In its attempt to crush Native America through assimilation, the U.S. government created, operated, funded and perpetuated a network of hundreds of Indian boarding schools across the country. For centuries, the government forcibly severed Indigenous children from their families and tribal homes. Countless students were subjected to sexual, emotional and physical abuse. Nearly 1,000 schoolchildren died. Many were buried in unmarked graves.
Last month, over 200 years after the first school opened, outgoing President Joe Biden apologized.
How the apology landed for everyone is impossible to fully capture. But The Imprint reached out to boarding school survivors and their descendants, and compiled public statements made in recent weeks.
For some, the apology rang hollow. Others described it as an important first step. But they all said more specific action must follow: more funding for education, the return of buried children’s remains, and adherence to reforms called for by the U.S. Interior Department, which is led by the nation’s first Indigenous cabinet-level secretary, Deb Haaland.
“The apology was a welcome statement to me that should result in solid action in terms of remedying harms to Tribal families and communities,” wrote legal scholar Angelique EagleWoman, chief justice on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Supreme Court and director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
President Biden’s apology is the latest in a short list of acknowledgements of historical harms caused by the U.S. government:
- 1983: The U.S. apologized for shielding a former Gestapo officer known as the “Butcher of Lyon.”
- 1988: President Ronald Reagan apologized to Japanese Americans for their forced removal to internment camps during World War II. The apology was accompanied by $20,000 in compensation to each person who was imprisoned.
- 1993: Congress apologized for a 1893 coup staged against the Hawaiian Queen Lili’uokalani by American businessmen and sugar plantation owners.
- 1997: President Bill Clinton formally recognized the U.S. role in the infamous 40-year Tuskegee experiment, involving doctors from the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama who withheld medical treatment to hundreds of Black men infected with syphilis in order to study the long-term progression of the disease. More than 100 men died.
- 2008: The second-most recent — and entirely symbolic — apology was issued by Congress, an acknowledgment of the U.S. government’s perpetuation of the Atlantic slave trade and Jim Crow laws.
Biden acknowledged Indian boarding school survivors 16 years after the Canadian government apologized for its own network of such abusive institutions. Canada’s apology was followed by a $2 billion settlement with First Nations to compensate survivors for the schools’ acts of “cultural genocide.”
Mental health experts interviewed for this piece emphasized restitution as critical for individual and collective healing from historical trauma. They pointed out that unlike Canada, the U.S. president did not announce his apology alongside any meaningful next steps beyond verbal acknowledgement.
Spero Manson, medical anthropologist and director of the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health, said when answering the question of ‘what does an apology need to have in order to offer healing?’ that self-determination is key. Individuals on this recovery journey, he said, must have the opportunity to dictate their own course in navigating the consequences of their traumas. Boarding school survivors and their descendants are no exception.
“When we talk about treating patients who suffer from trauma — and the emotional and psychological consequences thereof — after that first acknowledging of the root causes, we begin to explore ways to reassert a sense of self-efficacy, of reacquiring the ability to interact positively with one’s environment,” Manson said. “We see this happening at community levels as well as individuals, or at least the prospects of that happening.
So what resources are necessary to enable people to continue on this recovery journey? There are many different resources. The problem is, from my point of view, with the changing nature of federal initiatives and priorities, there’s great uncertainty about the ability of the government to commit consistently, long term, to the provision of these resources and attendant support for tribal communities.”
The Association on American Indian Affairs has called for burial remains to be returned home to ancestral lands.
“Justice requires action, including the repatriation of children who were buried at these schools,” reads a public statement released after the apology. “We must ensure this work not only continues but expands in the next administration. Our next generations depend on it.”
Self-described Indigiqueer scholar and activist Autumn Asher BlackDeer was not impressed with Biden’s apology.
“Apologies without action are like the drive-by privilege checks or hollow readings of land acknowledgments,” said BlackDeer, who is Southern Cheyenne and an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. “No imperialist is getting a pat on the back from me anytime soon.”
Below are responses to Biden’s apology to boarding school survivors and their descendants from around the country:
Abby Abinanti, chief judge of the Yurok Tribal Nation
Abinanti’s mother and her two sisters were sent to Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, California.
“The apology is an important starting point and must be followed up by substantive efforts to ‘make it right.’ That is where the major work must be done with the families, the descendants. Discussions must occur at the ground level, and plans must be created.”
Robert Ludgate, child welfare expert and Siksika Nation descendant
Although he is employed by the University of Washington as a development and facilitation specialist, his views do not reflect the views or positions of the university.
“Taking steps to remedy the effects of the boarding/residential school systems means focusing on contemporary child welfare system reform as they are inextricably intertwined. An apology without action to address what is happening now to Native families in the child welfare system means very little.
Any meaningful apology related to the boarding/residential school system needs to acknowledge both its context in the contemporary child welfare system and be followed with action for systemic changes within the contemporary child welfare system.”
Angelique EagleWoman, chief justice on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Supreme Court
EagleWoman’s father, grandparents and great-grandparents attended Indian boarding schools.
“U.S. President Biden spoke for a government that was engaged in genocidal acts toward Tribal Nations for over a hundred years when he gave the apology on Oct. 25, 2024. This was a long time in coming and absolutely necessary to acknowledge the intergenerational trauma stemming from deliberate U.S. policies towards Tribal children.
The suppression of this history must end. By understanding the harms from the U.S. Indian boarding school era, the need for contemporary responses such as the Indian Child Welfare Act to provide active efforts in unifying Tribal families and transferring child cases to Tribal courts is better understood.
The apology was a welcome statement to me that should result in solid action in terms of remedying harms to Tribal families and communities.”
Minnesota Sen. Mary Kunesh, a New Brighton, Minnesota lawmaker of Lakota heritage
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems. This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.
The generational trauma caused by over a century of family separation and forced cultural assimilation still weighs on Indigenous communities to this day. In a time where we see a resurgence of white supremacist attitudes in this country, it is crucial that we reject these hateful ideas, in order to make sure we do not repeat these injustices of history. Furthermore, we must remain vigilant of acts of ethnic cleansing and prevent them from happening, both in our country and around the world.”
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan of White Earth Band of Ojibwe
Flanagan is a descendant of boarding school survivors.
“There literally is no Native person who hasn’t been impacted by this,” she told The Minnesota Star Tribune. “I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities. It’s a powerful first step toward healing.”
Angelique Albert, CEO of Native Forward Scholars Fund and member of Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes
Albert is the granddaughter of boarding school survivors.
“As we build upon this moment, I encourage President Biden and the next administration to execute the additional seven recommendations from the Interior Department’s report. This includes the responsibility to educate the American public on Native history, including the history of federal Indian boarding schools, and to invest in education for Native people.”
Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe
Barnes speaks often about boarding school survivors within his own tribe and how their needs should be uplifted.
“I’m delighted that President Biden’s apology today has shed an unprecedented light on the evils perpetuated by the United States in Indian boarding schools and elevated the visibility of tribal nations and our fight to find justice for boarding school survivors and descendants. However, I am incredibly disappointed President Biden did not utilize this once-in-a-lifetime occasion to announce any meaningful new action that will bring us closer to those goals.
Until the U.S. Truth and Healing Commission bill is passed, and until American education systems tell the full history of this chapter in our shared history, we will still have a very long fight for justice ahead of us.”
SOURCE: https://imprintnews.org/top-stories/indian-boarding-school-survivors-respond-biden-apology/256088
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