But, there’s an overall mixed message in 2025—

While celebrating powwows—U.S. officials cancel efforts to show boarding school atrocities

By JOE GRIMM
Founder of the MSU School of Journalism Bias Busters series

THURSDAY, APRIL 24-26—There’s no question about this: The Gathering of Nations Powwow in New Mexico is the largest powwow in North America, bringing together over 3,000 dancers and singers from more than 750 tribes across the United States, Canada, and beyond.

But the federal government’s message in late April 2025 is more mixed.

On April 25, it released four new stamps commemorating Indian powwows.

However—about a week earlier, the Associated Press reported that the National Endowment for the Humanities had canceled $1.6 million in grants to capture and digitize records of the abuse and deaths of children in Indian boarding schools. The boarding school grants, just a few of many NEH cuts by the Trump administration, follow a federal investigation and apology by former President Joe Biden in October 2024.

For 150 years, the federal government sent Indigenous children away to the schools. They were made to stop using their native languages and faiths, were stripped of their cultures and beaten. Many were abused and died. An Interior Department investigation found that at least 973 Native American children died at the boarding schools. The report and outside researchers say there were more. 

Enactment of the Indian Child Welfare Act officially ended the forced assimilation policy in 1978. However,  the U.S. government did not fully investigate boarding schools until the Biden administration. Then, in April 2024, the NEH announced it was awarding $411,000 to more than a dozen tribal nations and organizations working to illustrate the impact of boarding schools. Most of those awards are now terminated. 

One project, by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, was to  digitize more than 100,000 pages of boarding school records for its database. People use the site to find loved ones who were sent to boarding schools. Now, the National Endowment for the Humanities has issued a statement that the “grant no longer effectuates the agency’s needs and priorities.”

However, on April 25, the United States Postal Service dedicated its “Powwows: Celebrating Native American Culture” stamps in Albuquerque. The occasion is an auspicious one each year. The Gathering of Nations draws more than 100,000 attendees.

According to a Postal Service press release, chief customer and marketing officer and executive vice president Steven W. Monteith, said  it “takes great pride in our stamps and the unique opportunity they offer to tell the story of America. … We hope they inspire a deeper appreciation of Native American culture and influence all who see them.” 

The four stamps are from paintings by Cochiti Pueblo artist Mateo Romero

Care to learn more?

To learn more, see “100 Questions, 500 Nations: A Guide to Native America: Covering tribes, treaties, sovereignty, casinos, reservations, Indian health, education, religion, … and tribal membership.” It is part of the Bias Busters series, which includes guides about the religiously unaffiliated, Muslims, Jews, Latter-day Saints, Chaldeans, Sikhs and the Black Church with more on the way. All are on Amazon.