Biden Dons Tribal Blanket, Announces Plan to ‘Revive’ Native American Languages

A teary-eyed administration official solemnly draped a tribal blanket over President Biden on Monday before he announced plans to “revive” Native American languages and designate a Pennsylvania Indian boarding school as a national monument.

Biden, 82, joked that the embroidered, eighth-generation Native American blanket, gifted to him by an emotional Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, would’ve come in useful last week when he battled frigid temperatures and gusty winds at the White House National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony.

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In his remarks, Biden announced a new proclamation designating the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School — where more than 7,800 children from 140 Indian tribes were separated from their communities between 1879 and 1918 — a national monument.

“I don’t want people forgetting 10, 20, 30, 50 years from now, pretending it didn’t happen,” the president said of the government effort to Westernize Native Americans.

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The new national monument will encompass 24.5 acres of historic buildings and structures that made up the old campus of the Carlisle School.

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The president lamented that Indian boarding schools all but erased the culture and language of Native American tribes and said the US would embark on a “10-year plan to revive Native languages in a serious effort.”

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