President Biden officially apologizes for Native American boarding school

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – President Joe Biden’s visit to Arizona raised an issue the country has tried to ignore for decades.

He apologized for The era of the federal Indian boarding school which lasted 150 years and ended almost 50 years ago.

Biden told a crowd at the Gila River Indian Community that to usher in a new era of federal-tribal relations, the country must fully acknowledge the past.

“I am formally sorry! As President of the United States of America, I officially apologize for what we have done!” the president exclaimed as the crowd cheered.

Biden’s apology also highlighted that during the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of children from Native American, Alaska Native and Hawaiian communities were taken to more than 500 boarding schools far from their homes to assimilate them and erase their culture. Abuses were rampant, resulting in the death of as many as a thousand people.

There were three such schools in southern Arizona, and there are schools all over the country HERE.

“These federal Indian boarding schools have had an impact on every Native person I know,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland told the crowd.

Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, provided the results of the Interior Department investigation to Biden, who agreed that an apology was necessary.

“It’s a long, long, long time ago. “Frankly, there is no excuse why it took 50 years to make this apology,” Biden said.

“You can’t change the past, but at least we heard these words, you know, you can’t change the past or what happened, but an apology is a good, appropriate apology,” said Ivan Whitman, a member of the Gila River Tribe of the Indian Community.

Whitman said he knows stories of children spending their youth away from their parents.

While the past can’t be changed, Biden hopes to help in the future.

“We’re finally modernizing tribal infrastructure, for God’s sake,” Biden told the cheering crowd.

He pointed to billions of dollars in internet connections as well as physical bridges and roads on tribal lands and the restructuring of federal funding to defer decision-making by tribes. The change shows confidence in the judgment of indigenous peoples on the day the president apologized for the failure of a judgment on the country that had lasted for generations.

“This is who we are, for God’s sake. Let us reach out to him and accept him, because you make us stronger. You are America. May God bless you all and may God protect our troops. Thank you,” Biden concluded.

Haaland also said an oral collection of first-person narratives from residential school survivors is being developed.

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