Biden to formally apologize for Indian boarding schools

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President Joe Biden is scheduled to issue a formal apology Friday for a government-run boarding school system that forcibly separated generations of Native American children from their families.

"I’m heading to do something that should have been done a long time ago: make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years," Biden told reporters Thursday. "That’s why I’m going. That’s why I’m heading West."

Biden will deliver his remarks at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna who became the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, and Deborah Parker, chief executive of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, are scheduled to join him on his trip to Phoenix.

At a White House briefing Thursday, Haaland said members of her own family had been forced into the board school system, and she referred to Biden as “the best president for Indian Country in my lifetime.”

“For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books, but now our administration’s work will ensure that no one will ever forget,” she said.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement Thursday that the apology was “long-overdue” and “must be followed by continued action,” including efforts to preserve Native languages and repatriate ancestors and cultural items.

Beginning in 1819 and continuing through at least 1969, the U.S. pursued policy establishing and supporting Indian boarding schools that sought the forced assimilation of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children, according to the Interior Department. Many students who attended the schools were abused, and some died.

In June 2021, Haaland launched an initiative to investigate the federal Indian boarding school system and shed light on its traumas. An initial report on the system published in 2022 found that hundreds of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died attending Indian boarding schools run or supported by the U.S. government. A second volume of the report was released this year.

The more recent report stemming from Haaland's initiative found that the boarding school system consisted of 417 institutions across 37 states or then-territories, and it identified the deaths of at least 973 children who were enrolled at the schools. The report also documented at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 school sites.

The report this year urged the federal government to both establish a national memorial to acknowledge the experiences of those in the boarding schools and to apologize to those harmed by the policy.