During a trip to Arizona Friday, President Joe Biden delivered a “historic” apology to Native American tribes for a government funded boarding school program that abused indigenous children.
“Quite frankly, there is no excuse that this apology took 150 years to make,” Biden said in Laveen, Ariz., according to CNN. He was at the Gila Crossing Community School outside of Phoenix.
With just a few months left in his term, this is Biden’s first trip to the area known as Indian Country. A sitting president hasn’t visited the area in 10 years, since former President Barack Obama visited the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation in 2014.
However, during Biden’s presidency the federal government made its largest investment in Tribal Nations history. Through the American Rescue Plan, $32 billion was provided to the area, An additional $13 billion came through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build high-speed Internet, roads, bridges, public transit, clean water, and improve sanitation in Tribal communities.
“In particular, the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona received $84 million to build a pipeline that will help irrigate its community’s crops while conserving water to help al- — alleviate ongoing drought conditions,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Jean-Pierre and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland previewed the president’s apology. Jean-Pierre explained that Biden’s apology would be a “critical step” in the “next era of federal-Tribal relationships,” and to fully acknowledge the harms of the past.
In 2021, Haaland established the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a comprehensive effort to recognize the continued impact and “troubled legacy” of Indian boarding school policies. An investigative report conducted as part of the initiative found that at least 973 children died while attending these boarding schools.
“I couldn’t tell you the number of children who were deceased,” Haaland said Thursday. “You know, in some cases, children got sick at boarding school, and they knew they were sick, so they sent them home, and then they died at home. This happened a lot. And so, you know, it’s hard to – to essentially assess the – the number of actual children who died as a result of being in those schools.
Overall, CNN said at least 18,000 children were taken from their families and forced to attend more than 400 boarding schools across 37 states or then-territories for 150 years, from 1819 and 1969.
“If we truly love our country, we must remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful, and we must learn from that history so that it never repeated – it is never repeated,” said Jean-Pierre.
In his speech Friday, Biden said: “I believe it is important that we do know there were generations of native children stolen, taken away to places they didn’t know, with people they never met, who spoke a language they had never heard.”
CNN noted that Biden was briefly interrupted by two pro-Palestine protesters. He paused the speech to say that the killing of people in Gaza “has to stop,” the outlet said.
Haaland explained that the second volume of the Indian Boarding School Initiative’s report included a list of recommendations for healing the trauma left by the boarding school era. An official apology was part of that list.
“We also have asked for other things,” Haaland said. These include a national monument to honor the children who never came home from the schools and sustained investments into Indian Country. She added the Biden administration has been supportive of Tribal leaders’ goal to support Native language revitalization, answering concerns from Tribal leaders about their languages being stolen from them.
Biden said Friday that no apology can make up for what Native American communities suffered through or what they lost as a result of the boarding school policy.
“Native communities silenced – their children’s laughter and play were gone,” Biden said. “… Children abused emotionally, physically and sexually abused, forced into hard labor, some put up for adoption without the consent of their birth parents, some left for dead and unmarked graves.”
Even the children who made it back home returned “wounded in body and spirit,” said the president.
“Twenty years ago, I never would have believed that I would be gaggling with the White House Press Corps on Air Force One, flying with the president to his first visit to Indian Country,” said Haaland. “President Biden has been the best president for Indian Country in my lifetime. This is a president and an administration that truly sees Indigenous people and has worked tirelessly to address the issues in Indian Country that have long been underfunded or outright ignored.”
Jean-Pierre said the president has wanted to make the trip for some time. She said this apology should be considered part of his legacy.
“This apology is historic. It’s impactful. And, you know, the scars and the trauma that we have seen from this community does indeed run deeply, and he feels that,” Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday. “He feels that and understands. As someone who understands tragedy and trauma and loss, he feels that very, very personally.”
Next month, Americans will put either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump in the White House. When asked about how the new president might impact the relationship between the federal government and Tribal Nations, Haaland sad: “I hope that regardless of what happens in the future, that Tribal leaders are dead set about what the relationship between the federal government and them is and that they will – they will ensure that they have a seat at the table.”