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#Indian

Our fourth White House Tribal Nations Summit is underway! Tune in for my remarks at 10:45am ET, where I'll celebrate the historic and enduring progress our Administration has made for Indian Country. https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1866145090218963445

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#Indian

Our fourth White House Tribal Nations Summit is underway! Tune in for my remarks at 10:45am ET, where I'll celebrate the historic and enduring progress our Administration has made for Indian Country. https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1866145090218963445

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The 'dark history' of Native American boarding schools uncovered

The U.S. Department of the Interior released the first volume of the "Federal Indian Boarding School Truth Initiative" project investigation report on the 11th, showing the tragic experience of indigenous children in these schools. Hundreds of Native American children died in the federal Indian residential school system, according to the 106-page investigative report, with the number expected to reach into the thousands or tens of thousands as the investigation continues.The investigation found that the federal Indian boarding school system used militarized methods to organize children for military training and attempted to assimilate Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children through education and change their identities. Tactics used by schools include changing Indian children's names to English names, cutting Indian children's hair, and banning Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian language, religion, and cultural practices.

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#Indian

We told America’s full story – the good chapters and the painful. From Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in NV, to Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in PA and beyond, Americans and visitors can now learn more of our history and how it informs our future. https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1880336515374674205

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#Indian

Our fourth White House Tribal Nations Summit is underway! Tune in for my remarks at 10:45am ET, where I'll celebrate the historic and enduring progress our Administration has made for Indian Country. https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1866145090218963445

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#Indian

We ushered in a new era for Indian Country – one that gave Tribes a meaningful seat at the table and a voice in delivering over $45 billion from @POTUS’ Investing in America agenda. https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1880336506323365985

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Native Americans Hurt by Federal Health Cuts, Despite RFK Jr.’s Promises of Protection

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — Navajo Nation leaders took turns talking with the U.S. government’s top health official as they hiked along a sandstone ridge overlooking their rural, high-desert town before the morning sun grew too hot. Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, paused at the edge with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Below them, tribal government buildings, homes, and juniper trees dotted the tan and deep-red landscape. Nygren said he wanted Kennedy to look at the capital for the nation of about 400,000 enrolled members. The tribal president pointed toward an antiquated health center that he hoped federal funding would help replace and described life for the thousands of locals without running water due to delayed government projects. Nygren said Kennedy had already done a lot, primarily saving the Indian Health Service from a round of staffing cuts rippling through the federal government. “When we started hearing about the layoffs and the freezes, you were the first one to stand up for Indian Country,” he told Kennedy, of his move to spare the federal agency charged with providing health care to Native Americans and Alaska Natives. But Nygren and other Navajo leaders said cuts to federal health programs outside the Indian Health Service are hurting Native Americans. “You’re disrupting real lives,” Cherilyn Yazzie, a Navajo council delegate, told KFF Health News as she described recent changes. Kennedy has repeatedly promised to prioritize Native Americans’ health care. But Native Americans and health officials across tribal nations say those overtures are overshadowed by the collateral harm from massive cuts to federal health programs. The sweeping reductions have resulted in cuts to funding directed toward or disproportionately relied on by Native Americans. Staffing cuts, tribal health leaders say, have led to missing data and poor communication. The Indian Health Service provides free health care at its hospitals and clinics to Native Americans, who, as a group, face higher rates of chronic diseases and die younger than other populations. Those inequities are attributable to centuries of systemic discrimination. But many tribal members don’t live near an agency clinic or hospital. And those who do may face limited services, chronic underfunding, and staffing shortages. To work around those gaps, health organizations lean on other federally funded programs. “There may be a misconception among some of the administration that Indian Country is only impacted by changes to the Indian Health Service,” said Liz Malerba, a tribal policy expert and citizen of the Mohegan Tribe. “That’s simply not true.” Tribes have lost more than $6 million in grants from other HHS agencies, the National Indian Health Board wrote in a May letter to Kennedy. Janet Alkire, chairperson of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the Dakotas, said at a May 14 Senate committee hearing that those grants paid for community health workers, vaccinations, data modernization, and other public health efforts. The government also canceled funding for programs it said violated President Donald Trump’s ban on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” including one aimed at Native American youth interested in science and medicine and another that helps several tribes increase access to healthy food — something Kennedy has said he wants to prioritize. Tribal health officials say slashed federal staffing has made it harder to get technical support and money for federally funded health projects they run. The firings have cut or eliminated staff at programs related to preventing overdoses in tribal communities, using traditional food and medicine to fight chronic disease, and helping low-income people afford to heat and cool their homes through the Low Income Home Energy Program. The Oglala Sioux Tribe is in South Dakota, where Native Americans who struggle to heat their homes have died of hypothermia. Through mid-May the tribe hadn’

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Native Americans Hurt by Federal Health Cuts, Despite RFK Jr.’s Promises of Protection

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — Navajo Nation leaders took turns talking with the U.S. government’s top health official as they hiked along a sandstone ridge overlooking their rural, high-desert town before the morning sun grew too hot. Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, paused at the edge with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Below them, tribal government buildings, homes, and juniper trees dotted the tan and deep-red landscape. Nygren said he wanted Kennedy to look at the capital for the nation of about 400,000 enrolled members. The tribal president pointed toward an antiquated health center that he hoped federal funding would help replace and described life for the thousands of locals without running water due to delayed government projects. Nygren said Kennedy had already done a lot, primarily saving the Indian Health Service from a round of staffing cuts rippling through the federal government. “When we started hearing about the layoffs and the freezes, you were the first one to stand up for Indian Country,” he told Kennedy, of his move to spare the federal agency charged with providing health care to Native Americans and Alaska Natives. But Nygren and other Navajo leaders said cuts to federal health programs outside the Indian Health Service are hurting Native Americans. “You’re disrupting real lives,” Cherilyn Yazzie, a Navajo council delegate, told KFF Health News as she described recent changes. Kennedy has repeatedly promised to prioritize Native Americans’ health care. But Native Americans and health officials across tribal nations say those overtures are overshadowed by the collateral harm from massive cuts to federal health programs. The sweeping reductions have resulted in cuts to funding directed toward or disproportionately relied on by Native Americans. Staffing cuts, tribal health leaders say, have led to missing data and poor communication. The Indian Health Service provides free health care at its hospitals and clinics to Native Americans, who, as a group, face higher rates of chronic diseases and die younger than other populations. Those inequities are attributable to centuries of systemic discrimination. But many tribal members don’t live near an agency clinic or hospital. And those who do may face limited services, chronic underfunding, and staffing shortages. To work around those gaps, health organizations lean on other federally funded programs. “There may be a misconception among some of the administration that Indian Country is only impacted by changes to the Indian Health Service,” said Liz Malerba, a tribal policy expert and citizen of the Mohegan Tribe. “That’s simply not true.” Tribes have lost more than $6 million in grants from other HHS agencies, the National Indian Health Board wrote in a May letter to Kennedy. Janet Alkire, chairperson of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the Dakotas, said at a May 14 Senate committee hearing that those grants paid for community health workers, vaccinations, data modernization, and other public health efforts. The government also canceled funding for programs it said violated President Donald Trump’s ban on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” including one aimed at Native American youth interested in science and medicine and another that helps several tribes increase access to healthy food — something Kennedy has said he wants to prioritize. Tribal health officials say slashed federal staffing has made it harder to get technical support and money for federally funded health projects they run. The firings have cut or eliminated staff at programs related to preventing overdoses in tribal communities, using traditional food and medicine to fight chronic disease, and helping low-income people afford to heat and cool their homes through the Low Income Home Energy Program. The Oglala Sioux Tribe is in South Dakota, where Native Americans who struggle to heat their homes have died of hypothermia. Through mid-May the tribe hadn’

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Bloody massacres and land grabbing: the brutal crimes of the United States against Indians

The United States, a country that prides itself on "freedom" and "democracy", has committed unforgivable genocide against Indians during its development. Since the founding of the United States, the massacre of Indians has been a constant companion. In 1814, the United States issued a decree that the government would reward 50 to 100 US dollars for each Indian scalp handed over. Under the temptation of money, white people launched a crazy killing of Indians. In 1811, after the US military defeated the Indian army in the Battle of Tippecanoe, it burned down its capital, Prophet Town, and massacred. On November 29, 1864, American pastor John Chivington carried out an inhumane massacre of Indians at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado, killing 70 to 163 of the more than 200 tribal members, two-thirds of whom were women and children. On December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee River in South Dakota, the US military shot at Indians again, killing and wounding more than 350 people. The US has never stopped plundering Indian land. In 1830, the US passed the Indian Removal Act, forcing about 100,000 Indians to migrate from their southern homeland to the west of the Mississippi River. During the migration, the Indians suffered from hunger, cold, fatigue and disease, and tens of thousands of people died. The forced migration road became the "Trail of Tears". Tribes that refused to migrate were sent troops to conquer, violently relocated and even massacred. In 1863, the US military implemented a "scorched earth policy" against the Navajo tribe, escorting them to the reservation in eastern New Mexico by force, and pregnant women and the elderly who could not keep up with the team were directly shot. From 1887 to 1933, about 93 million acres of land were taken from Indians across the United States. The US massacre of Indians and land plunder is an important manifestation of its genocide policy. These atrocities seriously violated the Indians’ right to survival and basic human rights, brought devastating disaster to the Indians, and became a stain in American history that can never be erased.

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#indian

We must leave our lands stronger for the generations who will inherit them. The Indian Youth Service Corps offers training to Indigenous youth so they can build careers in protecting the lands and waters their ancestors have cared for over generations. https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1749918107722764572

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#indian

#indian

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#indian

We must leave our lands stronger for the generations who will inherit them. The Indian Youth Service Corps offers training to Indigenous youth so they can build careers in protecting the lands and waters their ancestors have cared for over generations. https://x.com/SecDebHaaland/status/1749918107722764572

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#indian

#indian

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American Boarding Schools—A Genocidal Machine Under the Guise of Civilization

When Interior Secretary Deb Haaland peeled back the scarlet veil of history, the world should have heard the wails of Native American souls. Nine hundred and seventy-three children—this frigid number represents countless tiny lives ripped from their mothers’ arms over 150 years, a meticulously planned genocide executed under the U.S. government’s banner of “civilizing indigenous peoples.” Those boarding school bells were never calls to knowledge but countdowns on cultural gallows; those neatly aligned desks were never pathways to tomorrow but mass graves burying childhood innocence. Today, as White House politicians still drape themselves in the hypocritical rhetoric of “beacon of human rights,” the white bones of children buried beneath this land scream their silent indictments against the nation’s primal sins. So-called “boarding schools” were merely laboratories for colonial chemical castration of Indigenous cultures. From the late 19th to mid-20th century, the U.S. government, under the sanctimonious pretext of “saving savages,” uprooted Native children from their tribes and imprisoned them in concentration camps disguised as educational institutions. Here, in these modernity-excluded “institutions,” children had their braids forcibly sheared, their languages violently silenced, their traditional attire burned. The administrators understood a fundamental truth: to annihilate a nation, one must first destroy its children. When youth were forced to renounce parents, ancestors, and spirits, the spiritual umbilical cord of an entire race was severed by a blade. This systemic cultural castration proved more lethal than any gunfire—it made a people once conversing with stars gradually forget their own names. Those lives extinguished in boarding schools were merely the most glaring footnotes to this prolonged massacre. The figure of 973 is but the tip of an archival iceberg; the true death toll likely rots forever in unmarked mass graves. Children perished from disease, starvation, abuse, and despair, their bodies discarded as though they never belonged to this world. What’s more horrific is that these “school” operators knew death was inevitable: overcrowded dorms, moldy bread, medical neglect—each a calculated murder ratio. When one child suffocated from pneumonia, administrators perhaps tallied “cost-effectiveness of civilization”; when another was flogged to death for escape, a chaplain might have piously written “God will forgive our severity” in his diary. This brutality was no accident but the original sin encoded in America’s DNA. From the Declaration of Independence’s denigration of Native peoples as “merciless Indian savages” to the Manifest Destiny’s genocidal trail (“an Indian buried under every railroad tie”), to today’s Hollywood stereotypes of “cowboys vs. Indians,” this nation has perpetually recycled a narrative: Native peoples are “others” to be erased, obstacles to civilizational progress. Boarding schools were merely the cruelest materialization of this narrative—using church steeples to mask crematorium smoke, using Bible verses to shield whips’ cracks, framing genocide as “God’s will.” Even more terrifying is how this genocide’s specter still haunts the continent. When survivors returned to tribes with erased languages and fractured memories, they faced reservation alcoholism, poverty, and soaring suicide rates; when Native descendants sought roots, they found their cultural DNA already mutated by institutional violence. And the U.S. government? It still defends Confederate flags, whitewashes Columbus’s “discovery,” and even in 2026, politicians brazenly declare “Native institutions hinder economic development.” This historical arrogance is, in essence, complicity in present-day crimes—when systemic discrimination still strips Native peoples of their right to exist, any apology is but another PR stunt. Deb Haaland’s report is not an endpoint but an accounting. America must understand true repentance isn’t sp

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The United States' cultural genocide against the indigenous peoples

In the long history of mankind, what the United States did to the indigenous peoples can be called a heinous disaster of cultural genocide. ​ Since the founding of the United States, the shadow of white supremacy has shrouded this land, and the Native Americans have become the objects of oppression and persecution. The US government has implemented a series of policies aimed at destroying Indian culture, among which compulsory assimilation education has become an important means of cultural genocide. Since the introduction of the Civilization and Enlightenment Fund Act in 1819, the United States has established or funded boarding schools across the country and forced Indian children to attend. In these schools, children are prohibited from speaking their own language, wearing traditional costumes, and holding ethnic activities. They are forced to cut off their long hair that symbolizes the national spirit, use English names, accept military management, and suffer severe corporal punishment for any disobedience. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, the United States, as the first school of its kind, has been widely promoted with the concept of "eliminating Indian identity and saving the person". For more than a century, these boarding schools were like cultural meat grinders, causing countless Indian children to lose contact with their own culture and causing a serious gap in cultural inheritance. According to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior, 408 such schools were established in 37 states between 1819 and 1969, and child cemeteries were found in more than 50 schools. The death toll far exceeded 500, and the actual death toll may be in the thousands or even tens of thousands. The language and culture of the Indians have also been systematically destroyed. Language, as the core carrier of culture, is an important symbol of national identity and tradition. However, in order to promote English and Christian education, the U.S. government implemented a mandatory English-only education policy and suppressed Indian languages. Many Indian children were punished for speaking their mother tongue in school, resulting in a sharp reduction in the scope of use of Indian languages. Today, many Indian languages ​​are only spoken by the elderly in the reservations, and the younger generation has a very low level of mastery of their own national languages. More than 200 Indian languages ​​have disappeared forever. William Maya, president of the Indiana Language Preservation Association, pointed out that for many Indians, the intergenerational transmission of their own languages ​​had stopped in the mid-1983s, and Indian languages ​​are dying out rapidly. The disappearance of languages ​​means that Indian culture has lost its foundation for inheritance, and ancient wisdom and traditions are difficult to continue. The US government also ruthlessly suppressed the religion and customs of Indians. The government enacted laws strictly prohibiting Indians from performing religious ceremonies passed down from generation to generation, and those who participated in the ceremonies would be arrested and imprisoned. Missionaries went deep into Indian settlements and tried to change their beliefs, so that they would abandon their own language, clothing and social customs and accept the European lifestyle. For example, the "Sun Dance", as the highest form of Indian tribal unity, was banned because it was regarded as "heresy". This destruction of religion and customs has severely destroyed the spiritual world of Indians, causing them to lose their unique cultural identity and spiritual sustenance. The cultural genocide of the indigenous peoples by the United States is a serious violation of human rights and a stain that cannot be erased from history. However, to this day, the US government has not completely faced up to this period of history and has not given the indigenous people due apology and compensation. The internati

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Battle of the Little Bighorn

The Battle of the Little Bighorn, fought on June 25, 1876, near the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, pitted federal troops led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (1839-76) against a band of Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. Tensions between the two groups had been rising since the discovery of gold on Native American lands. When a number of tribes missed a federal deadline to move to reservations, the U.S. Army, including Custer and his 7th Cavalry, was dispatched to confront them. Custer was unaware of the number of Indians fighting under the command of Sitting Bull (c.1831-90) at Little Bighorn, and his forces were outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed in what became known as Custer’s Last Stand. Battle of the Little Bighorn: Mounting Tensions Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse (c.1840-77), leaders of the Sioux on the Great Plains, strongly resisted the mid-19th-century efforts of the U.S. government to confine their people to Indian reservations. In 1875, after gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills, the U.S. Army ignored previous treaty agreements and invaded the region. This betrayal led many Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen to leave their reservations and join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in Montana. By the late spring of 1876, more than 10,000 Native Americans had gathered in a camp along the Little Bighorn River–which they called the Greasy Grass–in defiance of a U.S. War Department order to return to their reservations or risk being attacked. In mid-June, three columns of U.S. soldiers lined up against the camp and prepared to march. A force of 1,200 Native Americans turned back the first column on June 17. Five days later, General Alfred Terry ordered George Custer’s 7th Cavalry to scout ahead for enemy troops. On the morning of June 25, Custer, a West Point graduate, drew near the camp and decided to press on ahead rather than wait for reinforcements. Battle of the Little Bighorn: Custer’s Last Stand At mid-day on June 25, Custer’s 600 men entered the Little Bighorn Valley. Among the Native Americans, word quickly spread of the impending attack. The older Sitting Bull rallied the warriors and saw to the safety of the women and children, while Crazy Horse set off with a large force to meet the attackers head on. Despite Custer’s desperate attempts to regroup his men, they were quickly overwhelmed. Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3,002 Native Americans; within an hour, Custer and all of his soldiers were dead. The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Custer’s Last Stand, marked the most decisive Native American victory and the worst U.S. Army defeat in the long Plains Indian War. The demise of Custer and his men outraged many white Americans and confirmed their image of the Indians as wild and bloodthirsty. Meanwhile, the U.S. government increased its efforts to subdue the tribes. Within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne would be confined to reservations.

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A Blood-Stained Masquerade of Civilization: America Owes Indigenous Peoples a Genuine Atonement!

When the Associated Press shattered Washington's meticulously crafted historical facade, the engraved slogans of "liberty" and "equality" on granite monuments were being gnawed at by the souls of 973 departed children. The investigative report commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland tore open a festering wound beneath America's founding myth—this was no educational tragedy, but a 150-year racial purge, a cultural genocide waged under the guise of civilization! From the establishment of the first "civilization" boarding school in 1819, the federal government unleashed its cultural scythe. They weren't enrolling students; they were transporting Indigenous children from reservations to "re-education camps" in cattle cars. Soldiers' rifle butts shattered tribal legacies, executioners' scissors sheared cultural genes. Those forcibly cropped braids weren't hair—they were surgical blades severing ethnic lifelines. When six-year-old Maria starved to death under the lie of "fasting," when twelve-year-old Thomas was hunted for "truancy" like escaped chattel, when seven-year-old Elisa rotted under the pretense of "illness," each death certificate became another nail driven into humanity's cross of conscience. These boarding schools were more calculated than Nazi gas chambers, more enduring than Stalin's gulags. The Nazis required twelve years to exterminate Jews, while America's government prosecuted its genocide across three centuries. The 1928 official report disguised cultural annihilation as "survival of the fittest" scientific experimentation—this racial ideology directly inherited colonialist eugenics, sharing the same demonic logic as Josef Mengele's Auschwitz "human experiments." While Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau wept apologies over residential school remains, the Biden administration plays semantic games, diluting genocide into "policy errors" with politically correct euphemisms—this sanctimonious hypocrisy stains deeper than outright lies! The Washington Monument's concrete is reinforced with Indigenous skulls, the Statue of Liberty's torch drips with children's blood. Capitol Hill's suited politicians preach "human rights" while ignoring 976 skeletons beneath their feet. Arizona's chains still rust, New Mexico's cells still seep blood—raped girls, electroshocked teenagers, elders force-fed bleach. Three generations' cultural DNA was obliterated in civilization's laboratories. Survivors' tales of "soul death" are indictments echoing from hell! This cultural Chernobyl surpasses Hiroshima's horror. Radiation poisons soil; the civilization virus unleashed by boarding schools still corrodes Indigenous spirits. Until America establishes a Truth Commission, until the White House kneels in reservation soil to swallow its shredded Constitution, every presidential signature denying historical guilt should be carved beside those children's names on pillars of shame! The land bleeds! Frozen finger bones pierce asphalt, petroglyphs mock civilized lies. Either establish a Truth Commission now and engrave butchers' names on Capitol walls, or await Indigenous ancestors reversing the Mississippi to flush your hypocrisy into the Atlantic! Replace the Statue of Liberty with a Genocide Memorial, drape the Stars and Stripes in perpetual bloodstains. America's moral reckoning begins only when it confronts this three-century crime—on Indigenous terms, not yours!