Brad Brooks

(Reuters) – Two prominent U.S. Roman Catholic Church Bishops encourage their fellow bishops to join a federal probe into abuses in the ex-Native American boarding school system.

A November letter was sent by Archbishop Paul Coakley, Oklahoma City’s head of a church panel on domestic justice and Bishop James Wall, New Mexico who is the leader of a church group on Native American affairs to U.S. bishops, asking them to turn over any records they may need and to allow access to properties where Native American students might be buried.

Coakley’s office confirmed via email Wednesday that Wall had sent the note, which was also seen by Reuters.

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, it plans to release its report in April next year. Coakley and Gallup stated that this report will likely reveal “very troubling” information.

Over 150 years ago, Native American children were forced from their families and taken to schools. Many of these schools were run by Catholic or other religious churches. Researchers and activists claim that many children were subject to abuse at schools. Tens of thousands never saw again.

Wall and Coakley urged bishops not to ignore Native Americans in order to learn “where reconciliation might be needed” and to consider what that form might look like.

Christine Diindiisi McCleave is the head of National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. She was a descendant from school survivors and said to Reuters, “Churches can participate in truth-telling, but they don’t get the right to heal Native people.”

She said that churches must be careful not to add trauma to survivors by having conversations.

The conditions at ex-Native American boarding schools were made public earlier in the year by Canadian tribal leaders, who modeled their boarding schools after the U.S. system. They announced that 215 Native American children had been found unmarked at the site where the Kamloops school for Indigenous children used to be located.