Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-376_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 46

4 

HAALAND v. BRACKEEN 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

the Indian nature,” officials set out to eliminate it by dis-
solving  Indian  families.    Annual  Report  of  the  Commis-
sioner  of  Indian  Affairs  to  the  Secretary  of  Interior  392 
(1904).

Thus began Indian boarding schools.  In 1879, the Car-
lisle Indian Industrial School opened its doors at the site of
an  old  military  base  in  central  Pennsylvania.  Carlisle’s 
head, then-Captain Richard Henry Pratt, summarized the 
school’s mission this way:  “[A]ll the Indian there is in the
race should be dead.  Kill the Indian in him, and save the 
man.”  The Advantages of Mingling Indians With Whites,
in Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and 
Correction  46  (I.  Barrows  ed.  1892).    From  its  inception,
Carlisle depended on state support.  The school “was deeply
enmeshed with local governments and their services,” and
it was “expanded thanks to the Pennsylvania Legislature.”
Brief  for  American  Historical  Association  et al.  as  Amici 
Curiae 11 (Historians Brief ).  Ultimately, Carlisle became
the model for what would become a system of 408 similar 
federal institutions nationwide.  BIA Report 82.  “The es-
sential  feature”  of  each  was,  in  the  federal  government’s
own words, “the abolition of the old tribal relations.”  An-
nual  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Indian  Affairs  to  the
Secretary of Interior 28 (1910). 

Unsurprisingly,  “[m]any  Indian  families  resisted”  the
federal  government’s  boarding  school  initiative  and  “re-
fus[ed] to send their children.”  S. Rep. No. 91–501, pt. 1, 
p. 12 (1969).  But Congress would not be denied.  It author-
ized the Secretary of the Interior to “prevent the issuing of 
rations or the furnishing of subsistence” to Indian families 
who  would  not  surrender  their  children.  Act  of  Mar.  3, 
1893, 27 Stat. 628, 635; see also, e.g., Act of Feb. 14, 1920, 
41 Stat. 410.  When economic coercion failed, officials some-
times  resorted  to  abduction.    See  BIA  Report  36.    As  one 
official  later  recounted,  officers  would  “visit  the  [Indian]
camps  unexpectedly  with  a  detachment  of  [officers],  and