Native American Boarding Schools - The Meriam Report of 1928

The Meriam Report of 1928

In 1926, the Department of Interior (DOI) commissioned the Brookings Institution to conduct a survey of the overall conditions of the American Indians and to assess federal programs and policies. The Meriam Report, officially titled The Problem of Indian Administration, was submitted February 21, 1928 to the Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work. Related to education of Native American children, it recommended:

• abolition of "The Uniform Course of Study", which taught only European-American cultural values;
• education of younger children at community schools near home, while providing for older children to be able to attend non-reservation schools for higher grade work; and
• provision by the Indian Service (now Bureau of Indian Affairs) to Native Americans of the education and skills to adapt both in their own communities and United States society.

Despite the Meriam Report, attendance in Indian boarding schools generally grew throughout the first half of the 20th century and doubled in the 1960s. Enrollment reached its highest point in the 1970s. In 1973, 60,000 American Indian children are estimated to have been enrolled in an Indian boarding school. The rise of pan-Indian activism, tribal nations' continuing complaints about the schools, and studies in the late 1960s and mid-1970s (such as the Kennedy Report and the National Study of American Indian Education) led to passage of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. This emphasized decentralization of students from boarding schools to community schools. As a result, many large Indian boarding schools closed in the 1980s and early 1990s. By 2007, 9,500 American Indian children were living in Indian boarding school dormitories. This figure includes those in 45 on-reservation boarding schools, seven off-reservation boarding schools, and 14 peripheral dormitories. From 1879 to the present day, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of American Indians as children attended Indian boarding schools.

Today, a few off-reservation boarding schools still operate, but funding for them is in decline. Some American Indians found their experiences and education at such schools to be valuable and have wanted to retain the schools as alternatives to reservation-based education. Many others found their times at boarding schools to be repressive.