Cole, Davids reintroduce bill to investigate Indian boarding schools history

Legislation to investigate the history of Indian boarding schools has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to Gaylord News, an outlet affiliated with the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan., are the lead sponsors of the “Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act of 2026.” The bill would establish a commission to examine past federal actions that forcibly enrolled nearly 86% of Indigenous school-age children in boarding schools, according to Cole. The legislation was referred this month to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Natural Resources.

“For years, Indian boarding schools forcibly removed Native children from their families, stripped them of their heritage, and, in many cases, took their lives,” Cole was quoted as saying. The proposed commission would have six years to locate and identify marked and unmarked burial sites and would be granted subpoena power under the new bill. The legislation calls for possible $90 million in funding to hold convenings across all 12 Bureau of Indian Affairs regions and to access an estimated 100 million pages of documents, according to Gaylord News.