President Joseph Biden issued a formal apology on October 25 in Arizona for the U.S. government’s role in forcing more than 60,000 American Indian and Alaska Native children into Indian boarding schools for a 150-year period that resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,000 students. This federal policy stripped Native American children of their language and culture to force their assimilation into White society.

Speaking to the apology, Cheryl Crazy Bull, president and CEO of the American Indian College Fund, said, “The experiences of Native people with boarding schools touches nearly every Native American alive today. The federal government policy had a goal of total assimilation of Native people. This assimilation was to be achieved by separating children from families, banning the use of Native languages, and forcing children and young people to adopt Western practices, including insisting they give up their own spiritual ways to become Christians. During this period across several generations, many children were physically abused, sexually assaulted, malnourished, and mistreated. The Interior Department urged the U.S. government this summer to formally apologize for the enduring trauma inflicted on Native Americans. The trauma of those experiences reverberates across Indian Country today.”

Crazy Bull added, “This dark period in American history is largely unknown to non-Natives. I hope President Biden’s apology not only raises awareness of the true Native history in our country but is a step towards national reconciliation and healing. We join tribes, Native organizations, and our Native relatives and allies in the call for reparative actions. Today, we call for a significant investment by the federal government and philanthropy in restorative and healing approaches and institutions to repair the harm done by the boarding school era. The Native people who we support, from our youngest children to our college students, deserve that investment. The tribal college and university movement that emerged over 50 years ago to support place-based, Native-led, and tribally controlled education deserves that investment.

We also thank Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe of New Mexico, whose grandparents and great-grandfather were taken from their homes and sent to boarding schools. Under her leadership, the boarding school investigation launched three years ago, and was the first time the U.S. government scrutinized the schools and listened to the stories of boarding school survivors and their descendants. Secretary Haaland’s leadership was vital to the formal apology American Indian and Alaska Native people received today.”