PHOENIX (AZ)
Axios [Arlington VA]
October 25, 2024
President Biden will formally apologize Friday to Indigenous communities for the role the U.S. government played in abuses committed in federal Indian boarding schools that Native American children attended after being forcibly removed from their homes.
Why it matters: Biden’s remarks in Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community will mark the first time a U.S. president has both formally acknowledged and apologized for the policy that saw abuses occur for more than 150 years and which the United Nations regards as genocide.
- A 2022 federal report found Native American children at these 408 boarding schools suffered whippings, sexual abuse, manual labor and severe malnourishment from 1819-1969 as part of the U.S. government’s campaign to compel their assimilation.
- An Interior Department report out this year found more than 900 children died while being forced to attend the schools.
- “I’m heading to do something that should have been 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 before departing on Marine One for Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday.
The big picture: Biden “believes that to usher in the next era of the Federal-Tribal relationships we need to fully acknowledge the harms of the past,” per a White House statement outlining plans for the historic apology he’s expected to make at Gila Crossing Community School, just south of Phoenix.
- Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who launched an investigation into the school system abuses after becoming the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency, is accompanying Biden on the trip to the Gila River Indian Community.
- During his visit, Biden will outline “his record of transformative investment in Indian Country and relationships with Tribal Nations, advancing Tribal sovereignty and self-determination, respecting Native cultures, and protecting Indigenous sacred sites,” according to the White House statement.
- “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.”
What they’re saying: Haaland told AP Thursday that Biden’s apology “will be one of the high points” of her entire life.
- “It’s a big deal to me. I’m sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country,” said Haaland, who is Laguna Pueblo.
- Native Organizers Alliance Action Fund executive director Judith LeBlanc said in a statement that Biden’s “formal apology for the deep and lasting harm caused by Indian boarding schools will help heal generations of survivors and their families.”
Go deeper: Reckoning with the forced assimilation of Native American children
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with more comment from the White House and a screenshot of a post by the Gila River Indian Community on X. Russell Contreras contributed reporting.