20 Democrats urge mental health support for Indian Boarding School survivors, descendants

Details: The lawmakers, led by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Sharice Davids (Kan.), are pushing IHS to consider...

• Some form of protection for Natives since the Interior's probe is set to reveal troubling details.
• A "culturally competent" hotline for survivors and families.
• Other "mental and spiritual supports developed in collaboration with tribal nations."

What they're saying: "The Indian Boarding School era is a stain in America's history, and it is long overdue that we begin to formally investigate the past wrongs and ongoing harms of these policies," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to the acting IHS director on Friday.

• "The legacy of these policies continues to impact Native communities through intergenerational trauma, grief over the loss of children who never returned, cycles of violence and abuse, disappearance, health disparities, substance abuse, premature deaths, despair, and additional undocumented psychological trauma."

• "[W]e look forward to working together to address the resulting painful intergenerational reverberations in Native communities today," the letter adds.

The big picture: Recent discoveries of Indigenous children's remains in former boarding school sites in Canada have prompted calls for accountability.

• The policy left a legacy of low self-esteem, alcoholism and high suicide rates among Native communities, even after the last school closed.
• Investigations would later find documented cases of sexual, manual, physical and mental abuse, many of which killed Native children, per Amnesty International.