Washington DC - A bill to create a truth and healing commission for Indigenous communities ravaged by the US' genocidal boarding school system has been reintroduced in the Senate.

Legislation to create a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States (S. 761) has been introduced in the 119th Congress by Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski. The bill has 20 co-sponsors so far, according to Congress.gov.

A version of the bill passed by voice vote in the Senate during the last Congress but did not go before the full House.

If enacted, the commission would be tasked with formally investigating and documenting the lasting harms of the boarding school system to Indigenous Peoples.

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The body would also develop recommendations for federal action to address the legacy of boarding schools and promote healing for survivors and their descendants.

Members would include one person appointed each by the Senate majority leader, Senate minority leader, House speaker, House minority leader, and chair and vice chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. There would be a process in place for Indigenous communities to submit nominations.

Over its six-year lifespan, the commission would be required to hold at least one convening in each of the 12 regions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and in Hawaii, during which members may hear testimony from impacted individuals and experts. They will also collaborate with descendants to locate and identify burial sites and unmarked graves where Indigenous children and youth were interred.

A Survivors Truth and Healing Subcommittee and advisory committees on Native American Truth and Healing and Federal and Religious Truth and Healing would support the work of the commission.

The boarding school system was a tool of genocide designed to "kill the Indian, and save the man," in the words of US Army officer Richard H. Pratt, founder of the notorious Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Physical, sexual, and psychological abuse were rampant at the institutions, which sought to forcibly strip Indigenous children of their languages, cultures, and identities – often with deadly results.

An investigation by the Washington Post published last year documented 3,104 Indigenous students who died at the schools between 1828 and 1970 – three times the number found in a prior government assessment.

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The National Native American Board School Healing Coalition in 2023 released documentation revealing 115 more Indigenous boarding schools than previously reported by the federal government. The group's updated interactive map shows 523 known schools in 38 states now claimed by the US.

Toward the end of his term, former President Joe Biden apologized for the treatment of Indigenous children at the institutions and announced the establishment a new Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument.

Indigenous communities have stressed that much more needs to be done to address the legacy of land theft, forced family separations, ethnocide, systematic abuse, and killings that characterized the boarding school system.