Swarthmore College and Haverford College are helping to create a digitized record showing the trauma Native American youth experienced by being forced to attend nine Quaker-operated boarding schools between 1852 and 1945 in seven states, including Pennsylvania.
Children were separated from their families, tribes, and traditions, writes Luis Andres Henao for the Albany Democrat-Herald.
The National Native American Board School Healing Coalition is working with the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College and Quaker & Special Collections at Haverford College to digitize 20,000 documents about the schools and place them on a public database available in the spring of 2024.
The documents include enrollment papers, photographs, financial information, correspondence, and administrative records.
The records will show what children experienced at the schools and will help generate statistics of how many children went missing and died, said Stephen Curley, director of digital archives for NABS.
Sarah Horowitz, head of Quaker & Special Collections at Haverford College, said the records can bring out the truth and help repair past harms
“By making these archival records available, by digitizing these records, we can help restore access to communities that were impacted.”
Read more about efforts underway to digitize documents of life at Indian boarding schools in the Albany Democrat-Hald.
