The president will be at Gila River Indian Community to acknowledge the trauma wreaked by U.S. forced assimilation policies *UPDATED
ICT: More than 150 years after the first Native children were forced to attend Indian boarding schools that robbed them of their families, culture and language, President Joe Biden will issue a long-awaited apology for the dark history that has left generational damage among Indigenous peoples.
Biden is set to present the apology and a plan for helping tribal communities heal from the enduring traumas on Friday, Oct. 25, at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, marking his first visit to tribal lands as president.
It’s an apology that Native people have been seeking for decades.
“This apology is an acknowledgement that the President of the United States sees and hears them,” said U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, whose family members attended Indian boarding schools.
“This is an acknowledgement of a horrific history,” Haaland told ICT in an interview.“This happened in our country.”
Boarding school survivor Jim LaBelle, Inupiaq, right, speaks to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland during the Interior Department’s “Road to Healing” meeting on Oct. 22, 2023, in Anchorage, Alaska. The tours are being held around the U.S. to hear from survivors of Indian boarding schools. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)
For Deb Parker, chief executive of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, known as NABS, it was an emotional moment to learn an apology would finally be made.
“It’s time,” Parker said, her voice taut with emotion as she waited to board Air Force One Thursday on her way to Arizona with Biden, Haaland. Five tribal leaders were also on the plane, including Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin Chairwoman Gena Kakkak, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Chairman Rodney Butler and Bay Mills Indian Community Chairwoman Whitney Gravelle.
“I think he has it in his heart to understand the pain and trauma that we and our loved ones have suffered,” said Parker, of the Tulalip Tribes. “It takes a strong president to deliver this apology.”
The apology comes just three months after the U.S. Department of the Interior released a final report in July of its investigation into the U.S. boarding school system after gathering evidence and witness testimony during a year-long “Road to Healing Tour.”
The first item on the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report’s list of recommendations was for the United States to apologize for and acknowledge that generations of Native children were stolen from their families, and often severely beaten and abused in government and private boarding schools. Many of them died at the schools and were never sent home.
The recommendations also call for a Truth and Healing Commission to investigate further, a memorial to acknowledge those who attended, and for the U.S. to invest in tribal communities to help individual and community healing, revitalization of Native languages and improvements to Indian education. Details of Biden’s proposals had not been released by Thursday afternoon.
Haaland described the president’s apology for the U.S.’s role in operating Indian boarding schools as an example of his ongoing commitment to Indian Country.
“It’s very meaningful to me and I think it will be meaningful to many people,” Haaland told ICT.
Navajo President Buu Nygren praised Biden’s decision. His grandmother was taken to the Sherman Institute Indian boarding school in Riverside, California, about 700 miles from the Navajo Nation, he said in a statement.
“This dark chapter caused untold suffering, trauma, and loss, and its impact still reverberates in our communities today, “Nygren said. “By recognizing this tragic legacy, President Biden honors the resilience of the survivors and their families, many of whom carry the weight of these experiences …
“Ahe’hee’, thank you, President Biden, for your commitment to reconciliation and justice,” he said.
Why has it taken so long?
The United States lags years behind Canada and even the Catholic Church in offering an apology for residential boarding schools, which were largely patterned after the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
Thousands of Native children attended those schools in the U.S. and many died at the schools without ever returning to their families.
Related ICT stories:
Apologize! Report calls for government to own up to abusive boarding school history
Truth and healing commission gains ground
‘We all carry the trauma in our hearts’
‘Our children came home with moccasins’
Buried Secrets: Red Cloud takes the lead in uncovering boarding school past
apal Visit: Apology at last in Canada
Canada’s then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in 2008 for the government’s role in operating Indian residential schools in 2008, and Pope Francis apologized in 2022 in Canada for the role played by members of the Catholic Church in running residential schools. The U.S. Catholic Bishops apologized this year for the church’s role in boarding schools.
“In order to apologize, you have to recognize that something wrong happened,” Parker said. “I don’t think the United States was ready to acknowledge what they did, not only to Native children but also the parents, grandparents and the entire community.”
“This was a crime; now it’s time to examine that crime.”
Haaland, the first Native member of a presidential cabinet, spent more than a year on the cross-country Road to Healing Tour, gathering testimony from boarding school survivors and family members. Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is of the Bay Mills Community, also attended, and authored the final report and recommendations.
Haaland described listening to hundreds of stories from boarding school survivors and descendants during the tour. Haaland’s grandparents and great-grandparents were taken away from their families to attend boarding schools.
“I’ve lived this all of my life,” she said. “The federal government spent exorbitant amounts of taxpayer funding to essentially eradicate the Native culture, languages and traditions of these children.”
While in Congress as a U.S. representative from New Mexico, Haaland worked with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to introduce a bill in 2020 to create a Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy in the United States. The bill was later redrafted and re-introduced in Congress, and is now awaiting a vote in Congress.
“We went to Capitol Hill and testified in support of that bill,” Haaland said. “There’s not a lot of time left, but I hope Congress makes the right decision.”
Few people in the United States outside of Indian Country were even aware of Indian boarding school history, Haaland said.
“So many Native folks around the country have moved this issue forward,” she said. “We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors always.”
Biden’s apology is expected to include a commitment to fund Native language revitalization projects. Haaland noted that although Native Americans are not a monolith, one thing most survivors and descendants agreed on was regret that their languages were stolen from them.
“We are making a concerted effort to ensure the funding is there in the best way tribes want to support language revitalization,” she said.
Native language isn’t just language, she said, it’s culture, tradition, geography, and science. She said both the president and first lady Jill Biden are supportive of language revitalization.
“It’s the foundation of who we are,” she said.
She said her own mother didn’t teach her or her siblings their language.
“My mother was afraid to teach us because of her time in boarding school; that’s one of the things that we heard constantly,” she said.
Haaland was on her way to Arizona Friday, along with tribal leaders including Gila River Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis, who is hosting the announcement Friday, and Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin Chairwoman Gena Kakkak, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation of Connecticut Chairman Rodney Butler and Bay Mills Indian Community Whitney Gravelle.
“When a sitting President makes an apology like this, it’s a big deal,” Haaland said. “I’m honored to travel with him when he makes his first visit to Indian Country and honored to stand by his side when this happens.”
Parker said the apology is just the first step toward healing for Indian Country.
“This (the apology) is only the beginning,” Parker said. “The dark secrets of the past need to be released. We cannot keep suffering intergenerational trauma for the things that were done to us.”
What’s next?
For some, however, the apology is too little, too late.
“It’s like a slap in the face,” said Arthur “Art” Zimiga, an Oglala Lakota elder with years of experience in Indian education on a tribal, federal and local level. “Generation after generation for Indigenous people, educational systems neglected their religious beliefs, their culture, their own freedom of speech.”
An apology without action is a shallow apology, Zimiga said. The elder expressed frustration at a lack of action from the president. “With the stroke of a pen (President Biden) could give us land back, the lands that are being used for national parks. What would that restitution be? Look at the physical health of Native people today, statistics on economic development or the land taken through policies such as the Dawes Act. These are all part of the ways that Native people have been disenfranchised and disinherited. If you’re going to say sorry to someone, there has to be restitution.”When Amy Sazue first heard that the president would be delivering a formal apology for the boarding school era, the Sicangu Lakota woman was speechless.
“It’s a little hard to wrap my head around it, I’ve been processing it all day,” Sazue said. “It’s a natural expectation that this would at some point be acknowledged out loud, but I was just speechless, it’s long overdue.”
Sazue is executive director of Remembering the Children, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the history of the Rapid City Indian Boarding School and the children who never made it home.
The Rapid City school was a federally run boarding school on the city’s west side aimed at teaching middle school students with a military-style daily routine. More than 2,000 students from across the nation were brought to the school over its 35-year run; more than 50 of these students never made it home.
Sazue, like many others, believes this is just the first step.
“An apology needs to be followed by action, it needs to be followed by commitment,” Sazue said. “I believe wholeheartedly that for healing and reconciliation to even be possible this was necessary. The United States Government and the United States President need to apologize and frankly acknowledge the harm caused by federal policy.
When Nick Tilsen heard the news of a formal presidential apology for the boarding school era, he experienced a mix of emotions, the NDN Collective founder said.
“I was choked up immediately, I felt all the emotions of it,” Tilsen said. “And then I immediately transitioned into thinking, ‘Okay, an apology must have action. You can’t just apologize for something that has destroyed nations of people and not have it followed up with action. This is an issue that has impacted every single household.”
Action, the Oglala Lakota man said, should come in the form of granting clemency to Leonard Peltier, who himself is a boarding school survivor.
“As you apologize for boarding schools, you cannot keep the longest-living Indigenous political prisoner incarcerated,” Tilsen said.
Peltier is currently serving two consecutive life sentences in connection to the deaths of two FBI agents in South Dakota in 1975. The Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe elder is currently serving his time in the Coleman I Maximum Security Prison in Coleman, Fla., and was denied parole earlier this year.
Tilsen also said action should include rescinding medals of honor given to the Seventh Cavalry Regiment for its involvement in the Wounded Knee Massacre, pass the Truth and Reconciliation healing bill and work to make unprecedented investments into Indigenous language and education.
“Those are the two things he can do right now before the inauguration and second, make it part of the next administration to carry the other things forth,” Tilsen said.
Moving forward, Tilsen emphasized the need for Indigenous people to keep each other in prayer as the government begins to acknowledge the harm it has caused them and their ancestors.
“We have to hold all of our people and all of our ancestors and elders with love and with prayer right now at this moment in history, while we’re pivoting toward justice,” Tilsen said. “This is one of the most historic moments in the history of this country because of how much damage boarding schools caused.”
Boarding School Report
The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative’s second and final investigative report released on July 30, 2024, by the U.S. Department of the Interior includes eight recommendations from Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, who authored the report. Here are the recommendations:
*Apology: The U.S. government should acknowledge its role in a national policy of forced assimilation of Native children and issue a formal apology to individuals, families and tribes that were harmed by U.S. policy.
*Investments: The U.S. should invest in tribal communities in five key areas: individual and community healing; family preservation and reunification, including supporting tribal jurisdiction over Indian child welfare cases; violence prevention on tribal lands; improving Indian education; and working to revitalize First American languages.
*A national memorial: The U.S. government should establish a national memorial to acknowledge and commemorate the experiences of Native people within the federal Indian boarding school system.
*Repatriations: The government should identify children interred at school burial sites and help repatriate their remains
*Return school lands: The government should work to return the federal Indian boarding school sites to tribal ownership.
*Tell the story: The government should work with institutions to educate the public about federal Indian boarding schools and their impact on communities.
*Further research: The government should study how policies of child removal, confinement and forced assimilation have impacted generations of families, particularly the present-day health and economic impacts.
*Advance international relations: The government should work with other countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand with their own similar but unique histories of boarding schools and assimilationist policies, to determine best practices for healing and redress.
Updated: This story has been updated to include reaction from across Indian Country to the news of the apology.
Mary Annette Pember
ICT
Amelia Schafer contributed to this report.
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