President Joe Biden created America’s 432nd national park on Monday with the proclamation of Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument.
The 24.5 acre national monument is located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It will be managed jointly by the National Park Service and U.S. Army. 24 historic buildings stand within the monument, including residential, vocational, and athletic facilities that represent the broader Indian Boarding School program.
What is the Carlisle Boarding School?
From the early 1800s to the mid 1900s, the Federal Government made a concerted effort to “civilize” American Indians, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians by disconnecting them from their languages, religions, and cultures.
One aspect of this policy was the federal Indian boarding school system. Usually located on reservations, these schools removed children from their homes to teach industrial and agricultural skills. The Carlisle School was the first school to be located off-reservation, thousands of miles from indigenous homelands.
Constructed in U.S. Army barracks, the Carlisle School opened in 1879. Until its closure in 1918, 7,800 displaced Native children from 140 tribes were forced to attend. As the White House proclamation explains, “Practices first used at the Carlisle School inflicted a legacy of individual, collective, and multi-generational trauma.”
These traumas included physical abuse, forced labor, sexual abuse, and inadequate medical care and nutrition. It is unknown how many Native children died as a result of these conditions, but it is believed to be more than a thousand across the school system.
In addition to these atrocities, connections between Native children and their cultural heritage were intentionally destroyed. They were given Euro-American names, had their hair cut, had their traditional clothing taken, and could be physically beaten for speaking an indigenous language.
President Biden’s Effort for Indigenous Americans in National Parks
This effort to honor — and make amends for — the dark history of American Indian mistreatment and dispossession is not new for President Biden.
While new national parks can help educate on the horrific events of the past, Biden has sought practical measures to improve the lives of Native American citizens and involve them in the protection and management of our public lands.
In a historic move Biden appointed Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, to be the first Native Secretary of the Interior. He also made history when he appointed Chuck Sams, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, as the first Native director of the National Park Service.
In addition, this is not Biden’s first monument intended to preserve Native American history and culture. In 2023, Biden issued proclamations creating Avi Kwa Ame and Baaj-Nwaavjo I’tah Khukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon national monuments, protecting almost 1.5 millions acres considered sacred to multiple tribes across the Southwest (both are managed by the Bureau of Land Management).
On a broader scale, Biden has made a point of creating national parks that protect the history of minority groups in America. These have included the 1908 Springfield Race Riot National Monument and Blackwell School National Historic Site.
If President Biden is to create more national monuments in the final days of his presidency, they are likely to follow this trend.
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