Biden set to apologize to Native Americans for Indian boarding schools

Biden set to apologize to Native Americans for Indian boarding schools

The president’s apology would come less than two weeks before the election and mark the first formal acknowledgement by a U.S. president of the government’s role in atrocities against Native children.

By Dana Hedgpeth, Sari Horwitz and Toluse Olorunnipa

October 24, 2024 at 2:05 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/10/24/biden-set-apologize-native-americans-indian-boarding-schools/

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President Joe Biden plans to formally apologize Friday for the U.S. government’s role in running hundreds of Indian boarding schools for a 150-year period that stripped Native American children of their language and culture in a systematic effort to force them to assimilate into White society, according to administration officials.

These remarks would be the first time a U.S. president has apologized for the atrocities suffered by tens of thousands of Native children who were forced to attend the boarding schools over several generations. From 1819 to 1969, the U.S. government managed or paid churches and religious groups to run more than 400 federal Indian boarding schools across 37 states.

“It’s extraordinary that President Biden is doing this,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, in an interview with The Washington Post. “It will mean the world to so many people across Indian Country.”

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