NEH-DOI Federal Boarding School Initiative Partnership

NEH is a partner with the Department of the Interior (DOI) on the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a federal initiative to recognize the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies with the goal of addressing their intergenerational impact and shedding light on the traumas of the past.  Since the launch of the initiative in 2022, NEH has committed nearly $5 million to support the digitization of records from the United States’ system of 408 federal Indian boarding schools and the creation of a permanent oral history collection, documenting the experiences of the generations of Indigenous students who passed through the federal boarding school system.  

Read the press release to learn more about the NEH-DOI partnership.  

Through this partnership, NEH also supports humanities programming—including scholarly research, convenings, and educational programs—that further public understanding of the history and impact of the federal Indian boarding school system. This funding builds upon previous NEH-supported work such as the Heard Museum’s Away From Home permanent exhibition of American Indian boarding school stories, and the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project, which is digitizing and transcribing government records, photographs, oral histories, and other historical materials documenting the experience of Native American children who attended the Genoa U.S. Indian School in Nebraska between 1884 and 1934.   

NEH funding opportunities through this program are included under NEH’s American Tapestry: Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future initiative.    

Find additional NEH resources for Native Communities at this page.