“Biden formally apologizes for Indian boarding schools: ‘a blot on US history’
President’s historic remarks, alongside Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, given at Gila Crossing school near Phoenix
Adria R Walker
Fri 25 Oct 2024 19.55 BST
On Friday, Joe Biden formally apologized for the United States government’s role in running at least 523 Indian boarding schools. His remarks were given at the Gila Crossing community school outside of Phoenix, Arizona, and marked his first visit to Indian country as president.
“After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program,” Biden said. “But the federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened – until today. I formally apologize, as president of the United States of America, for what we did. I formally apologize. That’s long overdue.”
[…]
Indian boarding schools were run with the express goal to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man”, a phrase coined by the army officer Richard Henry Pratt, who founded Carlisle Indian boarding school, the first federally run Indian boarding school.
From 1819 to 1969, in what Biden called “one of the most horrific chapters in American history”, the US government directly managed or funded Indian boarding schools in nearly 40 states.
The schools, at which formal education was limited, forcibly and systematically stripped Indigenous children of their culture by removing them from their families and communities, forbidding them from speaking their languages and, typically violently, punishing them if they resisted.
A US Department of the Interior report released earlier this year found that at least nearly 1,000 Indigenous children died in the schools. Sexual violence was commonplace.
Dr Denise K Lajimodiere, an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and one of the founders of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, wrote that the “boarding school era represented a deliberate policy of ethnocide and cultural genocide and human rights abuses”.
[…]
The final boarding school report provided eight recommendations from the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the federal government – beginning with calling for an official apology.
Chuck Hoskin Jr, the Cherokee Nation principal chief, said that the apology was “a profound moment for Native people across this country”. While he praised the Biden administration for the apology, he noted that “true healing goes beyond words – it requires action, resources and commitment”.
[…].”
- Full report on the website of the Guardian (last checked in October 2024)

US President Biden apologizes for forced Native American boarding school policy in a speech given at Gila Crossing school near Phoenix on 25 October 2024, published by US broadcaster NBC. Photo: Screenshot of video on the NBC website (last checked in October 2024)
- Genocide Convention of the Untited Nations of 1948 (last checked in October 2024)