Native American leaders again call for action after residential schools apology

Native American leaders and survivors of the federal Indian Residential School system are calling on the Biden administration to do more than just apologize to facilitate healing in their communities.

Their calls had been growing for decades, but the remarks marked a milestone: the first time a U.S. president has acknowledged and apologized for a system in which federal agents removed children from their parents, often at gunpoint, sending them to schools thousands of miles from home. , depriving families of their language and culture.

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The exact number of children who were forced into boarding schools in the US for more than 150 years is unknown due to poor record keeping, but nearly 19,000 cases have been confirmed. Physical, sexual and psychological abuse was rampant in schools, often run by religious institutions. Some children were referred to only by numbers, and teenage girls were raped and sent home pregnant. Thousands never returned home.

Addressing the public on the Gila River Reservation near Phoenix, Arizona, on October 25, President Joe Biden made good on a long-delayed promise to visit India and called the residential school system a “sin on our soul,” adding that there is “no excuse.” ” about how recognition is long overdue and that “no amount of apology can or will make up for what was lost in the darkness of federal boarding school policy. But today we are finally moving forward into the light.”
The timing of the visit has also been flagged as a tactic in the swing state to persuade native voters to cast ballots for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. But many Native Americans are frustrated by the government’s inaction to adequately protect the land, provide access to quality education and health care, and impose an arms embargo on Israel.

Survivors and descendants recognize how significant Biden’s speech was after centuries of fighting for recognition from the federal government and are calling on the administration to act quickly on the apology.

“In his final two weeks in office, we demand that President Biden also pass S.1723/HR7227: The Indian Residential School Policy Truth and Healing Commission Act,” said the Coalition to Heal Native American Residential Schools , a nonprofit organization that has worked with survivors and tribal leaders for more than a decade to educate about the system and facilitate repatriation.

The legislation would provide an opportunity to invest in language and cultural revitalization efforts, educate the American public about the system through museums or educational programs, and create trauma-informed mental health resources.

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It would also allow subpoenas to be used to investigate the extent of the system: Catholic organizations could keep private records for decades, some of which contain the only known photographs or remains of survivors’ ancestors. The bill, reintroduced in the Senate and House last year, has yet to receive a vote.

The mental and physical health problems of survivors and the lack of widespread reconciliation attracted national attention earlier this year when the Home Office released its final report into the system’s investigation, which found at least 1,000 Indigenous children had died or been murdered. Schools operated using more than $23 billion in inflation-adjusted federal dollars.

Thousands of people were forced into child labor to operate the facilities and were “displaced” by working for free for white families near schools.

Angelica Albert, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and executive director of the nation’s largest direct scholarship organization for Native students, Native Forward, called boarding schools not places of learning but places of “extermination.”

Just as slavery was used as a tool to harm black people throughout America, “education was a tool to harm us, to assimilate us. This is the tool that we lost our children to,” Albert said, adding that the apology is a testament to the work done by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Native American cabinet minister and a former recipient of their scholarships, to unearth testimonies from survivors and investigation. system.

“She is in the very position that introduced boarding schools. Do you understand? It gives me goosebumps,” Albert said, emphasizing how important it is for the federal government to maintain strong relationships with tribal nations and provide more funding for college access for Native youth so their voices can be heard in the jobs they have historically been excluded. .

While the apology, belated as it may be, is “a critical first step in the process of truth and reconciliation among Aboriginal and First Nations peoples,” Albert stressed, “the Indian residential school policy is not a horror of the past—these institutions operated before 1969, and many Indigenous people those who were subjected to this cruel policy are still alive today.”

The residential school system, while the focus of President Biden’s speeches, was not the only widespread system of forced removal of Indigenous children. Throughout the 60s and 70s, more than a third were separated from their families and overwhelmingly placed in non-Indian homes following discriminatory welfare investigations.

In Washington, Native children were placed in foster care and adopted at 19 times the rate of their peers. The practice was widespread until Congress passed the Indian Child Protection Act in 1978, which stated that “the widespread separation of Indian children from their families is perhaps the most tragic and destructive aspect of American Indian life today.”

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Indigenous populations now face disproportionately poor health outcomes, including the highest rates of substance abuse, suicidal ideation and chronic disease, which researchers link to centuries of genocide, disinvestment and intergenerational trauma.

After Biden’s speech, a collective of Indigenous people gathered to pray, mourn, sing and press for further action in South Dakota, on the lands of what will soon become the Oceti Sakowin Community Academy, a “cultural school” for the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota. children.

“Tonight we took to this land and reminded the world that we are the children of survivors… We will honor our ancestors by holding this country accountable for what it has done to our people,” NDN Collective President Nick said in a press release Tilsen. “The US government tried to exterminate us and wipe us off the face of the earth. We will continue to remind them that they failed and the warrior spirit of our ancestors lives within us all.”