### President Biden Issues Historic Apology to Native American Communities for Atrocities of Federal Boarding Schools

In a momentous address on Friday, President Biden delivered a formal presidential apology to Native American communities, acknowledging the deep injustices inflicted by federal Indian boarding schools over a span of 150 years. Speaking at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, Biden extended his apology to all tribal nations for the enduring suffering and loss they have experienced.

"After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program," President Biden remarked. "But the federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened - until today. I formally apologize, as president of the United States of America, for what we did. I formally apologize. That's long overdue."

From 1819 through the 1970s, the U.S. government, in collaboration with religious institutions, imposed a system of boarding schools designed to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children into white American culture. This heinous practice involved forcibly removing children from their families and obliterating their cultural identities. President Biden described this era as "one of the most horrific chapters in American history" and a "sin on our soul," and held a moment of silence for the lost lives.

"Generations of Native children stolen, taken away to places they didn't know, with people they'd never met, who spoke a language they had never heard," President Biden said. "Native communities silenced. Their children's laughter and play were gone. Children who would arrive at schools, their clothes taken off, their hair that they were told was sacred, chopped off. Their names literally erased, replaced by a number or an English name."

The boarding schools were notorious for subjecting children to emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, resulting in the deaths of hundreds. Those who survived returned home with deep physical and spiritual wounds. President Biden underscored the gravity of his apology by calling it one of the most consequential acts of his presidency. "I say this with all sincerity - this, to me, is one of the most consequential things I've ever had the opportunity to do in my whole career as president of the United States," he stated. "It's an honor, a genuine honor, to be in this special place on this special day."

For Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the history is deeply personal. As the first-ever Native American Cabinet secretary, Haaland recounted how her maternal grandparents and great-grandfather were forcibly placed in boarding schools. At the event, she revealed the sweeping and intergenerational trauma these policies have inflicted on Indigenous communities.

"Tens of thousands of Indigenous children as young as 4 years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government and religious institutions," Haaland stated. "These federal Indian boarding schools have impacted every Indigenous person I know. Some are survivors, some are descendants. But we all carry the trauma that these policies and these places inflicted."

Under Haaland's leadership, the Interior Department conducted the first-ever federal investigation into the boarding school era. The probe found more than 500 deaths of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children at 19 federal boarding schools and identified 53 marked and unmarked burial sites nationwide. The investigation also detailed the brutal punishments children faced, including solitary confinement, flogging, and other forms of corporal punishment, often administered by older children upon younger ones.

"The federal government failed to annihilate our languages, our traditions, our life ways, it failed to destroy us, because we persevered," Haaland declared to applause. She vowed that the administration's work would ensure the atrocities of the boarding school program are never forgotten. "For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books. But now, our administration's work will ensure that no one will ever forget."