It's estimated that Oklahoma had 98 Indian boarding schools, the highest number for any state in the U.S. When the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, or NABS, set out in 2024 to document what happened at these schools, they conducted their first interviews with survivors in Oklahoma.
Friday's closing ceremony "closed the circle," said Lacey Kinnart, who is Sault Ste. Marie Ojibwe and co-director of the NABS Oral History Project.
"For generations, boarding school survivors were told to forget and to be quiet. Forget their language, forget their songs, forget their ceremonies, forget who they are," Kinnart said at the ceremony. "And this project said something entirely different. We said, we remember. We believe you. Your story matters. Your life matters, and your truth will outlive every one of us long after we're gone."
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the federal government sponsored over 500 boarding schools, largely church-run, intended to assimilate Native American children into white Christian culture. Children were forbidden from speaking their Native languages or practicing Indigenous customs, forced to cut their hair and wear uniforms. Many suffered physical and sexual abuse. A federal investigation found in 2024 that at least 924 children died while attending Indigenous boarding schools.
The Oral History Project spanned 28 months, 86 tribes and 19 states. It began as a partnership between NABS and the Department of the Interior under the leadership of Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo Laguna tribe.
Recorded interviews with 383 survivors, along with photographic portraits, will be preserved in the Library of Congress and made available to the public in early 2027.
"Children yet unborn will hear these stories. Researchers will learn from these stories. Hopefully, Congress will learn from these stories," Kinnart said. "Families will reconnect with pieces of themselves they never knew existed. Our descendants will know that when they needed us most, we did not look away."
Walkie Charles, who is Yup'ik, was among the survivors interviewed for the project. He traveled to Tulsa for the closing ceremony alongside dozens of other participants.
Charles said he was 12 years old when he was forced to attend boarding school at the Wrangell Institute in Alaska. There, he experienced sexual abuse at the hands of a non-Indigenous physician. He carried the pain silently for most of his life, fearful of picking up the phone or answering emails from authority figures.
"Early on, I thought I was bipolar, or something was wrong with me, until two and a half years ago when I was asked to tell my story about my boarding school experience," Charles said.
In 2024, the Oral History Project made a stop in Anchorage, Alaska. Charles saw a flyer inviting survivors to participate, and he reluctantly agreed to an interview.
Charles said that his oral history interview with Dr. Denise Lajimodiere, who is Turtle Mountain Chippewa, marked the first time he had ever felt safe with an authority figure. He found that he had no reservations about telling Lajimodiere his story.
"At one point during the interview, doctor Denise said, 'What you're experiencing is two things, PTSD and childhood trauma,'" Charles recalled. "And when I heard those, I said, 'so I'm okay, I'm okay. And these are fixable. I've carried this pain for 67 years and it's fixable.'"
Through his experience participating in the Oral History Project, Charles said he began to heal in ways he never thought possible. He began seeing a therapist, and NABS even led him to spaces where he could love himself for the first time.
"In churches, you know, people go, 'I've seen the light.' I've seen more than the light, because I have not just one person in the pulpit to whom I'm sharing, but a whole generation of people who have taken me under their wings to say, it's okay to tell your story," Charles said. "Because the more you tell your story, the stronger and the faster you're going to heal."
During Friday's ceremony, organization leaders, including Kinnart, said this project marks a historic milestone. She credited Haaland, as well as former NABS CEO Deborah Parker (Tulalip) and former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities Shelly Lowe (Navajo), for their leadership in helping guide the project.
Though the ceremony marked the end of a multi-year effort, Kinnart said her team has plans for the future. The organization is planning another phase of the project, which will include Indigenous descendants, historians, tribal historic preservation officers and knowledge keepers, she said.
In her closing remarks for this round, Kinnart addressed the crowd of survivors and community members at Friday's ceremony, thanking them for their trust.
"History will remember this project. History will remember these interviews," Kinnart said. "But I hope history remembers something even more important: when survivors were finally ready to speak, we were here to listen to every survivor."
Copyright 2026 KOSU
