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The Buried Record
Off Limits AmericaDeclassified EditionFile No. 0543
Racial Justice

Kill The Indian, Save The Man

For more than a century, the U.S. took Native children from their families and put them in boarding schools designed to erase their language and culture. Many never came home.

Beginning in 1879, the United States pursued a policy of forced assimilation: take Native American children from their families and ship them to distant boarding schools. The guiding philosophy was stated plainly by the system's founder — "kill the Indian, save the man."

Erasing a Culture

Children were stripped of their names, their language, their hair, and their religion. They were punished for speaking their own tongue. Abuse, overcrowding, and disease were rampant.

Exhibit A — The method Children were taken from home. Their language was forbidden. Many never returned.

The goal was not education. It was erasure.

Unmarked Graves

Recent investigations have begun identifying hundreds of student deaths and unmarked graves at former school sites — a toll the government left uncounted for generations.

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Generations were taken. Only now is the country beginning to count the graves.

The Verdict Is Yours

You've Seen the File.

Generations of Native children taken to erase their culture, with their deaths uncounted for decades. A misguided policy, or something the country chose to bury?

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Education for Extinction
Want to go deeper?

Education for Extinction — David Wallace Adams

The definitive history of the boarding-school system and its aims.

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We show you the system. You decide what it means.
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