Velshi: Acknowledging U.S. history of Native erasure is Step 1. Step 2 is action.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, America’s first Native American cabinet secretary, commissioned a report to investigate the abuses that occurred within America’s Federal Indian boarding school system and the lasting consequences. The report estimates that thousands of Native American, Native Alaskan and Native Hawaiian children died in the custody of federal Indian boarding schools between 1819 and 1969. These were schools owned or supported by the American government. The numbers in this report are staggering. But, the intent is worse. This was a deliberate effort by the American government to strip children from their families, destroy native roots, exploit labor and westernize Native communities, making it easier for the government to steal their land.