The nation’s leading Indian boarding school organization is entering a new era amid ongoing challenges to its advocacy efforts.
On Wednesday, the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) announced Nikki Santos as its new Chief Executive Officer. Santos, who hails from the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, fills a leadership position that went vacant earlier this year.
“I am deeply honored to join the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition at such a pivotal moment,” Santos said in a statement. “The work of truth-telling, justice, and healing belongs to all of us.”
“I look forward to working alongside survivors, descendants, Tribal Nations, and partners to ensure that the stories of those impacted by the federal Indian boarding school system are honored, preserved, and transformed into meaningful action for future generations,” Santos added.
As the organization’s highest ranking executive, Santos will help NABS advocate for the survivors of the Indian boarding school era, during which tens of thousands of tribal youth were taken from their homes in order to disconnect them from their cultures and communities. The efforts have included an expansive oral history project that hosted 22 sessions across Indian Country to collect the stories of those impacted by genocidal policies throughout the United States.
“Nikki’s vision, integrity, and lifelong commitment to Native communities make her the ideal leader for this next chapter of NABS,” said Ben Barnes, the president of the organization’s board of directors.
“Her extensive experience building partnerships, shaping policy, and advancing Indigenous priorities will strengthen our work as we continue to advocate on behalf of Native peoples impacted by U.S. Indian boarding school policies,” said Barnes, who also serves as Chief of the Shawnee Tribe in Oklahoma, where the final oral history session took place in Tulsa two weeks ago.
At the national level, NABS has been advocating for the passage of the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. The bill would authorize an official government panel to investigate and document the removal of tribal children from their communities, an undertaking that has drawn support from Republicans and Democrats alike.
Despite bipartisan backing, however, the U.S. Congress has failed to enact the legislation. Late last year, NABS worked to get the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act included in a national defense measure only for the effort to unravel at the last minute.
“I think it’s long past time that we bring truth and healing to our Native people and help end the intergenerational trauma associated with this legacy,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said when she advanced the bill at the start of the 119th Congress last year.
Additional hurdles to truth-telling are arriving courtesy of President Donald Trump, a Republican. As the nation celebrated its 250th anniversary, the White House released a 162-page report that took aim at the way in which Indian boarding schools are presented by the Smithsonian Institution, which is part of the federal government.
The report, which was made public on Independence Day on July 4, discounts the genocide committed against tribal nations in the present-day United States. It also questions an exhibit at the National Museum of American History that documents the harms of the Indian boarding school era.
In particular, the report faults the museum for explaining how Indian boarding schools discouraged and even outlawed the use of tribal languages by students. The White House claims the exhibit is part of a movement to encourage “pro-illegal alien activism” in America.
The Trump report also focuses on the National Museum of the American Indian for documenting the history of failed promises by the United States in its dealings with tribal nations. According to the White House, the Nation to Nation exhibit “frames America’s
founding as a fundamentally oppressive and genocidal effort to take Native Americans’ land and
oppress their culture and peoples.”
“The Smithsonian Institution is not a private institution or an independent trust but is a
‘trust instrumentality of the United States’ by which it carries out the institutional mission of the
trust on behalf of the United States Government,” the White House report states.
The missive marks a major shift from the era of former Democratic president Joe Biden. Under the leadership of then-Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who was the first Native person to serve in a presidential cabinet, the Department of the Interior carried out an investigation into Indian boarding schools, linking the removal of tribal children to the theft of tribal lands.
Biden also issued a formal U.S. government apology for “the lasting harms caused by the Federal Indian boarding school policy” and proclaimed the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument at the site of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. As the nation entered the Independence Day weekend, the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition once again called attention to this dark chapter in history.
“For Indigenous communities, this history cannot be separated from the policies and systems that shaped this nation, including the forced removal of Native peoples, the disruption of communities, and Indian boarding schools created to erase Native languages, cultures, identities, and connections to family,” NABS said on July 3. “The impacts of these policies continue today through survivors, descendants, families, and Native communities.”
Sen. Murkowski introduced S.761, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act, on February 25, 2025. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs approved the bill on March 5 of that year but it has not yet advanced further in the chamber as a standalone measure.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation who is the first Native person to lead the House Committee on Appropriations, introduced the companion version of the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 3 of this year. The bill, H.R.7325, has not seen further action in that chamber either.
“For years, Indian boarding schools forcibly removed Native children from their families, stripped them of their heritage, and, in many cases, took their lives,” Cole said. “Yet, for far too long, little has been known about these Indian boarding schools, and these stories have been kept in the shadows.”
“This silence cannot go on,” continued Cole, who also serves as co-chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House. “We must bring light to this dark chapter in our nation’s history — and this bill is critical to doing that.”
The bill establishes the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States to further examine the “dark chapter” in American history, as Cole put it. Both the House and the Senate versions also call for the creation of a Federal and Religious Truth and Healing Advisory Committee to consist primarily of U.S. government officials, such as the leaders of the Indian Health Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education.
Notably, however, the measure requires representation on the federal committee from religious groups. At least three members “shall be representatives employed by, or representatives of, religious institutions, to be appointed by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in consultation with relevant religious institutions,” according to the text of the bill.
The legislation also requires the creation of the Native American Truth and Healing Advisory Committee. The Native committee would consist of representation from Indian Country, including the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, and from Native Hawaiians.
As for the commission itself, the measure states that the commission can “request” documents, records and other information in connection with an investigation into Indian boarding schools. Prior versions of the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act had authorized the commission with the power to issue subpoenas that would have been enforceable in federal court.
“Subpoena authority allows the Commission to obtain necessary records and provide Congress comprehensive and accurate report of the intertwined federal and non-federal actions implementing federal Indian Boarding
School policies and practices,” the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs said in a frequently asked questions document during the 118th Congress, the legislative session prior to the current one.
However, by the time the version with the subpoena powers reached the Senate floor in December 2024, the subpoena language was removed — and the change has persisted. In the 119th Congress, neither S.761 nor H.R.7325 authorize the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies in the United States with subpoena powers.
According to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs report on S.761 dated July 31, 2025, the Senate “struck the Commission’s subpoena authority, renamed the Federal Truth and Healing Advisory Committee to be the Federal and Religious Truth and Healing Advisory Committee, struck the Native American preference for nominee’s to serve as a Commissioner, added three representatives to the renamed Federal and Religious Truth and Healing Advisory Committee that are employed by or acting as representatives of religious institutions appointed by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (renamed White House Office of Faith in 2025), and authorized appropriation of $90,000,000 to fund the Commission over its six-year term.”
The Trump administration has not officially offered a position on the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act. The Biden administration strongly supported prior versions of the bill.
