黑料福利社

A national effort to collect oral histories of students of听boarding schools for Indigenous children听has scheduled a stop in Snoqualmie at the end of the month.听

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition will be听at the Snoqualmie Casino and Hotel from May 25-29. The coalition will record professional video interviews of people who attended boarding schools for Indigenous children before 1970.

Interviews are by appointment only. People may be interviewed in-person, virtually or both. Time slots are limited; organizers encourage early registration.听For registration information, visit or call 651-650-4445.

Snoqualmie Casino and Hotel is at 37500 SE North Bend Way in Snoqualmie. Participants will receive an honorarium, a travel stipend and hotel accommodations if necessary, organizers said.

"We are looking to add to the historical documentation of Indian Boarding School survivor stories and would like to listen to and learn from your experience through our healing-centered approach to interviewing," the form reads.

Participants' stories will become part of a permanent collection with the Library of Congress, "ensuring their experiences are honored and remembered for generations to come," the release said.

Yakima County had two boarding schools for Indigenous children. , west of White Swan on the Yakama Reservation, was the site of a federal government-run boarding school that operated from the fall of 1860 to 1920. It closed in early 1920 after the school building burned down on the evening of Dec. 15, 1919.

The Sisters of Providence ran a boarding school for Indigenous children in what was then North Yakima from 1889-96. Officially known as St. Francis Xavier Indian Boarding School, it primarily included students from the Yakima and Kittitas valleys. The boarding school building faced Naches Avenue between C and D streets.

It closed after the nuns learned that the U.S. Department of the Interior would no longer subsidize private sectarian schools. A City of Yakima housing development and a parking lot cover the site today.

The Fort Simcoe and St. Francis Xavier schools are among the听听that the U.S. operated or supported between 1819 and 1969. That total, researched and documented by NABS and released in February 2025, is听the largest known list of U.S. Indian boarding schools ever compiled to date, according to the organization's website.

NABS and听the U.S. Department of the Interior have also researched student deaths at the schools. An investigative report released in documented at least 973 student deaths at the schools nationwide 鈥� a total almost immediately proven to be low 鈥� with marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the schools.

The NABS Oral History Project is a part of the , the news release said.

"Our hope is that these stories do more than preserve the truth. We hope they help bring our people closer to healing, closer to each other, and closer to the parts that boarding schools tried so hard to erase,鈥澨齭aid Lacey Kinnart, NABS Oral History Project co-director.

Visit for a list of federally supported schools for Indigenous children in Washington state. Get more information about the national oral history project at .

The NABS Oral History Project is not interviewing descendants of boarding school students at this time. This story has been edited to reflect that.

If you are a boarding school survivor or a descendant, resources are available from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition at .

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