US President Joe Biden on Friday formally apologised to Native Americans over the US government’s role in operating boarding schools that for over 150 years aimed to assimilate children by taking them away from their families and trying to erase their languages and culture.
Biden’s apology came at the Gila Crossing community school outside of Phoenix, Arizona. This was his maiden visit to the Indian County as President.
Calling it “one of the most horrific chapters in American history,” Joe Biden said, “After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program, but the federal government has never, never formally apologised for what happened – until today. I formally apologise, as president of the United States of America, for what we did. I formally apologise. That’s long overdue.”
Hundreds of native Indian boarding schools were run for over 150 years, starting from the early 1800s until the late 1960s. The federal government shifted thousands of Native American children from their homes and forced them into these boarding schools across the country. The idea behind this was to erase the tribal ties and cultural practices of these children, The New York Times reported.
At these schools, children of Native Americans were given new names, punished for speaking their native language, besides being forcibly converted to Christianity. Many of them were sexually and physically assaulted, the report said.
In July this year, the US’ Interior Department identified close to 19,000 such children, who attended these schools between 1819 and 1969. However, it acknowledged that there were many more of them.
Shockingly, at least 973 children died at these schools and were buried at 74 sites, with 21 of them being unmarked, the department’s report states.
These schools were funded by Congress via annual appropriations and by selling the land of tribes. For running them, the US government had hired Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Congregationalist associations.
As per the US Interior department, the government spent roughly $23 billion (in 2023 dollars) on the programme, operating these institutions in 37 states and territories.
Not just that, the government reportedly forced parents to send their children to schools, while the Interior Department got the authority to withhold guaranteed food rations to the families that resisted.
Some of the survivors — now in their late 60s, 70s and 80s — have termed their experience at these schools as “pure hell”. “It was like a prison setting… I can still feel the hurt,” Ron Singer, one of the survivors, told New York Times.
Another person, named Denise Lajimodiere, said the government’s policy was to get them “away from their homes, their culture, their language, their families and their spirituality and totally assimilate them into white ways”.
