Biden apologizes for Native American boarding schools and their legacy By Reuters
Written by Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden apologized on Thursday for the U.S. government's role in running abusive residential schools for more than 150 years, acknowledging the damage the community endured for generations.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as cabinet secretary, has launched an investigation into the troubled legacy of Indian boarding school policies. The department's investigation report found that 973 children died in these schools.
The government-run Indian boarding school system is designed to assimilate Native Americans by “destroying Native culture, language and identity through brutal methods of war and assimilation,” the White House said Thursday.
No US president has formally apologized for the act until now.
KEY QUOTES
“The president also believes that in order to usher in the next era of Federal-Tribal relations we need to fully acknowledge the wrongs of the past,” the White House said in a statement.
“In his apology, the president admits that we, as people who love our country, must remember and teach our full history even if it hurts. And we must learn from that history so that it never happens again.”
CONTEXT
From 1819 to the 1970s, the United States implemented policies that established and supported hundreds of American Indian boarding schools across the country.
The purpose of these integrated residential schools was to culturally integrate American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children by forcibly removing them from their families, communities, languages, religions and cultural beliefs, the Department of the Interior said.
The US spent more than $23 billion, adjusted for inflation in 2023, during that time to run schools and matching policies.
Although the children attended government residential schools, many endured physical and emotional abuse and in some cases died.
Like the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have in recent years reviewed past abuses of Aboriginal communities, including children in schools.
