On October 25, 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a speech at the Gila River Crossing School in the Gila River Indian Community in La Verne Village, near Phoenix, Arizona.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
President Biden apologized for the incident on Friday The U.S. policy of forcibly separating generations of indigenous children For more than 150 years, they were separated from their families and sent to federally supported boarding schools for forced assimilation.
“As President of the United States of America, I offer a formal apology for what we have done,” Biden said in pointed remarks. “It’s long overdue.”
The president’s apology, on tribal land on the Gila River Indian Reservation, came after a years-long investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. member and the first Native American to serve as cabinet secretary. Haaland’s grandparents were separated from their family as a result of this policy.
“We know the federal government has failed,” Haaland said emotionally before introducing Biden.
“It did not violate our language, our traditions, our way of life. It did not destroy us because we persisted,” she added.
The investigation revealed generations of trauma. it’s ok At least 973 people died Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children attending residential schools.
Biden admitted in his speech that “the actual number is probably much higher.”
“India’s federal residential school policy and the suffering it caused will forever be a major shame and a stain on American history,” Biden said.
People wait for U.S. President Joe Biden to deliver a speech at Gila River Crossing School in the Gila River Indian Community in La Verne Village, near Phoenix, Arizona, on October 25, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
In total, the survey identified 417 agencies in 37 states or territories operating between 1819 and at least 1969.
“Many Indian children suffer physical, sexual and emotional abuse in these institutions,” the report found. It confirmed there were at least 74 marked and unmarked grave sites in 65 schools.
The president’s apology comes more than two years later Pope Francis issued a similar apology Similar abuses occurred in Canada on behalf of the Catholic Church. More than 150,000 local children are forced to attend Canadian boarding schools.
Alex White Plume, 73, the former president of the Oglala Sioux tribe who attended two boarding schools on the South Dakota reservation, told NBC News he would not Accept the President’s apology.
“I really don’t see how we can accept it because it’s not going to change anything,” Baiyu said.
“We need to survive, and in order to survive we need to take back our territory so that we can bring back our language and have the rituals of specific places in our territory,” he said. “So I don’t want to accept an apology. I hope the apology is there Meaningful. If it was a meaningful apology, he would say, ‘Okay, we’re going to investigate the genocide and we’re going to create a process to create an agreement on how to proceed. I think something like that would be more meaningful.
Cecelia Fire Thunder, 78, became the first female president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe when she and her three sisters attended Holy Rosary on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1953 Mission School, now known as Red Cloud Indian School. “The apology is about making sure our community has access to behavioral health resources if there’s a trickle-down effect from what happened 50 or 60 years ago,” she said.
“There is no word forgiveness in our language,” she added. “Just because you admit someone hurt you and then you say ‘I forgive you,’ doesn’t mean the pain goes away; the pain is still there.”
Fire said the apology “should open the door for people to ask, ‘What happened?'” It should open the door not just for Native people, but for America as a whole, because they don’t know.
Ground-penetrating radar expert Marsha Small, 65, led the The search for unmarked children’s graves in 2022 Died while attending Red Cloud Indian School.
“I’m a little angry,” she said. “But I appreciate President Biden acknowledging that.”
“The White House said in its statement that we must learn from this history so it doesn’t happen again,” Small added. “Well, we’re still living a nightmare. So please support these reservations, Homes and urban areas to raise some funds.”
While Biden’s apology Friday morning was welcomed by much of the Phoenix crowd, one demonstrator said it wasn’t enough.
Demonstrators were escorted out during the president’s speech, holding a sign that read “There are babies in mass graves and your apology means nothing.”
