Arizona [US], October 26 : US President Joe Biden has apologized to Native Americans for the federal government-funded Indian boarding schools that abused Indigenous children and forced them to assimilate over a 150-year period, terming it as "one of the most horrific chapters in American history," CNN reported.
After calling for a moment of silence to "remember those lost and the generations living with that trauma," Biden in Laveen, Arizona said, "Quite frankly, there is no excuse that this apology took 150 years to make."
At least 18,000 children were taken from their families and forced to attend more than 400 boarding schools across 37 states or then-territories between 1819 and 1969, according to CNN.
In 2021, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, commissioned the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative to review the schools' impacts on Native Americans. The final report issued by them this summer found that at least 973 Native American children died while attending these federal boarding schools.
"As president," Biden said, "I believe it is important that we do know there were generations of native children stolen, taken away to places they didn't know, with people they never met, who spoke a language they had never heard."
"Native communities silenced - their children's laughter and play were gone." He said, "...Children abused emotionally, physically and sexually abused, forced into hard labor, some put up for adoption without the consent of their birth parents, some left for dead and unmarked graves," he further noted.
President Biden noted that children who returned home were "wounded in body and spirit." He made the remarks at the Gila Crossing Community School outside of Phoenix.
This was Biden's first visit to Indian Country as US President and the first time in 10 years a sitting president has visited tribal lands. Earlier in 2014, then-US President Barack Obama had visited the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, CNN reported.
He acknowledged that "no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkness of the federal boarding school policy." He added, "We're finally moving forward into the light."
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