Trump’s Education Secretary Pick Blames D.C. ‘Bureaucrats’ For Indian Boarding Schools

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon told senators in a recent correspondence that the U.S. government’s dark, 150-year legacy of forcing tens of thousands of Native American children into white assimilation schools is “a key example” of why education should be locally controlled.

McMahon, a billionaire and President Donald Trump’s previous administrator of the Small Business Administration, on Tuesday provided members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions with written answers to questions senators sent her after her confirmation hearing last week. Her responses are not currently public, but HuffPost obtained a copy of her answers to select questions relating to tribal education.

Her comments suggest that not only does she not seem to understand the federal government’s role in providing tribal education, but she doesn’t seem to realize that the vast majority of Native American children receive their education through programs run by the federal Department of Education ― which she is on track to oversee.

“What is your understanding of the events that took place during the Indian boarding school era?” reads one of the senators’ questions to McMahon.

From 1819 to 1969, the Interior Department ran hundreds of boarding schools nationwide, with one goal: to eradicate Native American culture and assimilate Native children into white society. The U.S. government forcibly removed kids from their families and and tribal communities, and shipped them off to far-away boarding schools. Tens of thousands of children endured extensive psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Some died. Others disappeared.

The ethos behind these schools, as articulated by the founder of one of the flagship boarding schools, Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, was to “kill the Indian, save the man.”

In her response, McMahon said she condemned this chapter in American history – and then suggested the government’s genocidal campaign wouldn’t have happened if Native American children had been receiving education from within their local communities.

“I condemn the actions of U.S. government officials who removed Indian children from their homes, against the wills of their parents and families, to force them to attend boarding schools, in many instances in other states,” she said. “This is a key example of why local communities should direct education systems, not Washington bureaucrats.”

In fact, the U.S. government’s policy of assimilating Native American children into white culture was driven not simply by a handful of bureaucrats sitting in a Washington, D.C. building, but by systemic racism and the Christian church. Several denominations had long been urging the government to adopt this policy as a way to reprogram Indigenous kids and erase their cultures. These churches ran many of the Indian boarding schools themselves.

As one teaching fellow at the University of Chicago Divinity School put it in a 2022 essay about the rise of these boarding schools, “Cultural assimilation and conversion to Christianity were effectively synonymous concepts.”

McMahon also seems to incorrectly believe that most Native American children today get their education through the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Education, not the Department of Education.

“What role do you believe the Department of Education plays in fulfilling the federal trust responsibility?” reads another question from a senator.

“The federal government has an obligation to provide appropriate educational facilities to recognized tribes,” McMahon said. “While the vast majority of this work is carried out by the Bureau of Indian Education at the Department of the Interior, the Department of Education does maintain grant programs that support tribal education.”

She repeats this claim throughout her responses. But fewer than 10% of Native American students attend Bureau of Indian Education schools, which are in rural communities on reservations and often the only option. About 90% attend traditional public schools funded by Department of Education programs.

Spokespeople for the White House and the Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment about Trump’s education secretary nominee flubbing basic questions about tribal education.

The Senate HELP Committee is scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to advance McMahon’s nomination to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote.