Contact: Ian Brickey, ian.brickey@sierraclub.org
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, President Biden announced the designation of Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument as the country’s newest national monument. The announcement occurred at the White House Tribal Nations Summit, the annual convening of the federal government and Tribes across the United States.
The new national monument will sit on 24.5 acres of the U.S. Army’s Carlisle Barracks in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The monument includes historic buildings and structures that comprised the campus of the Carlisle School, a federal Indian boarding school that operated from 1879 to 1918. The monument will be managed in cooperation by the National Park Service and the U.S. Army. Both offices will engage Tribal Nations and the Native Hawaiian community to develop a management plan and ongoing management of the monument.
Approximately 7,800 children from more than 140 Indian Tribes (including Alaska Native Villages) were brought to Carlisle School as part of its coercive education program. For more than 150 years, the federal government removed American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children from their families and to boarding schools that sought to erase their languages, religions, and cultures. According to federal records, at least 973 Indigenous children died in these schools.
In response, Ben Jealous, Sierra Club’s Executive Director, released the following statement:
“For too long, the stories of historical injustice and the enduring resilience of Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples, the original stewards of this county’s lands, have been left out of the story public lands tell. This designation will forever memorialize the horrors experienced by Indigenous communities at the hands of the federal Indian boarding school system. Our national monuments are chapters in our national story – the good and the bad – and ensure future generations can see our past and learn from it.”
About the Sierra Club: The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org.