Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act of 2026

A five-member, bipartisan federal commission would be created in the legislative branch to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the history and lasting impacts of Indian boarding school policies on Native American and Native Hawaiian individuals, families, tribes, and communities. The commission — authorized at $90 million drawn from existing appropriated funds — would operate for six years and hold at least one public convening in each of the twelve Bureau of Indian Affairs regions and in Hawaii, with quarterly sessions to receive testimony, including from survivors of boarding schools and their descendants. A Survivors Truth and Healing Subcommittee of fifteen members, the majority of them actual boarding school attendees, would advise the commission and help shape how testimony is gathered in a culturally appropriate and trauma-informed manner. The commission is also charged with locating and identifying marked and unmarked burial sites — including mass burial sites — where students died, and coordinating the preservation and repatriation of those remains in partnership with tribal nations under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Federal agencies and religious institutions that operated these schools would be expected to cooperate by providing records, documents, and oral histories through a Federal and Religious Advisory Committee that includes senior officials from the Departments of Interior, Health and Human Services, Education, and Defense; that committee's deliberative records are shielded from Freedom of Information Act disclosure. The commission would produce an initial report within four years and a final report before it sunsets, with recommendations going to the President, Congress, and the heads of relevant federal agencies, who would be required to publicly respond within 120 days.