President Biden is in Arizona on Friday to issue a proposal formal presidential apology to Native American communities for the atrocities committed against Native people during a 150-year era of forced federal Indian boarding schools. The president’s remarks are scheduled for 1:30 PM EDT.
The president chose to speak at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, although his apology is addressed to all tribal communities that have suffered. From 1819 through the 1970s, the federal government and religious institutions across the country established boarding schools to assimilate Alaska Native, American Indian, and Hawaiian children into white American culture by forcibly removing them from their families, communities, and belief systems . Many children who attended these boarding schools suffered emotional and physical abuse, and hundreds of them died.
“I’m going to do something that should have been done a long time ago,” Biden told reporters Thursday afternoon before boarding Marine One. “Make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years.”
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The Department of the Interior, led by India’s first Cabinet Secretary, Deb Haaland, conducted the first-ever federal investigation into India’s federal boarding school era. It revealed that more than 500 deaths of American Indian, Alaska Native and Hawaiian children occurred at 19 of the federal Indian boarding schools, and identified 53 marked and unmarked burial sites at school sites across the country. The federal government often contracted with Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopalian religious institutions to run the schools.
The report found that when children did not adhere to standards or broke the rules, they were subjected to corporal punishment, including “solitary confinement; flogging; withholding food; whipping; beating; and shackles.” Often older children were forced to punish their younger classmates.
Speaking to reporters Thursday aboard Air Force One en route to Arizona, Haaland’s voice broke.
“For more than a century, tens of thousands of Native 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,” Haaland said. ‘This also applies to my own family. For decades, this terrible chapter remained hidden from our history books. But now the work of our government will ensure that no one will ever forget.”
How to watch President Biden’s remarks to the Gila River Indian Community
- What: President Biden apologizes on behalf of the country for the atrocities at federal Indian boarding schools.
- Date: Friday October 25, 2024
- Time: 1:30 PM EDT
- Location: Gila River Indian Community in Arizona
- Online stream: Live on CBS News in the player above and on your mobile or streaming device.
