Biden creates a new monument to mark the history of Indian boarding schools : NPR

President Biden with Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis on Oct. 25, 2024, when Biden formally apologized for the Indian boarding schools system.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

President Biden on Monday will announce a new national monument to tell the story of the more than 400 boarding schools where tens of thousands of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children were sent for assimilation.

Biden formally apologized for the Indian boarding schools in October, calling it one of the “most horrific chapters in American history.” He will announce the new monument during the White House Tribal Nations Summit.

The monument will be located in Carlisle, Pa., on what was the campus of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School — part of the U.S. Army’s Carlisle Barracks — and will be managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Army.

About 7,800 children from more than 140 tribes were sent to the Carlisle boarding school, which ran from 1879 to 1918. The school was a model for the federal Indian boarding school system, where more than 970 children died and survivors bore scars from abuse and separation.