1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

I need you to oppose the Trump administration's erasure of federal Indian boarding school history and protect tribal sovereignty. Specifically, restore the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative website, reinstate the $1.6 million in NEH grants for digitizing boarding school records, and reverse the executive order directing the Interior Secretary to remove accurate historical information from National Park Service sites. The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative identified 417 boarding schools where children from 140 tribes were forcibly removed from their families, forbidden from speaking their languages, and subjected to flogging and solitary confinement. The initiative documented 973 deaths, though investigations found at least 3,104. This history matters. When Americans don't learn about Native people and contemporary tribal sovereignty, they're more likely to support abolishing reservations and treaty rights. This erasure serves a clear purpose: opening public lands for extraction. Trump already reduced Bears Ears National Monument by 85% to allow drilling on lands sacred to multiple tribes, rescinded protections for sixty million acres of national forests, and provided $18 billion in tax breaks to oil and gas companies. His proposed $161 million in cuts to the Bureau of Indian Education would compound the damage. Restore the historical record and defend tribal lands from exploitation.