Native Americans want to see more action behind Biden apology for boarding schools

President Biden’s historic apology on Friday to Tribal Nations for the U.S. government's Native American boarding school policy has sparked celebration through the communities, along with some trepidation as advocates push for actions to follow the words.

Biden during his first diplomatic visit as president to a Tribal Nation issued the White House's first official apology for a 150-year policy that ripped American Indian children from their families and sent them to forced-assimilation boarding schools, where many were killed or abused.

"President Joe Biden’s apology today on behalf of the U.S. government for its role in the federal Indian boarding schools is a critical first step in the truth and reconciliation process for Native and Indigenous communities. Indian boarding school policies are not a horror of the past — these institutions operated through 1969, and many Native people who were subjected to these cruel policies are still living today,” said Angelique Albert, CEO of Native Forward Scholars Fund.

Biden’s impassioned speech at Gila River Indian Community in Arizona highlighted the cruel policy, which began in 1819.

The more than 400 boarding schools run by the government and various churches stripped Native children of their culture and language in an attempt at assimilation, abusing and even killing students in the process.

“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,” Biden said Friday.

“I have a solemn responsibility to be the first president to formally apologize to the Native people,” the president added. “It’s long, long, long overdue. Quite frankly, there’s no excuse this apology took 50 years to make.”

The speech came after the Department of the Interior released investigation findings over the summer that found almost 60 gravesites at the boarding schools and confirmed nearly 1,000 Native children were killed from disease or malnutrition.

“Generations of Native children stolen, taken away to places they didn’t know, with people they never met, that spoke a language they’d never heard,” Biden said in Arizona. “Children would arrive at schools, their clothes taken off, their hair they were told was sacred was chopped off, their names literally erased.”

Outside groups speculate the move, which comes less than three months before Biden leaves office, may have been pushed by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American member of a president's Cabinet.

“I think her leadership had a lot to do with the focus on boarding schools and their impact [...] And, you know, not surprisingly, with the election coming up, I'm sure they wanted to make this happen,” said Cheryl Crazy Bull, president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund.

Other countries, notably Canada, have also apologized for crimes inflicted on their Indigenous populations.

“It may not be well known that numerous other national governments have issued similar apologies to Native peoples within their recent pasts,” said Ned Blackhawk, professor of history at Yale University.

“Those apologies, however, have often not bred substantive and transformative practices thereafter. While I am very excited to hear that President Biden is taking this important step, I'm also hoping subsequent steps will be made to particularly understand this experience, to investigate it, to study and learn from it, and potentially implement practices that ensure that such assimilation efforts never happen yet,” Blackhawk added.

During his speech, Biden highlighted steps he has taken to bolster Native Americans, such as issuing executive orders to give their communities more permanence and record-breaking investments such as $32 billion going to Tribal Nations in the American Rescue Plan.

But activists say not enough has been done.

"I am actually the daughter of two people who went to boarding schools and the wife of someone who also went to boarding school. So, I know the impact on the well being and the emotional and spiritual wellness of people, I know the impact on their ability to access education and economic resources. So, I think there have been a lot of investments by this administration, but they're insufficient when it comes to community development, wellness and education,” Cheryl Crazy Bull said.

“I work in the tribal colleges and universities. We're institutions that are severely underfunded. And, clearly, it would be a worthwhile investment to give more resources to these institutions so they can do more work in the communities. I think of it as reparative work, you know, repairing the damages that were done. So that requires more money than what's currently being invested,” she added.

The additional investments needed should be seen as part of the healing from these boarding schools that the Native communities have been working through for decades, others argue.

“Tribal Nations have already begun to address the harm caused by the federal Indian boarding school era in their own communities. As the United States spent Tribal Nations’ own money on these schools, now is the time for the United States to provide the funding and resources necessary for Tribal Nations to continue their efforts to heal from this shameful era,” said Beth Margaret Wright, staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund.