Established in 1879, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the first off-reservation boarding school for Native children and youth in the continental United States. By the time it ceased operations in 1918, Carlisle School had subjected more than 7,800 Indian children from more than 140 Indian tribes, including Alaska Native Villages, to its coercive form of education, the release said. Some children were as young as five years old when they arrived. The school served as the template for more than 400 additional institutions across 37 states that were part of a forced assimilation system designed to eliminate Native languages, religions and cultures.  

Jim Thorpe, who went on to become an Olympic gold medalist in track and field, was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation and attended the Carlisle School off and on between 1904 and 1913, according to school records.

The proclamation designates a 24.5-acre national monument, to be managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Army, building on Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, the first-ever comprehensive effort by the federal government to recognize the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies, address their intergenerational impact, and shed light on past and present trauma in Indigenous communities.   

The announcement Monday follows President Biden’s October visit to the Gila River Indian Community with Secretary Haaland where he offered a formal apology to Tribal Nations and Native people on behalf of the U.S. government for the lasting harms caused by the federal Indian boarding school system. Federal records indicate that tens of thousands of children attended the schools and nearly 1,000 died while in the system — but the actual number of lives lost is likely much higher, Interior said.

“No single action by the federal government can adequately reconcile the trauma and ongoing harms from the federal Indian boarding school era. But, taken together, the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to acknowledge and redress the legacy of the assimilation policy have made an enduring difference for Indian Country,” said Haaland, whose great-grandfather and grandparents were stolen from their families and taken to boarding schools. “This trauma is not new to Indigenous people, but it is new for many people in our nation. One of the reasons I launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative was to ensure that this important story was told. Through the National Park Service — America's storyteller — people can now learn more about the intergenerational impacts of these policies as we, as a nation, continue to take steps to heal from them.”  

As part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, Secretary Haaland directed the National Park Service to explore opportunities for enhanced interpretation of this history and preservation of related resources. The National Park Service conducted two nation-to-nation consultations in April 2024. Per the direction of the president’s proclamation, the National Park Service will work with the U.S. Army on additional consultation and continued collaboration with Tribal Nations on the interpretation, preservation, and operation of the new monument.