A team of investigators claims to have identified 86 Native American students who died for decades in a federally-operated boarding school in Nebraska.
Between 1884 to 1934, the Genoa Indigenous School enrolled thousands of young people, ages 4 to 22, from 40 indigenous nations.
It was one of the largest in a system of 25 boarding schools run by the federal government.
[751 unnamed graves found in a former school for indigenous children in Canada]
"These children died at school,"
Margaret Jacobs, co-director of the Genoa Indian School's Digital Reconciliation Project and a history professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told The Omaha Word-Herald.
The first news assured that 102 students were identified, however, Jacobs specified in an email to Noticias Telemundo that they estimate that 86 children died at the boarding school,
of which they have identified the names of 49.
"They didn't have the opportunity to go home," he added, "I think
descendants deserve to know what happened to their ancestors."
A fifth grade class is seen at the Genoa Indian Industrial School in Nebraska in 1910. National Archives and Records Administration
Students were subjected to
brutal punishments and forced labor.
Many were driven away from their families and homelands against their will, prohibited from speaking their language, and forced to convert to Christianity in an effort to subdue or eliminate indigenous people.
The names of the 49 deceased students were obtained from newspaper files and school newsletters.
There are no official records, as they were destroyed or lost when the school closed, according to investigators.
Jacobs said that some of the names identified so far may have been duplicates, but that the true death toll is likely much higher.
The names of the victims will be released after consultation with tribal leaders and after efforts have been made to locate their families.
Most of the children died of diseases such as tuberculosis
, Jacos said, but many others died of drowning or shooting, according to newspapers at the time.
[Commotion in Canada after the discovery of 215 bodies of children in a former boarding school for indigenous people]
The discovery came after a ground penetrating radar was used to search for a cemetery that the school once used, according to the aforementioned newspaper, but so far no grave has been found.
The dark history of abuses in Native American boarding schools is the subject of an investigation by the federal government, which is working to "uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences" of policies that for decades forced hundreds of thousands of children leaving their families and communities, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced in June, as reported by The Associated Press news agency.