Inside real-life ‘religious’ boarding schools where Native Americans were ‘conditioned’ to be white – and where Hundreds died amid rampant abuse – as Yellowstone prequel brings horrors to life

• The drama 1923 details the abuse that went on within church and government-run boarding schools
• In 2012, the U.S. Interior Department launched an investigation to look at what happened decades ago
• It uncovered that between 1819 and 1969 more than 500 students died at US operated Indian schools

The Yellowstone prequel spinoff 1923 offers insight into one of the darkest periods of Indigenous American history, during a time when horrific government-sanctioned abuse took place under the guise of education and religion.

While the plotline of the Montana-set drama might be fictional, the physical and emotional abuse that is witnessed at a Catholic boarding school for Indigenous American youth and attended by Teonna Rainwater – played by Aminah Nieves – is based on real-life events.

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