Biden Establishes National Monument at Former Native American Boarding School

The Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania will honor the resilience of Indigenous communities and acknowledge the federal government’s history of forced assimilation.

President Joe Biden announced the creation of the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument during his final White House Tribal Nations Summit.
The monument, located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will commemorate the thousands of Native American children forcibly taken from their families to attend assimilation-focused boarding schools.
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which operated from 1879 to 1918, served as a model for over 400 similar institutions nationwide, where children were stripped of their languages, cultures, and identities.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, emphasized the monument’s role in educating the public about the traumatic legacy of these schools.
This marks Biden's seventh national monument designation and follows his October apology for the federal government’s role in the boarding school system.