Joe Biden Set to Apologize for Indian Boarding Schools

President Joe Biden is expected to apologize to Native Americans on Friday for the U.S. government’s role in the Indian boarding school system.
“I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen,” Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the first Native American to lead the Interior, said. “It’s a big deal to me. I’m sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country.”
No American president has ever formally apologized for the forced removal of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children from their lands into the boarding school system.
Haaland will join Biden during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president on Friday where he will deliver his apology.
“It will be one of the high points of my entire life,” said Haaland, whose grandparents were forced into a boarding school.
Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system, which ended in 1969, shortly after becoming interior secretary.
At least 18,000 children, some as young as 4 years old, were taken from their parents and forced into schools aimed at assimilating them into white society in an effort to deprive their tribal nations of land, according to the probe’s findings.
At least 973 Native American children died in the boarding school system, which was comprised of hundreds of schools. Additionally, 74 gravesites associated with the schools were found. Officials said that other children may have died after becoming sick at the schools and being returned home.
Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. called Biden’s upcoming apology “a profound moment for Native people across this country.”
“Our children were made to live in a world that erased their identities, their culture and upended their spoken language,” Hoskin told The Associated Press. “Oklahoma was home to 87 boarding schools in which thousands of our Cherokee children attended. Still today, nearly every Cherokee Nation citizen somehow feels the impact.”
Melissa Nobles, Chancellor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and author of The Politics of Official Apologies, said Friday’s apology could lead to more progress for tribal nations seeking continued action from the government.
“These things have value because it validates the experiences of the survivors and acknowledges they’ve been seen and we heard you, and also there’s a lot of historical evidence to suggest this happened,” Nobles said to The Associated Press.
The Interior Department continues to work with tribal nations to return the remains of children on federal lands. Many tribes are still at odds with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has refused to follow federal law regulating the return of Native American remains buried at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
Hoskin said Biden’s anticipated apology is just “an important step, which must be followed by continued action.”
In 2017, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave an apology for the country’s forcing of Indigenous children into residential schools for much of the 1900s. Many of the indigenous children were abused, according to reports.
“For far too many students, profound cultural loss led to poverty, family violence, substance abuse and community breakdown,” Trudeau said at the time. “It led to mental and physical health issues that have impeded their happiness and that of their family. Far too many continue to face adversity today as a result of time spent in residential schools, and for that we are sorry.”
His apology was followed by the establishment of a truth and reconciliation process as well as the channeling of billions of dollars into First Nations, which are Indigenous peoples in Canada, to deal with the devastation left by the government.
Last year, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a bill to establish a truth and reconciliation process. It remains in the Senate.
Pope Francis apologized for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s residential schools in 2022.
“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said at the time.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.
Update 10/24/24 3:57 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.