US report details church-state collusion on Native schools

FILE - In this July 8, 2021, photo, adjunct history professor and research associate Larry Larrichio holds a copy of a late 19th century photograph of pupils at an Indigenous boarding school in Santa Fe during an interview in Albuquerque, N.M. A new federal report on the legacy of boarding schools for Native Americans underscores how closely the U.S. government collaborated with churches to Christianize the Indigenous population as part of a project to sever them from their culture, their identities and ultimately their land. The Department of the Interior report, released Wednesday, May 11, 2022, says the federal government provided funding and other support to religious boarding schools for Native children in the 19th and early 20th centuries to an extent that normally would have been prohibited by bans on the use of federal funds for religious schools. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)