The president of the United States, Joe Bidenasked for forgiveness this Friday on behalf of the Government for the atrocities committed in hundreds of public boarding schools for indigenous children for 150 years, during which they were deprived of their language and culture.
“The federal government has never formally apologized for what happened, until today. As president of the United States, I formally apologize for what we did,” he said during an event in the Gila River Indian community, in Arizona.
“The pain we cause will always be an indelible mark of shame, of blood, in the history of the United States,” Biden added.
At least a thousand boys and girls died in those boarding schoolsalthough the figure could be much higher. The president said he bears “the firm responsibility of being the first president to formally apologize to indigenous peoplesNative Americans, Hawaiians and Alaskans.
“It’s too late. There is no excuse for this apology It took 50 years to arrive“said Biden.
Between 1819 and 1969, thousands of indigenous children were forced to attend these church-run boarding schools and publicly funded religious organizations for the purpose of forcibly assimilating them into white society.
“For those who lived through that period, it was too painful to talk about. For our nation, too shameful to acknowledge it. But what history is silent It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It happened,” said the president.
Biden was accompanied in the act of redress by his Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, the first Native American to be part of the United States Government and whose grandparents and one of her great-grandparents were forced to attend these boarding schools.
“My maternal grandparents were only eight years old when they were taken from their communities and forced to live in a Catholic boarding school until they were 13. My great-grandfather was also taken, sent by train thousands of miles from our small town of Mesita. Many children like them never returned home“said the secretary.
Haaland, who belongs to the Pueblo tribe of Laguna (New Mexico), launched an investigation three years ago into residential schools and, last July, published a report that revealed that at least 973 indigenous minors died from illness or malnutrition in the system of US Government boarding schools.
As a result of the investigation, graves were found, some unidentified, in 65 of the more than 400 boarding schools and the Department of Home Affairs formally urged the Executive to apologize for the trauma inflicted on generations of Indigenous children.
The visit comes as Biden seeks to build his legacy before leaving the White House in January 2025 and with less than two weeks until the Nov. 5 election.
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