PHOENIX — President Joe Biden on Friday offered an apology for a U.S. policy that for more than 150 years forcibly separated generations of Indigenous children from their families and sent them to federally subsidized boarding schools for forced assimilation.
Biden said in sharp statements: “I formally apologize as President of the United States of America for what we did.” “It’s long overdue.”
The president’s apology, on tribal lands on the Gila River Indian Reservation, followed a years-long investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the first Native American to serve as Cabinet secretary. Haaland’s grandparents were separated from their families because of this policy.
“We know the federal government has failed,” Haaland said in emotional remarks before introducing Biden.
She added: “You failed to violate our languages, our traditions and our ways of life. You failed to destroy us because we persevered.”
The investigation revealed generations of trauma. It identified the deaths of at least 973 Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children who attended residential schools.
During his remarks, Biden acknowledged that “the real number is likely to be much higher.”
“The federal Indian boarding school policy, and the pain it has caused, will always remain a great mark of shame, a stain on American history,” Biden said.
In all, the investigation identified 417 institutions in 37 states or territories that operated between at least 1819 and 1969.
The report found that “many Indian children suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse in these institutions.” It confirmed the presence of at least 74 distinct and unmarked burial sites in 65 school sites.
The president’s apology comes more than two years after Pope Francis issued a similar apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for similar abuses in Canada. More than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend Canadian residential schools.
Alex Whiteblum, 73, a former chief of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who attended two boarding schools in South Dakota, told NBC News he would not accept the president’s apology.
“I don’t really see any way we can accept that, because it doesn’t change anything,” Whiteblum said.
“We need to survive, and in order to survive, we need to reclaim our lands so that we can reclaim our language and perform place-specific ceremonies in our lands,” he said. apology. I want them to be meaningful. And if it was a meaningful apology, he would say, “Okay, we’re going to investigate genocide, and we’re going to create a process to create protocols on how to do that.” “I think something like that would have made more sense.”
Cecilia Fire Thunder, 78, who became the first female chief of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and her three sisters attended Holy Rosary Mission School in 1953, now known as Red Cloud Indian School, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. “The apology is about making sure that our community receives behavioral health resources if there is a trickle-down effect of what happened 50 or 60 years ago,” she said.
President Joe Biden after speaking Friday at Gila River Crossing School. ANDREW CABALLERO REYNOLDS/AFP – Getty Images
“There is no word for tolerance in our language,” she added. “Just because you acknowledge that someone has hurt you, and say ‘I forgive you,’ that doesn’t mean the pain remains; the pain is still there.”
Fire Thunder said the apology “should open the door for people to ask the question: What happened?” “It should open the door not just to indigenous people, but to all of America, because they don’t know.”
Marsha Small, a 65-year-old ground-penetrating radar specialist, led the 2022 search for unmarked graves of children who died while attending Red Cloud Indian School.
“I’m a little angry,” she said. “But I appreciate President Biden acknowledging that.”
“In their statement, the White House says we must learn from this history so it is never repeated,” Small added. “Well, we’re still living the nightmare. So, invest some money in these reserves, in the homelands, and in the urban areas as well.
While many in the crowd in Phoenix on Friday morning welcomed Biden’s apology, one demonstrator suggested it was not enough.
A sign held by the demonstrator who was escorted outside during the president’s remarks read: “There are still children in mass graves. Your apology means nothing.”
