On October 25, President Joe Biden apologized to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona for the U.S. government’s 150-year history of abusive Native American boarding schools. He is the first U.S. president to issue such an apology, acknowledging the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse suffered by Native American children and the intergenerational trauma it caused.
Biden called the apology “long overdue” and referred to the boarding school program as “a significant mark of shame in American history.” From 1819 to the 1970s, the U.S. established hundreds of boarding schools to forcibly assimilate Native children. An Interior Department report found that at least 973 children died in these institutions. US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is leading efforts to address this troubled legacy.
