Biden Apologizes for Boarding Schools - "Long over due!"
Oct 25
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During a visit to Gila River Indian Community today, President Joe Biden issued a “long overdue” formal apology for the abuse and trauma inflicted by the federal government’s Indian boarding school system. More than 900 Indigenous children died during what the president called “one of the most horrific chapters in American history.”
The federal government developed the Indian boarding school system as the centerpiece of a nearly two-century-long policy of forced assimilation. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly abducted from their families and sent to far-away boarding schools where they were given English names, forced to cut their hair, and forbidden from speaking their languages. Many children were beaten, starved, and abused in these schools.
“For Indigenous peoples, they served as places of trauma and terror for more than 100 years. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children, as young as four years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government and religious institutions,” President Biden said in Laveen, Arizona.
“Nearly 1,000 documented Native child deaths, though the real number is likely to be much, much higher. Lost generations, culture and language. Lost trust. It’s horribly, horribly wrong. It’s a sin on our soul,” he continued.
“I formally apologize as president of United States of America for what we did.”