President Biden’s apology for abuse at Indian boarding schools seen as just a start

President Biden’s apology to Native Americans for cruel residential school policies seen as just the beginning

President Joe Biden did something last Friday that no president has ever done. He apologized for the harm caused to generations of Native American children who were removed from their homes and forced to attend federal boarding schools.

From 1878 until nearly a century later, there were more than a hundred federally funded schools for Native children in Alaska. At that time, they were punished for speaking their own language and were also subjected to physical and sexual violence.

President Biden chose the Gila Reservation near Phoenix to apologize. He said he was pleased to hear the voices of young people singing traditional songs at the start of the ceremony – voices that were once silenced by boarding schools.

“As president of the United States of America, I formally apologize for what we did,” Biden said. “I formally apologize.”

The President told the crowd that his apology was one of the most important things he had ever done in his entire career as President of the United States.

“I’m honored, truly honored, to be in this special place on this special day,” Biden said.

“Frankly, there is no excuse for the fact that it took fifty years to get this apology. The pain this causes will always be a significant shame, a stain on American history. For too long, all this happened with virtually no public attention, it was not written about in our history textbooks, it was not taught in our schools.”

Jim LaBelle sat in the crowd among the boarding school survivors. LaBelle is an Alaska native and member of the National Native Residential School Healing Coalition. Before the president apologized, he and his Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, shared a hug with Jim LaBelle and his wife, he said.

“It’s almost indescribable how to express this feeling of recognition. It was just a very spiritual moment,” LaBelle said. “He just understood why we were there. “

LaBelle says the president’s apology was a powerful gesture that awakened the memories of those who never recovered from the trauma of boarding school and died young from drug addiction and suicide.

“When I heard the apology today,” he said, “I thought about it, hoping that their souls would feel those words and feelings.”

In his speech, President Biden mentioned Rosita Worl, to whom he recently presented the National Medal of Arts in the Humanities at a White House ceremony. He talked about how she was taken from her family at the age of six and sent to boarding school. He called her story a story of truth and healing. The President said that as a leading anthropologist, she helped usher in an era of understanding.

Benjamin Yakuk watched a livestream of the president’s apology from his office at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage, where he is chief researcher of Native history.

Opposite his desk you will find a wall covered with pieces of rope attached to photographs and stickers, much like what you see on television in homicide detectives.

Yakuk says the web of threads is like a map of the nation’s crime scene.

“That is exactly what we are doing now, plotting the genocide of not only the native peoples of Alaska, but ultimately all indigenous peoples.”

Yakuk is currently studying the connections between boarding schools and the ideas that flowed between them. Yakuk says it is important to understand what influenced the brutal militaristic policies aimed at erasing children’s Indigenous identities. Some of them, he said, come from schools in Alaska.

Yakuk calls the president’s unprecedented apology a “big deal” but still falls short of what is needed.

“While the apology is welcome and surprising, the work should never end there because it is just the beginning.”

Yakuk says that without truth there can be no healing. And without action there will be no meaningful apology.

The Alaska Federation of Natives praised President Biden’s apology but called for tangible steps toward healing and justice.

“We appreciate President Biden’s recognition of the pain and trauma caused by the residential school policy,” AFN President Ben Mallott said in a statement. “This apology is an important step forward, but it must be accompanied by meaningful action to address the ongoing consequences of this historical injustice.”

FSA called:

• A comprehensive study of the Indian residential school era.
• Reviving native languages ​​and cultures that boarding schools had nearly destroyed.
• Bringing home the remains of Alaska Native children who died in residential schools so they can be buried with their families and in their communities.

Earlier this month at the AFN convention, delegates passed a resolution in support of Senate and House bills that would establish a Truth and Healing Commission under the Federal Indian Residential Schools Policy Act. The legislation also covers the repatriation of children’s graves.