United States President Joe Biden has issued a formal apology to Native Americans for the government’s role in separating Indigenous children from their parents and forcing them into abusive boarding schools.
Biden gave the apology, long-sought by Tribal nations, on Friday during his first-ever visit to Native country, calling the boarding school abuses a “blot on American history”.
Speaking at the Gila River Indian Community’s land on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, Biden called the abuses; “a sin on our soul”.
He added, “Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make … Today, we’re finally moving forward into the light.”
Between 1869 and the 1960s, more than 18,000 Indigenous children — some as young as four — were forcibly taken from their families and put into the boarding school system.
The schools, often run by Christian churches, were part of the forced assimilation policy launched by Congress in 1819 as an effort to “civilise” Native Americans, Native Alaskans and Native Hawaiian peoples.
Children were beaten, sexually abused, banned from speaking their language and acting in any way that reflected their culture. Many didn’t see their families for years. At least 987 children died in the system, according to a US Department of the Interior investigation.
Biden said it was time the shameful history, still largely unknown, is put out in the open.
Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds, reporting from Gila River, said the president received a “warm welcome” from community members gathered to hear his apology, with several Native American leaders calling it a “profound” and “powerful” moment.
“Elders who actually lived through and survived the boarding school experience, have waited for their entire lives for this moment, many of them never believing that it would actually happen, but now it has,” said Reynolds.
Ramona Charette Klein, a 77-year-old boarding school survivor and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, told The Associated Press news agency that Biden “deserves credit” for finally putting attention on the issue.
“I do think that will reflect well on Vice President Harris, and I hope this momentum will continue,” she said, adding that the next president must follow up the apology with concrete action.
Biden’s Interior Secretary Deb Haalan, the first Native American in Cabinet, highlighted the resilience of her community’s “languages, our traditions, our life ways”.
Despite “everything that has happened, we are still here”, said Haalan, who joined Biden at the event.
Democrats hope Biden’s apology and visit to Native land in Arizona will provide a boost to Vice President Kamala Harris’s turnout effort in a key battleground state he carried by just 10,000 votes in 2020. (AlJazeera)