US President Joe Biden made a historic apology for the ‘most horrific chapter’ in US history, where Native American children were forcibly taken from their families and placed in government boarding schools to erase their culture.
From the 1800s to the 1970s, Indian boarding schools aimed to assimilate Native children into European culture, exposing instances of abuse and nearly a thousand deaths in a recent government report.
Biden’s apology at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona marked a shift towards acknowledging and rectifying this dark past, with increased investments in Native American communities under his administration.
Similar apologies have been made in Canada and other countries, highlighting the global recognition of historic abuses towards Indigenous populations.
Rare presidential apology
Official apologies for past atrocities in the US are uncommon, with examples like Reagan’s compensation for interned Japanese Americans and Clinton’s apology for the syphilis medical experiment on Black men. Biden’s acknowledgment of the boarding school system’s impact signals a step towards healing and reconciliation.