Sponsors (15)
Introduced February 3, 2026 by Tom Cole · Last progress February 3, 2026
The bill creates a federally supported, time‑limited mechanism with funding and advisory bodies to document harms, promote truth, healing, and repatriation for Native survivors, while imposing budgetary trade‑offs, creating transparency and enforcement limits, and carrying implementation and trauma‑mitigation risks.
Indigenous survivors, descendants, and Tribes gain a formal federal process to document harms, identify burial sites, and pursue truth and healing through a Commission and advisory bodies.
Native communities receive dedicated funding and staff capacity (including a $90 million allocation) to conduct investigations, convenings, reporting, memorialization, and repatriation work.
Tribes and lineal descendants gain clearer legal pathways for recovering and reburying cultural items and human remains and for co-stewardship of former boarding school sites (NAGPRA clarity and co-stewardship authorities).
Tribal communities face funding trade-offs because $90 million is allocated from existing Indian program authorizations, potentially reducing funds available for other Tribal services and programs.
Taxpayers and federal budgets will absorb new or redirected costs for Commission operations, staff pay, travel reimbursements, trauma‑informed services, and agency coordination.
The Commission's recommendations are non‑binding and the law does not create a private right to sue, so survivors and Tribes may face delays or be unable to compel federal agencies to deliver remedies.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Creates a federal Truth and Healing Commission to investigate the history, policies, and lasting harms of Indian boarding schools in the United States, document findings, and recommend federal actions while promoting healing for survivors, descendants, and affected communities. The Commission will be a legislative-branch body with a Survivors Subcommittee and two advisory committees, specific appointment rules, funding, reporting requirements, authority to gather records and hold public convenings across Bureau of Indian Affairs regions and Hawai‘i, and responsibilities for coordinating with Tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations, religious institutions, and federal agencies on repatriation, reburial, and co‑stewardship of cemetery sites.