U.S. government to investigate its Indian boarding schools in wake of Kamloops discovery

The United States government has announced it will investigate its history of Indianboarding schools and work to identify children who died in the institutions.

The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative will seek to identify boarding school facilities and sites as well as the location of burial sites near or at the facilities, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a former congresswoman and the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary, announced the initiative on Tuesday.

"To address the inter-generational impact of Indian boarding schools and to promote spiritual and emotional healing in our communities, we must shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past, no matter how hard it will be," Haaland wrote on Twitter.

"For more than a century, [the Department of the Interior] was responsible for operating the Indian boarding schools across the U.S. ... We are therefore uniquely positioned to assist in the effort to recover the dark history of these institutions that have haunted our families for too long."