President Biden formally apologizes for Native American boarding school

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – President Joe Biden’s visit to Arizona touched on an issue the country has tried to ignore for decades.

He apologized for Federal Indian Residential School era it lasted 150 years and ended almost 50 years ago.

Biden told the crowd at the Gila River Indian Community that to usher in a new era of federal-tribal relations, the country needs to fully acknowledge the past.

“I officially apologize! As President of the United States of America, I formally apologize for what we did!” – the president exclaimed to the applause of the crowd.

Biden’s apology also acknowledges that thousands of children from Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities were sent to more than 500 boarding schools far from their homes to assimilate them and destroy their culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Abuses flourished and nearly a thousand people died.

There were three such schools in southern Arizona, and a national map exists. HERE.

“These federal Indian residential schools have impacted every Native person I know,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told the crowd.

Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, took the Interior Department’s investigation to Biden, who agreed an apology was necessary.

“This is long, long, long overdue. Frankly, there is no excuse for the fact that it took 50 years to get this apology,” Biden said.

“You can’t change the past, but at least we heard the words, you know, you can’t change the past or what happened, but an apology is good, it’s appropriate,” said Ivan Whitman, a member of the Gila River Tribe. . Indian community.

Whitman said he knows stories of children spending their youth away from their parents.

While the past can’t change, Biden hopes to help in the future.

“For God’s sake, we are finally modernizing tribal infrastructure,” Biden told the cheering crowd.

He pointed to billions of dollars in internet connectivity as well as construction of physical bridges and roads on tribal lands, as well as a restructuring of federal funding to shift decision-making to tribes. The change shows confidence in Indigenous judgment on a day the president apologized for the failure of the country’s generations-long decision.

“For God’s sake, that’s exactly who we are. Let’s be sure to reach out and accept it because you make us stronger. You are America. May God bless you all and may God protect our troops. Thank you,” Biden concluded.

Haaland also said an oral collection of first-person accounts from residential school survivors is being created.

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