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Arizona, US, October 26 – US President Joe Biden has extended an apology to Native Americans for the government-funded boarding schools that subjected Indigenous children to abuse and forced assimilation for over 150 years, describing it as "one of the most horrific chapters in American history," according to CNN.
During an address in Laveen, Arizona, Biden called for a moment of silence to honor those who suffered and the generations still impacted by the trauma. He stated, “Quite frankly, there is no excuse that this apology took 150 years to make.”
Between 1819 and 1969, more than 18,000 children were separated from their families and placed in over 400 boarding schools across 37 states and territories, as reported by CNN. In 2021, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, launched the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to assess the schools' impacts on Indigenous communities. This summer's final report revealed that at least 973 Native American children died while attending these federal institutions.
President Biden emphasized the severity of this history, stating, "Generations of native children were stolen, taken to unfamiliar places, with people who spoke a language they had never heard." He described the devastating loss of joy in Native communities and the abuses these children faced—emotional, physical, and sexual mistreatment, forced labor, adoptions without parental consent, and, in some cases, abandonment in unmarked graves.
Biden noted that those who returned home were often “wounded in body and spirit.” Speaking at Gila Crossing Community School near Phoenix, he reflected that, although an apology cannot restore what was lost under the federal boarding school policy, "we're finally moving forward into the light."
This visit marked Biden’s first to tribal lands as president and the first visit by a sitting president to Indian Country in a decade, following President Barack Obama’s 2014 visit to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, CNN reported.
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