(The Center Square) – Amid disruptions from protesters, President Joe Biden issued the first ever apology on behalf of the United States government regarding federal Indian boarding schools on Friday.
Biden delivered his apology to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, condemning the federal abuse and assimilation of Indigenous children.
“Generations of native children stolen, taken away to places they didn’t know with people they’ve never met, speaking a language they didn’t know,” Biden said. “I formally apologize as President of the United States of America for what we did. There’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make.”
His speech was interrupted by protesters, with multiple crowd members yelling “Free Palestine.”
Biden responded “Let her talk,” allowing the woman to lecture the crowd about the ongoing clash in the Gaza Strip.
This apology comes after Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2022, spearheading a two-year long investigation into the loss of life and abuse that occurred in the Indian boarding schools.
These schools came to be in 1819 to assimilate Indigenous children to the U.S. and Christian culture following the invasion of tribal lands. The report found that there were 408 federally funded schools spanning across 37 states between 1819 and 1969. Forty-seven of these schools resided within Arizona. The children were often forcibly removed from their families and bussed to boarding schools where their hair was cut off and their cultures condemned.
They were stripped of their given names, either being given an English name or assigned a number and were punished if they spoke their native language. Students suffered much abuse ranging from manual labor to sexual assault.
“Federal Indian boarding school rules were often enforced through punishment, including corporal punishment such as solitary confinement; flogging; withholding food; whipping; slapping; and cuffing,” reads the report. “The Federal Indian boarding school system at times made older Indian children punish younger Indian children.”
While the U.S. government utilized Tribal trust accounts, appropriated government funds and donations to religious organizations to fund the boarding schools, the schools were still overcrowded with children living in unsanitary conditions and being malnourished.
In addition to this, the report found documentation that the schools could not operate without students being forced to do manual labor.
“They could not possibly be maintained on the amounts appropriated by Congress for their support were it not for the fact that students are required to do the washing, ironing, baking, cooking, sewing; to care for the dairy, farm, garden, grounds, buildings, etc.-an amount of labor that has in the aggregate a very appreciable monetary value,” reads the report.
In Arizona, specifically, the Leupp Boarding and Day School which consisted of children mostly from the Navajo Nation found that almost 200 children under the age of 11 who were incredibly malnourished were being forced to do manual labor such as washing, cooking and farming.
This type of mistreatment resulted in numerous deaths among the Indian boarding schools and children were often buried on school grounds in unmarked graves. At this time, the investigation has found that in total there are 53 marked burial sites and 21 unmarked burial sites containing over 1,000 child remains.
As a part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, Haaland launched “The Road to Healing,” a tour across the country to hear first-hand accounts of survivors from the boarding schools.
“In spite of everything that has happened, we are still here,” Haaland said on Friday.
Biden concluded his speech by referring to the boarding schools as “a blot on American history,” stating that the U.S. needs to move forward, acknowledging the pain of those who suffered and giving Indigenous communities autonomy to make their own decisions.
“While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing,” Biden said. “We remember so we can heal as a nation.”
