Biden apologizes for 150-year abusive Native American boarding school policy

WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden apologized on Thursday for the treatment of Native American children who were forcibly removed from their families by the government and put into an abusive boarding school system.

For more than 150 years, the schools sought to forcibly assimilate Native Americans, with a recent government report detailing numerous cases of physical, mental and sexual abuse, as well as the deaths of more than 950 children.

Biden was scheduled to make the official apology on Friday on a visit to the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona, one of the states with the highest Native American populations in the country and a key battleground in the US election.

The boarding schools, which were run by the US government, were in operation from the early 19th century until the 1970s.

The purpose of these schools was to culturally assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children by forcibly removing them from their families, communities, languages, religions and cultural beliefs, the US Interior Department said.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to be a cabinet secretary in the United States, launched a probe to recognize the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies. An investigative report by the department found that at least 973 children died in these schools.

"For more than a century, tens of thousands of Indigenous children as young as four years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools," Haaland told reporters. "This includes my own family."

'Terrible chapter'

"For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books," she continued.

The apology follows formal declarations in Canada, where thousands of children died at similar boarding schools and other countries around the world where historical abuses of Indigenous populations are increasingly being recognized.

In a statement, the White House said the apology was being issued in order to "remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful".

Biden's visit to Arizona, a state he narrowly won in 2020, comes in the midst of an extremely close presidential campaign between Vice-President Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump. The visit is considered to be a chance for Biden to spotlight his and Harris' support for tribal nations.

Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University, said both Harris' and Trump's campaigns have put a remarkable amount of effort into micro-targeting in Arizona.

"They are pulling out every stop just to see if they could wrangle a few more votes here and there," Reilly said. "The Indian community is one of those groups that Harris is hoping will overperform and help make the difference."

Agencies via Xinhua