California: Governor Newsom proclaims a Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding Schools
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~ ### Newsom proclaims Sept. 30 a Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding Schools

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared Sept. 30, 2026, a Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding Schools, recognizing Native children who were taken from their families and communities and forced to attend institutions designed to suppress their cultures.

In his proclamation, Newsom said the state was honoring boarding school victims and survivors for the first time. He noted that the federal government funded more than 526 schools nationwide between 1819 and the 1960s, with children as young as 3 removed from their homes.

Families were often barred from visiting or communicating with their children, the proclamation said. Some children who died at the schools were buried in unmarked graves, while many survivors returned home with lasting trauma. Others never returned to their families and communities.

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The schools were established to assimilate Native children into non-Native culture by stripping them of their identities, beliefs and languages, Newsom wrote. Thirteen boarding schools operated in California, one of which remains open today with a mission that embraces Native identities, according to the proclamation.

Children from California were sent to schools far from their ancestral lands, including the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. At the same time, children from tribal nations across the country were sent to California institutions.

Newsom urged Californians to remember the children and survivors and reflect on how to address the continuing effects of the boarding school era.

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