Biden expected to apologize for federal government’s role in Indian boarding schools

By Arlette Saenz, CNN

(CNN) — President Joe Biden is expected to issue an apology to the Native American community for the federal government’s role in the abusive Indian boarding schools that forced Native American children to assimilate over a 150-year period, two sources familiar with the plans said.

“I’m heading to do something that should have been done a long time ago: To make a formal apology to the Indian Nations for the way we treated their children for so many years,” Biden told reporters as he departed the White House on Thursday.

Biden is expected to make the announcement during a visit at the Gila Crossing Community School outside of Phoenix on Friday as he makes his first trip to Indian Country while in office.

“The federally-run Indian boarding school system was designed to assimilate Native Americans by destroying Native culture, language and identity through harsh militaristic and assimilationist methods,” the White House said Thursday. “In making this apology, the president acknowledges that we as a people who love our country must remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful. And we must learn from that history so that it is never repeated.”

The Washington Post first reported the expected apology.

In 2021, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, commissioned the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to review the impact of the federal boarding school policies. The department issued a final report this summer confirming at least 973 Native American children died while attending these federal boarding schools. The review found at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 different schools.

At least 18,000 children were taken from their families and forced to attend more than 400 Indian boarding schools across 37 states or then-territories between 1819 and 1969.

“The federal government – facilitated by the Department I lead – took deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities, and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people,” Haaland said at the time. “These policies caused enduring trauma for Indigenous communities that the Biden-Harris administration is working tirelessly to repair.”

One of the report recommendations called for the US government to formally acknowledge its role in the boarding schools and “accompany this acknowledgment with a formal apology to the individuals, families, and Indian Tribes that were harmed by U.S. policy.” It did not specify who should make the apology.

Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Lewis told CNN the era of the Indian boarding schools is “an incredibly painful time that is still living with us in a very real way with the generational trauma coming out of that period.”

“This is going to be just so significant to our boarding school survivors and the families,” Lewis said. “My hope is that by shining a light on this sad history, redeeming this through this apology, acknowledging that this in fact happened, that it will be documented in history moving forward and the hopes that this type of very painful, very traumatic history doesn’t happen again.”

Haaland, Lewis and several other tribal leaders, including Bay Mills Indian Community President Whitney Gravelle, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation Chairman Rodney Butler and Menominee Indian Tribe Chairwoman Gena Kakkak, joined the president aboard Air Force One to Phoenix on Thursday.

The announcement comes as the president is looking to burnish his legacy in his final months in office. Ahead of the visit, the White House has highlighted the Biden administration’s investments in the Native American community, including nearly $46 million doled out through the American Rescue Plan, bipartisan infrastructure law, and the Inflation Reduction Act, including initiatives to build roads, provide clean water, mitigate drought issues and expand access to high-speed internet in the communities.

The president has also moved to strengthen tribal sovereignty, restored or designated sacred tribal lands as national monuments, and taken steps to address violence against indigenous Americans. First lady Dr. Jill Biden has also been a frequent emissary to Native Americans, visiting 10 Native communities over the last four years.

The efforts to highlight the administration’s work with tribal communities is taking place less than two weeks before Election Day as Biden also looks to boost Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. The Native American community makes up a small slice of the electorate in Arizona, but it could prove pivotal in the battleground states, where Biden beat former President Donald Trump by roughly 10,000 votes in 2020.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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