OCTOBER 28, 2024:
LAVEEN VILLAGE, Ariz. (AP) — President Joe Biden has done something (Oct. 25, 2024) that no other sitting U.S. president has: He apologized for the systemic abuse generations of Indigenous children endured at the hands of the federal government. Biden told a crowd of Indigenous people gathered at the Gila River Indian Community near Phoenix that the U.S. “should be ashamed” for the pain and devastation inflicted by the boarding school system. For 150 years the U.S. mandated the removal of Indigenous children to the schools, where they were stripped of their cultures, histories and religions and beaten for speaking their languages. Native Americans have broadly welcomed the apology but are calling for actions to support healing.
Extended version:
LAVEEN VILLAGE, Ariz. (AP) — President Joe Biden did something Friday (Oct. 25, 2024) that no other sitting U.S. president has: He apologized for the systemic abuse of generations of Indigenous children endured in boarding schools at the hands of the federal government.
For 150 years the U.S. removed Indigenous children from their homes and sent them away to the schools, where they were stripped of their cultures, histories and religions and beaten for speaking their languages.
“We should be ashamed,” Biden said to a crowd of Indigenous people gathered at the Gila River Indian Community outside of Phoenix, including tribal leaders, survivors and their families. Biden called the government-mandated system that began in 1819 “one of the most horrific chapters in American history,” while acknowledging the decades of abuse inflicted upon children and widespread devastation left behind.
For many Native Americans, the long-awaited apology was a welcome acknowledgment of the government’s longstanding culpability. Now, they say, words must be followed up by action.
Bill Hall, 71, of Seattle, was 9 when he was taken from his Tlingit community in Alaska and forced to attend a boarding school, where he endured years of physical and sexual abuse that lead to many more years of shame. When he first heard that Biden was going to apologize, he wasn’t sure he would be able to accept it.
“But, as I was watching, tears began to flow from my eyes,” Hall said. “Yes, I accept his apology. Now, what can we do next?”
Rosalie Whirlwind Soldier, a 79-year-old citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said she felt “a tingle in my heart” and was glad the historical wrong was being acknowledged. Still, she remains saddened by the irreversible harms done to her people.
Whirlwind Soldier suffered severe mistreatment at a school in South Dakota that left her with a lifelong, painful limp. The Catholic-run, government-subsidized facility took away her faith and tried to stamp out her Lakota identity by cutting off her long braids, she said.
“Sorry is not enough. Nothing is enough when you damage a human being,” she said. “A whole generation of people and our future was destroyed for us.”
The schools were designed both to assimilate Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children and to dispossess tribal nations of their land, according to an Interior Department investigation launched by Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to lead the agency.
Introducing Biden on Friday, Haaland said that while the formal apology is an acknowledgement of a dark chapter, it is also a celebration of Indigenous resilience: “Despite everything that happened, we are still here.”
Haaland, a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna, commissioned the investigation in 2021. It documented the cases of more than 18,000 Indigenous children, of whom 973 were killed. Both the report and independent researchers say the overall number was much higher.
The report came with several recommendations taken from the testimony of school survivors, including resources for mental health treatment and language revitalization programs.
Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis noted that Biden has pledged to make good on those recommendations.
“This lays the framework to address the boarding school policies of the past,” he said.
Benjamin Mallott, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, who is Lingít, said in a statement that the apology must be accompanied by meaningful actions: “This includes revitalizing our languages and cultures and bringing home our Native children who have not yet been returned, so they can be laid to rest with their families and in their communities.”
That view is shared by Victoria Kitcheyan, chairwoman of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, which sued the U.S. Army in January seeking the return of the remains of two children who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
“That healing doesn’t start until tribes have a pathway to bring their children home to be laid to rest,” Kitcheyan said.
In an interview Thursday, Haaland said Interior is still working with several tribal nations to repatriate the remains of several children who were killed and buried at a boarding school.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who introduced a bill last year to establish a truth and healing commission to address the harms caused by the boarding school system, called the apology “a historic step toward long-overdue accountability for the harms done to Native children and their communities.”
And Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who is vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, also commended Biden while saying it reinforces the need for a truth and healing commission.
“This acknowledgement of the pain and injustices inflicted upon Indigenous communities — while long overdue — is an extremely important step toward healing,” Murkowski said in a statement.
As Biden spoke Friday, tribal members rose to their feet, with many recording the moment on their phones. Some wore traditional garments, and others had shirts supporting Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
There was a moment of silence, the formal apology and then an eruption of applause.
At the end of Biden’s remarks, the crowd stood again. There were shouts of, “Thank you, Joe.”
Hall, the boarding school survivor in Seattle, and others have long been advocating for resources to redress the harm. He worries that tribal nations will continue to struggle with healing unless the government steps up, and he sees a long road yet ahead.
“It took a lifetime to get here. It’s going to take a lifetime to get to the other side,” he said. “And that’s the very sad part of it. I won’t see it in my generation.”
OCTOBER 25, 2024:
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — President Joe Biden says he will formally apologize on for the nation’s role in forcing Indigenous children into boarding schools, where for more than 150 years many were physically, emotionally and sexually abused, and more than 950 died. The system devastated the lives of generations of Indigenous children and their ancestors. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system shortly after she became the first Native American to lead the agency, and she will join Biden during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president on Friday (Oct. 25, 2024). Biden said this apology is something he “should have done a long time ago.”
Extended version:
NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — President Joe Biden said he will formally apologize on Friday for the country’s role in forcing Indigenous children for over 150 years into boarding schools, where many were physically, emotionally and sexually abused, and more than 950 died.
“I’m doing something I should have done a long time ago: To make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years,” Biden said Thursday (Oct. 24, 2024) as he left the White House for Arizona.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system shortly after she became the first Native American to lead the agency, and she will join Biden during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president as he delivers a speech Friday at the Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix.
“I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen,” Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico, told The Associated Press. “It’s a big deal to me. I’m sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country.”
The investigation she launched found that at least 18,000 children — some as young as 4 — were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that sought to assimilate them into white society while federal and state authorities sought to dispossess tribal nations of their land.
The investigation documented 973 deaths — while acknowledging the figure is likely higher — and 74 gravesites associated with the more than 500 schools.
No president has ever formally apologized for the forced removal of these children — an element of genocide as defined by the United Nations — or the U.S. government’s actions to decimate Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian peoples.
The Interior Department conducted listening sessions and gathered the testimony of survivors. One of the recommendations of the final report was an acknowledgement of, and apology for, the boarding school era. Haaland said she took that to Biden, who agreed that it was necessary.
“In making this apology, the President acknowledges that we as a people who love our country must remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful. And we must learn from that history so that it is never repeated,” the White House said in a statement.
The forced assimilation policy launched by Congress in 1819 as an effort to “civilize” Native Americans ended in 1978 after the passage of a wide-ranging law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was primarily focused on giving tribes a say in who adopted their children.
The visit by Biden and Haaland to the Gila River Indian Community comes as Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign spends hundreds of millions of dollars on ads targeting Native American voters in battleground states including Arizona and North Carolina.
“It will be one of the high points of my entire life,” Haaland said of Biden’s apology Friday.
It’s unclear what action, if any, will follow the apology. The Interior Department is still working with tribal nations to repatriate the remains of children on federal lands. Some tribes are still at odds with the U.S. Army, which has refused to follow federal law regulating the return of Native American remains when it comes to those still buried at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
“President Biden’s apology is a profound moment for Native people across this country,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement to the AP.
“Our children were made to live in a world that erased their identities, their culture and upended their spoken language,” Hoskin said in his statement. “Oklahoma was home to 87 boarding schools in which thousands of our Cherokee children attended. Still today, nearly every Cherokee Nation citizen somehow feels the impact.”
Friday’s apology could lead to further progress for tribal nations still pushing for continued action from the federal government, said Melissa Nobles, chancellor of MIT and author of “The Politics of Official Apologies.”
“These things have value because it validates the experiences of the survivors and acknowledges they’ve been seen,” Nobles said.
The U.S. government has offered apologies for other historic injustices, including to Japanese families it imprisoned during World War II. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 to compensate tens of thousands of people sent to internment camps during the war.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a law apologizing to Native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy a century earlier.
The House and Senate passed resolutions in 2008 and 2009 apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow segregation. But the gestures did not create pathways to reparations for Black Americans.
In Canada, a country with a similar history of subjugating First Nations and forcing their children into boarding schools for assimilation, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a formal apology in 2008. There was also a truth and reconciliation process, and later a plan to inject billions of dollars into communities devastated by the government’s policies.
Pope Francis issued a historic apology in 2022 for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native people into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations.
“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.
In 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for his government’s past policies of assimilation, including the forced removal of children. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a similar concession in 2022.
Hoskin said he is grateful to both Biden and Haaland for leading the effort to reckon with the country’s role in a dark chapter for Indigenous peoples. But he emphasized that the apology is just “an important step, which must be followed by continued action.”
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