WHEREAS, The recent discovery of 215 unmarked graves by Canada’s Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation at the Kamloops Indian Residential School should prompt Americans to reflect on past federal policies to culturally assimilate Indigenous peoples in the United States; and

WHEREAS, Beginning with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819 and lasting through the 1960s, the United States enacted laws and implemented policies establishing and supporting Indian boarding schools across the nation; and

WHEREAS, The purpose of the Indian boarding schools was to culturally assimilate Indigenous children by forcibly relocating them away from their families and communities to distant residential facilities where their cultural identities, languages, and beliefs were forcibly suppressed; and

WHEREAS, Over the course of this program, the thousands of Indigenous children who were forced to leave their homes and attend these boarding schools were subjected to traumatic injury and abuse, and some of them perished and are buried in unmarked graves; and

WHEREAS, The horrific legacy of these boarding schools remains and manifests itself in Indigenous communities through intergenerational trauma and cycles of violence, abuse, and premature deaths; and

WHEREAS, The assimilationist policies represented by the boarding schools are contrary to the current doctrine of trust responsibility, under which the federal government is charged with the promotion of tribal self-governance and cultural integrity; and

WHEREAS, The United States Department of the Interior has instituted the Indian Boarding School Initiative to address the intergenerational impact of Indian boarding schools to shed light on the traumas caused by those schools and their continuing impact on Indigenous communities today; and

WHEREAS, The United States Department of the Interior will undertake an investigation of the loss of human life and other lasting consequences of the Indian boarding schools, and as part of that investigation the department will identify boarding school facilities and sites, the location of known and possible student burial sites located at or near school facilities, and the identities and tribal affiliations of the children who were buried at these locations; and

WHEREAS, The work of the initiative will include the identification and collection of records and information related to the United States Department of the Interior’s oversight of the Indian boarding school program from 1819 to 1969, inclusive, formal consultations with Tribal Nations, Alaska Native corporations, and Native Hawaiian organizations to clarify the processes and procedures for protecting identified burial sites and associated information, and submission of a final written report to the United States Secretary of the Interior by April 1, 2022; now, therefore, be it