The U.S. Federal Indian Boarding School Report: What Does it Mean for TCU?

The discovery in 2021 of thousands of unmarked graves of Indigenous children at Canada’s former residential schools sparked a pledge by the U.S. Interior Department to investigate former federal Indian boarding schools. In May 2022, the Department released its initial report, “Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report” (see, here). Join us on Monday evening, October 24, from 6:30-8:00 PM in the Brown-Lupton University Union (BLUU) Auditorium, for a discussion of the report’s findings and what they mean for TCU. While the report did not identify any federal boarding schools in Texas, the colonization process that created these schools has shaped TCU and all of north Texas. Our panelists will guide us through the report by responding to its findings and discussing its relevancy for TCU’s curriculum, inclusion efforts, and responsibilities and relationships to Native American nations and communities. Panelists will address the following questions: Why is this report significant and what are its most important findings? What do non-Native peoples most often fail to understand about colonization and boarding school experiences? As TCU seeks to build respectful, mutually beneficial relationships with Native American peoples, how can the university respond to the report’s findings in positive and healthy ways?