President Biden officially apologized for the Indian boarding school

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – President Joe Biden’s visit to Arizona was about something the country has tried to ignore for decades.

He apologized for The Federal Indian Boarding School Era which lasted for 150 years and ended almost 50 years ago.

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

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

Biden’s apology also acknowledged how thousands of Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children were sent to more than 500 boarding schools far from their homes to assimilate them and remove their culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Cruelty was rampant and about a thousand died.

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

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

Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, relayed the results of the Interior Ministry’s investigation to Biden, who agreed that an apology was necessary.

“It’s long, long, long overdue. Frankly, there is no excuse for it taking 50 years to issue 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 Indian Community.

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

While the past can’t be changed, Biden hopes to help the future.

“We’re finally modernizing tribal infrastructure for God’s sake,” Biden told the cheering crowd.

He cited billions of dollars for Internet connectivity, as well as physical bridges and roads on tribal lands and restructuring of federal funding to delay tribal decisions. The change shows confidence in the judgment of indigenous peoples on a day when the president apologized for the nation’s judicial failure that spanned generations.

“This is who we are, for God’s sake. Let’s make sure we reach out and embrace 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 that an oral collection of first-person accounts of residential school survivors is currently being created.

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