Dana Hedgpeth

Washington, D.C.

Reporter covering local breaking news

Education: University of Maryland at College Park

Dana Hedgpeth is a Native American journalist who has been at The Washington Post for 25 years. She is an enrolled member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina. At The Post, she has covered topics including Native Americans and their history, along with stories of Indian boarding school survivors, plus Pentagon spending, the U.S. defense industry, the D.C. Metro's rail and bus systems, local governments, and courts.
Latest from Dana Hedgpeth

‘I formally apologize’: Biden condemns U.S. Indian boarding schools

President Joe Biden apologized to Native Americans on Friday for the U.S. government’s role in taking Native children from their families and cultures.

October 25, 2024

Biden set to apologize to Native Americans for Indian boarding schools

Joe Biden’s remarks would mark the first time a U.S. president formally apologized for the government’s role in separating Native children from their families.

October 24, 2024
In an undated photo, first- and second-grade students sit in a classroom at the Genoa Indian Industrial School in Genoa, Nebraska. (National Archives/AP)

More than 900 Native American children died at U.S. boarding schools

A new Interior Department report reveals that 973 Native American children died at Indian boarding schools over a 150-year period of forced cultural assimilation.

July 30, 2024

Catholic bishops apologize for church’s role operating Indian boarding schools

In Friday vote, church leaders cite a “history of trauma” inflicted on Native Americans, including generations of children removed from their families to be forcibly assimilated.

June 14, 2024
Clarita Vargas, 64, one of the survivors of St. Mary’s Mission, an Indian boarding school, stands in the St. Mary’s church on the Colville Reservation on Feb. 20 in Omak, Wash.

Where did funding for Native American boarding schools come from? We took your questions.

Dana Hedgpeth and Sari Horwitz answered questions about their reporting on Tuesday during a live chat.

June 4, 2024

They took the children: U.S. created Indian boarding schools to destroy cultures and seize land

For 150 years, U.S. policy forced Native American children into boarding schools built to eradicate their culture and assimilate them into White society.

May 29, 2024
Sioux children before entering Hampton Institute. Native American children — some as young as 5 — were forcibly removed from their homes and sent hundreds of miles to Indian boarding schools.

‘In the name of God’: Native American children endured years of sexual abuse at boarding schools

Taken from their families and sent to remote boarding schools, Native American children often faced sexual abuse by priests, brothers or sisters who ran the facilities.

May 29, 2024

The scars of Native American boarding schools

In a moment of reckoning, survivors of the U.S.-run Indian boarding schools are speaking out and trying to hold the U.S. government accountable.

October 11, 2023

More schools that forced American Indian children to assimilate revealed

A nonprofit Native American group has found details about 115 more Indian boarding schools in the United States.

August 30, 2023
Ione Quigley, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe's historic preservation officer, returns to her seat after speaking during a ceremony at the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks, in Pennsylvania, in 2021. The site is the former home of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

‘12 years of hell’: Indian boarding school survivors share their stories

Forced by the federal government to attend the schools, generations of Native American children were sexually assaulted, beaten and emotionally abused

August 7, 2023