On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that he will formally apologise for the way the US government treated Native American children who were taken from their homes by force and placed in a system of cruel boarding schools.
A recent government assessment described multiple instances of physical, mental, and sexual abuse as well as the deaths of over 950 children during the more than 150 years that the schools attempted to forcefully assimilate Native Americans.
“I’m heading to do something that should have been done a long time ago,” the president said as he left the White House. “To make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years.”
During his visit to Arizona’s Gila River Indian Reservation, one of the states with the largest Native American populations in the nation and a crucial electoral battleground in the US, Biden is expected to offer the formal apology on Friday.
From the beginning of the 19th century until the 1970s, the US government operated the boarding schools.
in least 973 students perished in these schools, many of which were located far from their birthplaces, according to the research.
The first Native American cabinet secretary in US history, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, played a significant role in the inquiry that led to the report.
“For more than a century, tens of thousands of Indigenous children as young as four years old, were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools,” Haaland told reporters. “This includes my own family.”
“For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books,” she continued. “But now our administration’s work will ensure that no one will ever forget.”
The apology comes after official announcements in Canada, where hundreds of children perished at comparable boarding schools, and other nations where historical mistreatment of Indigenous people is becoming more widely acknowledged.
White House officials said in a statement that the apology was being offered to “remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful.”
“That the president is taking that step tomorrow is so historic, I’m not sure I could adequately put its impact into words,” Haaland said.
Biden’s trip to Arizona, a state he barely won in 2020, coincides with Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump running a very close presidential campaign.
