Tribes say the U.S. misappropriated funds to pay for Native American boarding schools

By Graham Lee Brewer Two tribal nations filed a lawsuit Thursday saying that the federal government used the trust fund money of tribes to pay for boarding schools where generations of Native children were systematically abused. In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the Wichita Tribe and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California said that by the U.S. government’s own admission, the schools were funded using money raised by forcing tribal nations into treaties to cede their lands. That money was to be held in trust for the collective benefit of tribes. “The United States Government, the trustee over Native children’s education and these funds, has never accounted for the funds that it took, or detailed how, or even whether, those…

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