President Joe Bidenin Arizona on Friday apologized to Native Americans for the federal government forcing their children into boarding schools where he said they were abused and deprived of their cultural identity.
“For Indigenous peoples, they served as places of trauma and terror for more than 100 years. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children, as young as four years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government and religious institutions,” he said.
“Nearly 1000 documented Native child deaths, though the real number is likely to be much, much higher. Lost generations, culture and language. Lost trust. It’s horribly, horribly wrong. It’s a sin on our soul,” he continued.
“I formally apologize as president of United States of America for what we did,” he said, emphatically. “I formally apologize!”
President Joe Biden speaks at the Gila River Crossing School in the Gila River Indian Community, in Laveen Village, near Phoenix, Arizona, on Oct. 25, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s long, long, long overdue,” he said. “Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make. Federal Indian Boarding School policy, and the pain it has caused, will always be a significant mark of shame. A blot on American history.”
The White House had called his trip to Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix — his first to Indian Country as president — “historic.”
Beforehand, officials said he would discuss the Biden-Harris administration’s record of delivering for tribal communities, including keeping his promise to visit the swing state, which is happening close to Election Day.
Sioux boys arrive at the Carlisle School, October 5, 1879.
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“The president also believes that to usher in the next era of the Federal-Tribal relationships we need to fully acknowledge the harms of the past,” the White House said.
Elementary school class of Native American students with botanical specimens at United States Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1901.
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“For over 150 years, the federal government ran boarding schools that forcibly removed generations of Native children from their homes to boarding schools often far away. Native children at these schools endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and, as detailed in the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report by the Department of the Interior (DOI), at least 973 children died in these schools,” the White House said.
“The federally-run Indian boarding school system was designed to assimilate Native Americans by destroying Native culture, language, and identity through harsh militaristic and assimilationist methods,” it said.
