genocide: The Crimes of Native American Boarding Schools spotlights the atrocities Indigenous children endured for decades at these schools — and how survivors are trying to heal
From 1819 through the 1970s, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were removed from their homes and placed in institutions across the nation where they were housed, educated and clothed. But they were also forced to give up all traces of their ancestry at more than 400 specialized schools around the country.
The real number of deaths could be in the "tens of thousands," according to the DOI.
Most Americans know very little about this history, says Crystal Echo Hawk, of the Pawnee Nation, founder of IllumiNative, a national Native woman-led social justice organization dedicated to increasing the visibility of Native peoples.
"What happened in these schools is one of the biggest root causes of the intergenerational trauma that affects Native peoples today," Echo Hawk tells PEOPLE. "This is cultural genocide."
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