The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (Wichita Tribe) and the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California (Washoe Tribe) filed a class action trust accounting lawsuit on Thursday, alleging that the US government misused Native nations’ “own funds” to pay for the country’s boarding school program during a period that President Joe Biden last year named “one of the most horrific chapters in American history.”

The plaintiffs in this lawsuit are the Wichita and Washoe Tribes, while the defendants include the Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and other US officials. The plaintiffs explain in the suit that a trust responsibility between the government and Native Nations was “born of a sacred bargain,” where the government undertook to “provide for the education of their children.” The lawsuit further claimed that in this role as trustee, the government has admitted to using native funds to pay for “one of the most shameful policies in American history.”

The plaintiffs argued that at certain points, up to 95 percent of the funding for the boarding school program came from Native nations’ trust funds. Meanwhile, throughout the boarding school program, Native children were “physically and/or sexually abused, barred from speaking their native tongues, forced into physical labor,” and even killed. As such, the plaintiffs asked that the government be held accountable for misusing Native funds and the harm caused by the boarding school program. Specifically, the plaintiffs ask for a “full accounting of Native Nations’ funds” that were used to implement the program.

In October 2024, former President Biden issued a formal apology to Native Nations for the historic abuses endured by their children in boarding schools, acknowledging how these schools were sites of horrific trauma. Similar lawsuits brought by Indigenous peoples and nations affected by the residential school program are taking place in Canada. Early this year, an Alberta judge certified a class action lawsuit brought by a residential school survivor, Cynthia Youngchief. The suit detailed the alleged abuse survivors endured at Notre Dame School. In 2023, the Canadian federal government also agreed to a $2.8 billion settlement, which Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Marc Miller said can help to “address the collective harm caused by Canada’s past.”