UN Filing on Missing Children
NABS worked with the IITC, NARF, NICWA, the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe to file a submission with the UN to call on the United States to provide a full accounting of American Indian and Alaska Native children who were taken into government custody under the U.S. Boarding School Policy and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
“Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture” –Article 8, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP)
Definition of Genocide according to Article 2 of the UN Geneva Convention, 1948:
- A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
- A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is worked with the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA), the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe to file a submission with the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) to call on the United States to provide a full accounting of American Indian and Alaska Native children who were taken into government custody under the U.S. Boarding School Policy and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown.
On June 15, 2017, at its Mid-Year Conference in Connecticut, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) adopted Resolution MOH-17-014, sponsored by the Chickasaw Nation, encouraging Tribal Nations, families, and descendants to provide information on children who never returned home from Indian Boarding Schools.
On April 12, 2019, this coalition of tribes, organizations, and independent researchers filed a submission with the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) and on May 14, 2019, this coaltion went before the United Nations to testify about American Indian and Alaskan Native children who went missing under the United States's Indian Boarding School Policy.
Read the Press Release about our testimony at the UN and the Full Filing to the UNWGEID.
NABS, IITC, NARF, and NCAI respectfully request that families and Tribes continue to gather testimony and share information, where appropriate, for future advocacy efforts.
In addition, please help us reach out to families and relatives who may have specific information or testimonies they are willing to share about family and Tribal members who attended boarding schools, but remain unaccounted for or are still missing which could be included in future advocacy efforts calling on the United States government to provide this information to the families and Tribes of those individuals.
Please help us spread the word with those who might have information about the children who went missing at boarding schools. The time for healing is now.
- Share the recent filing and news about our testimony on social media
- Talk with your relatives and ask if anyone in your family went missing at Boarding Schools
- Contact us with your story and testimony
For additional information on this UN Submission or to provide information or testimony, contact Heather Whiteman Runs Him at 303.447.8760 or NABS at 612.354.7700.