A number of Mining Journal readers felt compelled to call our newsroom last week to comment — and in several cases, complain — about a story published on our Learning page last Wednesday.

The piece, authored by The Associated Press, detailed that at least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s boarding school system — according to the results of an investigation recently released.

Readers’ complaints centered on the belief that the number cited — 973 — was in all likelihood, too low and perhaps much too low.

From where we sit, we tend to agree but we don’t blame AP for the information. The Associated Press did its job and reported what the government said about this topic. The problem is with, in our view, with the investigation itself.

Commissioned by Interior Sec. Deb Haaland, investigators found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children into white society.

The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death included sickness, accidents and abuse during a 150-year period that ended in 1969.

In an initial report released in 2022, officials estimated that more than 500 children died at the schools. The federal government passed laws and policies in 1819 to support the schools, the last of which were still operating in the 1960s.

The schools gave Native American children English names, put them through military drills and forced them to perform manual labor, such as farming, brick-making and working on the railroad.

But in Minnesota alone, one group has tallied more than 100 additional schools not on the government list that were run by churches and with no evidence of federal support.

And it’s unclear if government investigators visited the site of the old St. Joseph Orphanage and School in Assinins in Baraga County, which was operated by the Catholic Church starting in 1860 and ran for nearly 100 years.

Clearly, there’s more to do here and we hope and trust that Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe who is a 35th generation New Mexican, will get it done.