After more than two years of traveling across Indian Country, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) has completed the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Oral History Project, a landmark effort to preserve the voices and lived experiences of survivors of the federal Indian boarding school system.
The project concluded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after making 22 stops across 19 states. Tulsa was selected as the final location because Oklahoma is home to the largest known number of Indian boarding schools in the United States. The project also began in Oklahoma in 2024, making the final stop a symbolic return to where the effort first started.
Through a cooperative agreement with the Department of the Interior and support from the Mellon Foundation, NABS recorded video testimonies from 383 Indigenous survivors. The initiative was designed to create a survivor-centered environment where participants could share their experiences with dignity while receiving emotional support throughout the interview process…