Washington State Truth and Reconciliation Tribal Advisory Committee

For generations, the United States and the State of Washington pursued policies seeking total assimilation of Native American and Alaska Native people into the dominant white culture, attempting to eradicate tribal cultures, languages, and governments. The U.S. and state governments used different policies and practices to further this goal, many of which ended relatively recently. Persistent disparities for Indigenous people reflect the anti-Indigenous origins built into many systems.

Indian boarding schools were one such assimilationist effort. These boarding schools touched nearly every tribal community and caused immense trauma by separating children from their families and communities. Too often, children never returned home. There is no record accounting for the full extent of the operation of these institutions in Washington, or whether the state supported these institutions.

It is time for a genuine and robust conversation about equity and healing for Indigenous communities and individuals in the United States.

In 2023, the Washington Legislature directed the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) to convene the Truth and Healing Tribal Advisory Committee (TAC), a group of community members with expertise and lived experience, to compile a record about the operations and impacts of boarding schools in Washington.

Washington State Truth and Healing Tribal Advisory Committee Members are:

• Rebecca Black, Quinault Indian Nation
• Diana Bob, Lummi Nation
• Abriel Johnny, Tlingit/Cowichan First Nations
• Tamika LaMere, Anishinaabe/Little Shell Chippewa
• Edward Washines, Yakama Nation

Visit our Truth and Healing Tribal Advisory Committee Members page to read member bios.

Truth and Healing is a process that provides space and time to investigate, name, honor and address generations of harm caused by state and federal wrongdoings that benefited and empowered the white dominant culture through unjust means. The TAC will lead staff in the development of recommendations regarding how our state can address the harms caused by Indian boarding schools and other cultural and linguistic termination practices.

Tribes and Tribal communities continue to experience disparity at higher rates than other groups. The continuing harm to Indigenous communities caused by removal, termination and assimilation era practices is evident in the higher rates of incarceration, chronic disease, involvement in the child welfare system and the crisis of our missing and murdered Indigenous women and people.  

[GLOSSARY]

Key goals for this work include:

• Bringing forth a truthful account of the policies and practices that existed throughout the boarding school era, and beyond, that led to cultural and linguistic loss within Tribal communities.
• In consultation with the TAC, conducting the work with the guidance of Tribes and Tribal people.
• Developing recommendations to direct Washington State in its work with Tribes and Tribal communities, in its efforts to redress hurtful policies and practices, and to correct enduring language and policies that continue to damage Tribes and Tribal people.

The AGO also administers the Washington State Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People (MMIWP) Task Force, which conducts research and analysis to understand the disproportionate rates of Indigenous people who go missing and are murdered, and develops recommendations to address this disproportionality.

In 2023, the AGO received a grant to provide resources to work with tribes and tribal archives to research, identify, and create an inventory of cold cases involving Indigenous victims who also suffered civil rights violations prior to 1980. The civil rights violation could be that individuals were targeted because they were Indigenous, and/or cases of missing or murdered Indigenous people were not investigated appropriately or at all because the victim was Indigenous. We expect children who did not return from boarding schools to comprise a portion of this inventory.

These projects will cooperate to support the following key goals:

• Enhance collaboration between Tribes and the AGO to support inventory development and cold case investigations.
• With Tribal and family consent, advance cases identified through archival research to the AGO Cold Case Unit for potential investigation and prosecution.
• Engage with families and affected communities to define and record their visions of justice and accountability in Indigenous cold case investigations.

Washington has made this commitment to create space and time to investigate our state’s history as it relates to the original inhabitants of our land. Termination, removal and assimilation practices brought death, starvation, theft and violence into the lives of Indigenous communities across our nation. Thankfully, these attempts to terminate Indigenous spirituality, culture and language were unsuccessful. It is with gratitude that we begin this healing journey.

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Orange Shirt Day 

Indian boarding schools were part of the attempt to assimilate Native American and Alaska Native people into the dominant white culture of Washington and eradicate tribal cultures, languages, and governments. These institutions touched nearly every tribal community and caused immense trauma by separating children from their families and communities. Too often, children never returned home. Tribes, their communities, and their people, carry the weight of this dark history.

September 30 is Orange Shirt Day, the National Day of Remembrance for Indian boarding schools. It is called Orange Shirt Day because of a story of a survivor whose orange shirt, bought by her grandmother, was taken from her on her first day at boarding school, when she was six years old. On this day, we honor the children who were taken, those who never returned home, and the survivors who continue to share their truths.

The legacy of Indian boarding schools is one of deep harm—loss of culture and language, family separation, and intergenerational trauma. It is also a story of resilience, of survival, of the strength of community. Despite attempts at erasure, Indigenous survivors persevered, carrying forward their traditions, languages, culture and their stories of survival.

The Washington Attorney General’s Office, guided by the Truth and Healing Tribal Advisory Committee, is working to research this history and create space for listening, truth telling, and healing.

On this Orange Shirt Day, we pause to remember, to honor, and to affirm that every child matters—yesterday, today, and always.

We invite you to not only remember, but to engage! Learn about this history, beginning with the links below. Listen to survivors. Support the work of truth telling in Washington State.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

Orange Shirt Society

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TAC Reports

• TAC Preliminary Report June 2025
   

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Upcoming meetings

Advisory Group Meetings

• Every 2^nd Tuesday
  • 1pm - 3pm
    • https://atg-wa.zoom.us/j/84813861400?pwd=i5rAgi1oPamfVoSFvUpwyN8l3vXPDJ.1
    • Agenda

TAC Subcommittees

The TAC has held several meetings and is looking to expand their work by adding subcommittees. The subcommittees will be:

1. Elders, Survivors and Descendants Subcommittee
2. Legal Subcommittee
3. Cultural and Resource Protection Subcommittee

Click here for more information.

Subcommittee Meetings

• Elders, Survivors and Descendants
  • October 15, 2024
• Legal
  • October 22, 2024
• Cultural and Resource Protection
  • May 6, 2025
  • November 5, 2024

Previous advisory committee meetings

• November 18, 2025 - Meeting Minutes
• October 14, 2025
• September 9, 2025
• July 8, 2025
• June 10, 2025
• June 2, 2025
• May 19, 2025
• May 13, 2025
• April 8, 2025
• March 11, 2025
• February 11, 2025
• January 14, 2025
• December 10, 2024
• November 12, 2024
• August 6, 2024
• July 23, 2024
• June 11, 2024
• May 14, 2024
• April 30, 2024
• March 5, 2024
• February 20, 2024
• February 6, 2024
• January 23, 2024
• January 9, 2024
• December 12, 2023
• November 28, 2023
• October 19, 2023 

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Indian Boarding Schools identified as having operated in Washington State, as of 11/2023:

Years	Name of School	Location
1857-1869	Puyallup Indian School also, Puyallup Industrial School	Squaxin Island, WA
1857-1902	Tulalip Mission School Also, St. Anne’s Catholic Mission	Priest’s Point, WA
1860-1922	Ft. Simcoe Indian Boarding School   Also, Yakima Indian Boarding School	White Swan, WA
1866-1918	S’Kokomish Boarding & Day School	Olympia, WA
1869-1920	Cushman Indian School	Tacoma, WA
1870-1920	Quinaelt Boarding & Day School	Taholah, WA
1873-1921	Sacred Heart Academy   Also, Goodwin Mission School for Indians	Kettle Falls, WA
1873-1921	St. Francis Regis Mission School	Ward, WA
1886- Open	St. Mary’s Mission School   Also, Pascal Sherman Boarding School	Omak, WA
c1887- unknown	Colville Mission School	Kettle Falls, WA
1888-1936	St. George Indian Residential School	Federal Way, WA
1888-1889	St. Joseph’s Boarding School	Federal Way, WA
1890-1933	Neah Bay Boarding & Day School	Neah Bay, WA
1890-1820	Chehalis Boarding & Day School	Oakville, WA
1891-1897	Tonasket Boarding School   Also,      Okanagan Boarding School	Tonasket, WA
1900-1914	Fort Spokane Boarding School	Davenport, WA
1905-1932	Tulalip Indian Industrial School	Tulalip Bay, WA

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Glossary 

Term	Definition
Act	A formal decision, law or the like, by a legislature, ruler, court, or other authority; decree or edict; statute; judgement, resolve, or award: an act of Congress. [ii]
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES)	Potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood. ACEs can include violence, abuse and growing up in a family with mental health or substance use problems. Toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and affect how the body responds to stress. [iii]
Colonial Violence	Relationships, processes, and conditions that attended the practice of colonialism and violated the physical, social, and/or psychological integrity of the colonized while similarly impacting the colonizer. [iv]
Colonialism	A system that perpetuates the idea that settlers are superior to, and have the right to take from, and rule over, Indigenous peoples. [v]
Culture	The customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations. [vi]
Cultural Competency	A set of values, behaviors, attitudes, and practices within a system, organization, program or among individuals which enables them to work effectively cross culturally. [vii]
Cultural Violence	Those aspects of culture, the symbolic sphere of our existence— exemplified by religion and ideology, language and art, empirical science and formal science— that can be used to legitimize direct or structural violence. [viii]
Culturally Humility	A personal lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique that allows one to be open to the cultural identities and beliefs of others. It is not a state of knowledge or achievement, but a process of learning and reflection that requires humility and respect. [ix]
Cultural Identity	Part of a person's identity, or their self-conception and self-perception, related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, locality or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. [x]
Culturally Informed	Cognizance, observance, and consciousness of the similarities and differences among and between cultural groups; a way of thinking about culture that is open to new ideas that may conflict with the ideas, beliefs, and values of your own culture, and being able to see these differences as equal. [xi]
Cultural Resilience	The capability of a cultural system (consisting of cultural processes in relevant communities) to absorb adversity, deal with change, and continue to develop; [xi] the notion that communities can deal with and overcome adversity not just based on individual characteristics alone, but also from the support of larger sociocultural factors. [xiii]
DNA Methylation	A process that affects how your genes are expressed and may influence health, [xiv] and epigenetic mechanism. [xv]
Epigenetics	The study of the process by which genetic information is translated into the substance and behavior of an organism: specifically, the study of the way in which the expression of inheritable traits is modified by environmental influences or other mechanisms without a change to the DNA sequence; Coined in 1942 by English biologist Conrad H. Waddington (1905–75); blend of epigenesis and genetics. [xvi]
Eugenics	The study of, or belief in, the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by people presumed to have inheritable or undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by people presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). [xvii]
Forced Relocation	An involuntary or coerced movement of a person or people away from their home or home region, [xviii] as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, human rights violations and/or exploitation. [xix] Also called forced displacement or forced migration.
Forced Sterilization	The involuntary or coerced removal of a person's ability to reproduce, often through a surgical procedure referred to as a tubal ligation. Forced sterilization is a human rights violation and can constitute an act of genocide, gender-based violence, discrimination, and torture. [xx]
Generational Trauma	The psychological effects of collective trauma that was experienced by a group of people that gets passed down to the next generations of that group, beginning with traumatic event(s) that cause economic, cultural, and familial distress. People belonging to that group develop physical or psychological symptoms; can be caused by war, disease, famine, death, and other tragic events. [xxi] Also called intergenerational trauma or transgenerational trauma.
Genocide	The deliberate killing or severe mistreatment of many people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group, [xxi] the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. [xxiii]
Helicopter Research	When researchers from higher-income or more privileged settings carry out research in resource-poor settings with limited to no involvement of local communities or researchers. [xxiv] Also called parachute science.
Historical Trauma	Multigenerational trauma experienced by a specific cultural, racial or ethnic group, related to major events the group experienced because of their status as oppressed; [xxv] the cumulative emotional harm to an individual, group, or generation caused by a traumatic experience or event. [xxvi]
Indian Country	All land within the limits of any Indian reservation under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government, including rights-of-way running through reservation lands. All dependent Indian communities within the borders of the U.S., whether within the original or subsequently acquired territory. All Indian allotments, where the Indian titles have not been extinguished, including rights-of-ways through allotments. [xxvii]
Manifest Destiny	Coined in 1845, the idea that the United States is destined by God to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. The philosophy drove 19th-century U.S. territorial expansion and was used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes. [xxviii]
Racism	A belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race; the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another; a political or social system founded on racism and designed to execute its principles. [xxvix]
Reservation	An area of land set aside for occupation by North American Indians.
Resilience	Capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties. [xxx]
Settler Colonialism	A type of colonialism in which the Indigenous peoples of a colonized region are permanently displaced by settlers. [xxxi]
Structural Racism	A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity; [xxxi] referring to the wider political and social disadvantages within society that affect the lives, wellbeing and life chances of people of color; [xxxii] resulting in and supporting a continued unfair advantage to a privileged group and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race. [xxxiii]
Systemic Racism	Forms of racism that are pervasively and deeply embedded in systems, laws, written or unwritten policies, and entrenched practices and beliefs that produce, condone, and perpetuate widespread unfair treatment and oppression of people of color, with adverse health consequences. [xxxv]
Trauma	A disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury. [xxxvi]
Tribal Data Sovereignty	Tribal control of how Tribal data, including data about Tribal members, is collected, owned, and used. [xxxvii]
Tribal Sovereignty	The power and/or right for Indian Nations to determine their own form of government, define citizenship, make and enforce laws through their own police force and courts, collect taxes, and regulate property use. [xxxviii]
Treaty	An agreement or arrangement made by negotiation: a contract in writing between two or more political authorities (such as states or sovereigns) formally signed by representatives duly authorized and usually ratified by the lawmaking authority of the state. [xxxix]
White Supremacy	Individually, the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races. Systemically, the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races. [xl]

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Additional Resources:

• NCAI Presentation Slides: Creating Indigenous Safe Spaces for Truth Telling on Indian Boarding Schools
• Interactive map of Indian boarding schools: Interactive Digital Map of Indian Boarding Schools - The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
• List of Indian Boarding Schools:  List of Indian Boarding Schools in the United States - The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
• Documentary from White Bison organization capturing testimony from survivors and their families:    https://youtu.be/vZwF9NnQbWM?si=cWyTPEKswvVal1bG
• Interactive map showing lands ceded by Indigenous peoples:    Invasion of America (arcgis.com)   

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