New project will send boarding school records, correspondence to Native families

A University of Iowa professor and Lumbee tribal citizen is leading a project to send original documents to survivors of the boarding school era and their families, according to reporting by the Daily Iowan.

Operation Return begins in October. An online portal will let people request to have report cards, photos and letters between students and relatives sent to them free of charge. Lots of these old documents are at the National Archives, and have not been made available before.

“Most Indian boarding school survivors that I’ve ever met were not aware that there were records in the National Archives,” professor Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz was quoted as saying. She’s director of the Native Policy Lab and an associate professor for the university’s School of Planning and Public Affairs. Schuettpelz was recently awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to fund Project Return earlier this summer.

Accounts of the boarding school era are often tragic. An estimated 973 Native children died while attending the schools, with survivors sharing stories of abuse and isolation. The federal government and churches operated hundreds of the schools in the 20th century.