Biden Set to Apologize to Native Americans for Indian Boarding Schools

President Joe Biden plans to formally apologize Friday for the U.S. government’s role in running hundreds of Indian boarding schools for a 150-year period that stripped Native American children of their language and culture in a systematic effort to force them to assimilate into White society, according to administration officials.

These remarks would be the first time a U.S. president has apologized for the atrocities suffered by tens of thousands of Native children who were forced to attend the boarding schools over several generations. From 1819 to 1969, the U.S. government managed or paid churches and religious groups to run more than 400 federal Indian boarding schools across 37 states.

“It’s extraordinary that President Biden is doing this,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, in an interview with The Washington Post. “It will mean the world to so many people across Indian Country.”

Biden is set to make his historic announcement at the Gila Crossing Community School outside of Phoenix. The visit — his first to Indian Country as president — comes as Biden seeks to burnish his legacy before leaving office and boost his vice president’s campaign for the presidency less than two weeks before Election Day.

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Biden’s Friday event follows a report released by the Interior Department this summer that found that at least 973 Native American children, who were taken from their homes, died of disease and malnutrition at the schools. Many other children were physically abused, sexually assaulted and mistreated. The Interior Department urged the U.S. government this summer to formally apologize for the enduring trauma inflicted on Native Americans.

Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe of New Mexico whose grandparents and great-grandfather were taken from their homes and sent to boarding schools, launched the investigation three years ago, the first time the U.S. government had closely scrutinized the schools. {snip}

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By 1900, 1 in 5 Native American school-age children were sent to a boarding school, sometimes thousands of miles from their families. Children were stripped of their names and instead often assigned numbers. Their long hair was cut and they were beaten for speaking their languages, leaving deep emotional scars on Native American families and communities.

At least 80 of the schools were operated by the Catholic church or its affiliates. The Post, in a year-long investigation published in May, found at least 122 priests, sisters and brothers assigned to 22 boarding schools since the 1890s were later accused of sexually abusing Native American children under their care. {snip}

About two weeks after The Post’s report, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a formal apology for the church’s role in inflicting a “history of trauma” on Native Americans. {snip}

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It is rare for a sitting American president to offer a formal apology for past national sins. In 1998, while speaking in Uganda, President Bill Clinton apologized for slavery in the United States and his country’s role in the trade of Africans.

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