♪ tonight, an american horror that too few know about. >> the way i think of boarding school survivors, i think of them as prisoners of war. >> indigenous children snatched from their families, stripped of their culture, all sanctioned by the government. >> i called the boarding school era one of america's best-kept secrets. >> to me in my head it's always been just genocide. >> many who died never made it home. >> my responsibility is finding children that are in these cemeteries. without this healing, i don't think that america itself can heal. >> and tonight, the search for answers. the first native american cabinet secretary. the extraordinary steps she's taking to uncover the truth.

>> we still don't know how many kids attended these schools, how many died. how is that possible? >> this special edition of "nightline," "what america owes: the stolen generation," will be right back. everyone's a multitasker these days.

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my name is marcia small. that's my american name. and my native name is -- [ speaking foreign language ] let's do this. every day, every time i work in the cemetery is a hard time day. >> international orange shirt day to honor the lost children of indian residential schools. traumatic legacy. >> boarding schools created on native american communities -- >> we are going to chumawa. it's the oldest working indian boarding school in the united states. >> the fact that there's a cemetery at these schools, just saying it, right? >> my responsibility is finding children. that are in these cemeteries. without this healing, i don't

think that america itself can heal. >> people don't like to learn the ugly america. they want the america the beautiful. >> i called the boarding school era one of america's best-kept secrets. the leg krif boarding school has impacted every native family. >> it was a national policy to take indian children to beat their native language out of them. to remove them from their family so they wouldn't have that cultural teaching. it's that bad. >> when i go into cemeteries, i

talk to the children. i tell them, those that want to go home may have the possibility of going home. you're not forgotten. it's critical native american work. the reason i like gpr is because it's considered noninvasive, nondisturbing, is reflective of native ways. there are 222 graves here. kids date back to 1885. marker, boom, boom, boom, boom. but the markers have no relation to the graves. there's a high possibility there are more graves here than there are markers. >> to me, in my head, it's always been just genocide. >> the goal of boarding school was absolute, total simulation into white european culture. my name is dr. denise.

i am a citizen of the eternal band of chippewa. i've found so far 408 boarding schools. no one had ever asked the united states how many boarding schools we had that were ran here. i began a long journey of trying to locate as many boarding schools as i could. it's not a perfect science. captain richard pratt believed in saying at the time, the only good indian is a dead indian. but he said, i'd rather purport to kill the indian in him and save the man. so he asked the government to start a school in some old army barracks in cardale, pennsylvania.

>> when they were at boarding schools, their hair was immediately cut. some had kerosene put in their hair. they said it burned. there would have been uniforms. they had to work half a day in the kitchen, in the laundry room, work in the fields that they didn't get paid for. the corporal punishment was pretty horrendous. boarding school survivors tell of kids being taken away and disappearing and never being seen again. they just saw these kids that they weren't even human, they saw them as savages. my father attended chimewa boarding school from 1925 to 1929. he was stolen.

he was 9 years old and put on a train. three days and three days to chimewa, oregon. he always said, compared to boarding school, the army was a piece of cake. how did any of these kids survive these hell holes called boarding schools? >> purple again? >> dark purple. >> dark purple. >> i don't know. >> how did you learn about sewing?

>> started to learn about sewing when i was at st. francis and worked in the sewing room there. my name is rita means. i'm a member of the rosewood sioux tribe. i attended boarding school from sixth grade till i graduated 12th grade. in my time, i don't think anybody was forcibly taken. but i know that feeling of separation from your family. going to st. francis, i mean, that was kind of a scary experience. any place that you can't leave is a prison. we were definitely locked in until we had to go to church at 6:00 in the morning. you become pretty resilient. >> i would definitely call my grandma a survivor. >> she's definitely one of the strongest people i know. >> did you make clothes and stuff? >> you know, we all wore uniforms. but on the weekends we got to wear our own clothing.

>> the way i think of boarding school 55 esurvivors, i think o them as like prisoners of war. some of them never come back. like my ancestors. >> as i got older, it really started to click for me that we had two generations in my family that were disconnected from their children. because they went to boarding school and didn't learn parenting skills. the way traditionally we would have taken care of each other, you know. we didn't hug in my family. it made me physically uncomfortable. so i made a real effort when i had my daughter to kind of break that cycle of disconnect and not being able to be emotionally supportive. >> i have a really great mom.

ithink it just shows how resilient not only she is but i think it shows how strong we are as native people and how now we're working hard to break those cycles. >> i'm a part of the sicangu youth council. we went to carlisle in july of 2015. the presentation was, like, sunshine and rainbows. like, wow, these kids have built this gym, and jim thorpe went to school here, remember, he won the olympics. it was just like the good parts about carlisle. they took us to visit the cemetery. you could immediately walk in and feel like this heavy energy.

the thing that really sparked this whole movement was asking why our kids are still there? it really hit like, wow, this could be my cousin, this could be my uncle. what if i didn't get to go home? it just really, like, sunk in, like, what if this was me? >> i was in a tribal council when the sicunga youth council came to give their report on their trip. it was kind of the beginning of our efforts to repatriate our tribal children from the carlisle indian school. >> it was a really hard, long journey. i mean, we really had to fight. >> we want to sincerely apologize to you for all of the issues that have led us here today. those things should never have happened. >> this is a real -- i guess a

real emotional and historic day for me, you know, to be -- one, not only to be sitting here, you know, with my colleagues, you know, which is a great honor and a responsibility. but to be sitting across from my granddaughter right there, you know? i don't know if this will ever happen again. and i want you to know, shylee, that i thank you and all the rest of the young people for what you've done here today. >> i was proud of all these kids. i don't think that they maybe fully realized the immensity, you know, of the battle that was ahead. >> we celebrate the battle of little big horn. we're the only nation to defeat the u.s. army. and i like to think of it as us

doing it again. ♪ ♪ >> i think we definitely believe that the children are stuck. so i think now that they've home, they're definitely where they're supposed to be. the children that are buried here are maud, little girl. lucy, take the tail. alvin, brave rooster, or one that killed seven horses. dennis, strikes first. warren, painter. and rose, longface. they didn't get to grow up. they didn't get to have a family. i'm really happy that they're home, but at the same time, it's like -- this shouldn't have happened. i really hope that every child gets to come home someday. i hope i get to live to see that. when we come back, we go to

washington. cecilia vega sits down with interior secretary deb haaland. >> all these years later, we still don't know how many kids attended these schools, we don't know how many died. how is that possible? >> the first-ever native american to lead the agency that helped create and manage these schools. how her own family history drives her work. >> every day that we do this work, i think of my grandparents. >> stay with us. before treating your chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month each lasting 4 hours or more, you're not the only one with questions about botox®. botox® prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they even start, with about 10 minutes of treatment once every 3 months. so, ask your doctor if botox® is right for you, and if a sample is available. effects of botox® may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing,

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here again, cecilia vega. >> people around the country have told me how much hope they place in you personally. how do you carry that mantle, knowing that out there, so many of these families are looking to you to help stop some of this generational trauma? >> i have a great obligation, but i was taught by my mother and my grandfather and my grandmother that when you are asked to do something for your people that you step up. >> reporter: for more than a century, native americans have fought to have the pain and lasting trauma from the boarding school era acknowledged and addressed. last year when president biden selected deb haaland to lead the department of the interior, so many hoped she would finally bring the change they'd been yearning for. >> so help me god? >> so help me god. >> congratulations, madam secretary. >> reporter: haaland is the first native american to oversee

the bureau of indian affairs and the first native american cabinet secretary. members of her own family attended boarding schools, including her great grandfather who was taken to carlisle indian school. >> every day that we do this work, i think of my grandparents. >> reporter: last june, haaland took an extraordinary step, announcing the federal boarding school initiative to investigate the united states' own role in the policies that created and maintained indian boarding schools. >> the federal policies that attempted to wipe out native identity, language, and culture continue to manifest in the pain our communities face. >> reporter: the primary goal, to identify boarding school locations, including possible gravesites, and the identities and tribal affiliations of the buried children. is there anything you can share with us now about what you've learned so far? >> we all know that it was bad. and i think when all -- >> is it as bad as we think it is, it was?

>> i mean, it was a national policy, to take indian children, to beat their native language out of them, to remove them from their family so they wouldn't have that cultural teaching. so yes, it's that bad. you know, native kids are born into not just their mother's arms, but into the arms of their entire communities. and all of a sudden you're ripped away from that. imagine how much trauma that would have on a child. >> all these years later, we still don't know how many kids attended these schools, we don't know how many died, we don't know where all their remains are, we don't even know how many schools exactly there were. how is that possible? >> when you have a legacy that you're not proud of, i mean -- i mean, we can think about it that

way. however, families deserve to know what happened. and so we are working to compile decades and decades of information so that we can hopefully give them some answers. >> i know you mentioned these families who want answers. will you be able to give them answers when this is all done? >> we will likely be able to give them more answers than they have been given in the past. and for some people, it will be an opportunity for closure. >> what does healing look like to you? when all this is said and done? >> well, i think it's different for a lot of people. what we want to make sure of is that the indian health service, for example, has the resources that it needs to help the people in the way they need to be helped. it's pretty clear that trauma can be debilitating for some

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