Biden issues historic apology to Indian residential schools • Florida-Phoenix

Standing solemnly before a crowd full of indigenous people on the grassy field of a tribal elementary school near Phoenix, President Joe Biden formally apologized to indigenous communities across the country for the role the United States government played in a Native American residential school. a system, a system that has harmed indigenous people for generations.

“After 150 years, the United States government eventually ended the program, but the federal government has never formally apologized for what happened,” Biden said. “To this day, I formally apologize as the President of the United States of America for what we did.”

The crowd greeted Biden’s apology with loud cheers. He is the first sitting president in 10 years to visit the tribal nation.

He told the community that it was long overdue and that it was only fitting that it should be provided in a tribal school within an indigenous community deeply connected to culture and tradition.

“I have the solemn responsibility of being the first president to formally apologize to indigenous peoples, Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, Alaska Natives and federal Indian residential schools,” he said. “It’s long, long, long overdue. Frankly, there is no excuse for this apology taking (150) years.

Biden said the pain caused by the federal Indian residential school policy will always be a great shame for the United States.

“For those who went through that period, it was too painful to talk about,” he said. “It was too shameful for the nation to admit.”

“This formal apology is the culmination of decades of work by many brave people,” Biden said, thanking many in the audience, including residential school survivors and descendants.

“I know that no apology can and will not make up for what was lost during the darkness of federal residential care policy,” Biden said. “But today we are finally moving forward into the light.”

Biden’s apology, delivered Friday at Gila River Crossing School in the Gila River Indian Community, came three years after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched the first federal investigation into Indian boarding schools.

Haaland spoke in front of Biden and was greeted on stage by Miss Gila River, Susannah Ozif, as “Aunt Deb.” Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, told the crowd that thinking about our ancestors today is important because they endured and their stories are everywhere.

“We tell these stories because Native American history is American history,” Haaland said.

Department of Internal Affairs dismissed final report of the boarding school in July He provided eight recommendations from the Department of Indian Affairs to the federal government that will support the path to recovery for tribal communities.

“Memorial Day”

At the top of that list was a call for the United States to acknowledge and apologize for its role in the federal Indian residential school policy that has harmed — and continues to harm — Native peoples across the country.

“Today is a day of remembrance, but it’s also a day to celebrate our perseverance,” Haaland said. “Despite everything that’s happened, we’re still here.”

While for most of the United States boarding schools are places where wealthy families send their children for an exclusive education, Haaland noted how different the perspective was for Native Americans.

“For indigenous peoples, they have served as a place of trauma and terror for over 100 years,” she said. “Tens of thousands of indigenous children as young as four have been removed from their families and communities and forced into residential schools run by US government agencies.”

Haaland said the federal Indian residential school system has affected every indigenous person she knows, and they are all suffering the trauma caused by those policies and schools.

“This is the first time in history that a United States cabinet secretary has shared the trauma of our past, and I recognize that that trauma was caused by the agency I now lead,” Haaland said. “For decades, this horrific chapter was hidden from our history books, but now the work of our administration ensures that no one will ever forget.”

In 2021, Haaland launched the Federal Indian Residential Schools Initiative to shed light on a “horrific era in our country’s history.”

The initiative produced two reports and visited dozens of indigenous communities, listening to survivors and descendants to document their entire experience as the purpose of Indian residential schools was to assimilate and uproot the indigenous population.

Haaland said the investigation into these residential schools is prevalent in these reports and shows the “loud and unequivocal truth” that the federal government has taken deliberate and strategic steps through its residential school policy to isolate Indigenous children from their families and steal from their languages, cultures and traditions, which are fundamental to indigenous peoples.

“As we stand here together, my friends and family, we know that the federal government has failed,” she said. “He could not destroy our languages, our traditions, our way of life. It couldn’t destroy us because we persevered.”

Preservation of the native language

A report by the Federal Residential Schools Initiative urged Congress and federal agencies to take action, and Haaland said some of those recommendations are already being implemented.

For example, Haaland said the department is working with the departments of education, health and human services to invest in preserving native languages.

“We are developing a 10-year national plan led by tribal leaders and native language teachers,” Haaland said, and more details about their efforts will be released later.

“The painful loss of our native languages ​​was a constant theme as we met with survivors across our country,” she said.

Another effort Haaland highlighted is the department’s collaboration with the National Native American Residential School Healing Coalition to create an oral collection of first-person accounts of residential school survivors.

Haaland said the collaboration is a way to ensure future generations learn the stories of the residential school era and understand the intergenerational trauma caused by residential school policies.

As the crowd listened to Biden’s speech, O’odham Solidarity protesters could be heard as one of them walked toward the stage with a placard calling for justice for the Palestinians.

As Biden made his remarks, one protester shouted from the crowd, “No, what about the people in Gaza.”

The protest was met with cheers from the crowd, with a man in the crowd yelling, “Get out of here.” But Biden said let her speak.

“Let her go,” Biden said as the protester was being removed. “A lot of innocent people are being killed and it has to stop.”

Even after the protesters voiced their concerns, the crowd’s attention returned to Biden as he continued his speech about his years at the boarding school as well as his investments in Indian Country.

“It was a long time ago”

Crystalyn Curley said she thought of her grandfathers as Biden delivered his apology, which brought back memories of the stories they told about their time in residential schools and the trauma they endured.

“It’s a bittersweet moment,” Curley said. “I think there’s a lot of emotion here because every one of our Navajo citizens is connected to the trauma that happened in our residential schools.”

Curley is the speaker of the Navajo National Council and has heard stories about the federal residential school system from her community for generations.

“It was a long time ago,” Curley said. “I’m really grateful to our President Biden for taking that step and being the first to have the courage to say, ‘Yes, we did it wrong.’

Curley said that’s what many indigenous people have been waiting to hear, including the Navajo people.

“Many of our children have not returned home,” she said, and the policy’s lasting effects include the loss of language and culture.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted an investigation federal Indian boarding school system throughout the United States, discovering more than 400 schools and more than 70 burial sites.

Arizona was home to 47 of these schoolsin which the roots took part children who were removed from their families and tried to assimilate them through education—and, often, physical punishment.

The legacy of federal Indian boarding school system is not new to the indigenous population. For centuries, indigenous people across the country have felt the loss of their culture, traditions, language and land.

Several federal boarding schools were established by the Navajo in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and many are still in operation today, although under different policies than when they were built.

Curley said Navajo Nation still has many federally operated Bureau of Indian Education schools, but some families are still hesitant to enroll their children in them because of the residential school’s history.

She hopes the apology will lead to the federal government investing in tribal nations’ education systems.

“Start investing back into our children and our mental, spiritual (and) psychological health that this has caused for so many decades,” she added.

Pulse

Curley said she hopes the momentum of Biden’s apology will carry into the next administration, acknowledging the wrongs done to indigenous communities.

Now that a formal apology has been issued, Curley said healing needs to happen, and that comes in the form of investment in Indigenous communities, which she says is best done by funding public and mental health resources and reinvesting in culture and language revival in their communities.

“It takes at least two generations for healing to happen,” Curley said.

After Biden apologized, indigenous organizations and human rights advocates from across Indian Country called for action.

Cheryl Crazy Bull, president and chief executive officer of the American Indian College Foundation, said the federal government and philanthropists must make significant investments in restorative and wellness approaches and institutions to repair the damage caused by the residential school era.

“The Indigenous people we support, from our youngest children to our students, deserve this investment,” she said.

Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and CEO of IllumiNative, called Biden’s apology a significant step toward justice for Indian country, but said it shouldn’t be the end of the government’s efforts.

“True accountability requires comprehensive action — starting with full transparency about the extent of these abuses and the return of the remains of indigenous children to their families and communities,” she said.

“We must continue to demand further accountability for the harm done to indigenous peoples, especially indigenous children who have suffered neglect, inhumane conditions, physical and sexual abuse and death under the guise of education,” Echo Hawke said. “The federal government must commit to supporting Indigenous-led healing initiatives, language revitalization programs, and cultural preservation efforts to effectively begin repairing the damage of the past.”

This story first appeared in the Arizona Mirror, the Phoenix member of the nonprofit States Newsroom.

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