The borough is looking to move forward with its plan to develop residential lots on the site of the former Bureau of Indian Affairs Wrangell Institute boarding school, while also fulfilling the Department of the Interior’s mandate that former boarding school sites be inspected for human remains.

The federal push came after the discovery earlier this year of 215 unmarked graves in British Columbia at the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school, and the fear that unknown burial sites could exist at American Indian and Alaska Native school sites around the coun...