On today’s show, guest host Sara Gabler speaks with two Washington Post journalists about their investigation into deaths at Indian boarding schools from 1828-1970. In 2021 the US Interior Departments released a report initiated by Secretary Deb Haaland that documented that more than 400 schools existed, and it was the first report ever to do this. 11 boarding schools operated in Wisconsin.

Dana Hedgpeth and Sari Horwitz, along with a team of reporters, scholars, and photographers, built on the federal report and set out to document how many children died or were sexually abused in these schools. They found that 3,104 students died of diseases, malnutrition, hard labor, and accidents. The history professor, Margaret Jacobs, called the schools “death traps.” Another scholar, Preston McBride, said the large number of deaths “were tolerated as acceptable collateral damage in the government’s larger push to eradicate Indians and confiscate their lands.”

Hedgpeth and Horwitz also discuss the communication of Leonard Peltier this week and describe the exhumation and homecoming of three children–Almeda Heavy Hari, John Bull, and Bishop Shield–who died and were buried at the Carlisle Indian School. 

Dana Hedgpeth is a Native American journalist who has been at The Washington Post for 25 years. She is an enrolled member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina. At The Post, she has covered topics including Native Americans and their history, along with stories of Indian boarding school survivors, plus Pentagon spending, the U.S. defense industry, the D.C. Metro’s rail and bus systems, local governments, and courts. 

Sari Horwitz is an investigative reporter who covers criminal justice issues for The Washington Post. Horwitz has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times. In 2002, she shared the Pulitzer for investigative reporting for a series exposing the District of Columbia’s role in the neglect and deaths of 229 children placed in protective care. The series prompted an overhaul of the child welfare system and a new wing of D.C. Superior Court for children and families. 

Featured image of a group of students in front of the school buildings of Washakada Indian Residential School, Elkhorn, Manitoba, circa 1900 via Wikimedia Commons.

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