Like what you’re reading? Make our newscast part of your daily listening routine too. Subscribe on Spotify (or wherever you listen to podcasts).
President Biden recently apologized for the federally-run boarding school system, which sought to assimilate Native children into white culture and separated them from their languages and communities. The policy lasted from 1819 through the 1970s.
He’s the first president to do so and called the more than 150-year-old system a “sin on our soul” to a crowd at the Gila Crossing Community School at the Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix, Arizona.
“This apology is long overdue and quite frankly there is no excuse this apology took 50 years to make,” he said. “The pain that this has caused will always be a significant mark of shame.”
During the boarding school era, tens of thousands of children went to the more than 400 schools and nearly a thousand are documented to have died there, according to a report from the Department of Interior this year.
At the schools, students suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect. The trauma of those experiences and that separation still impacts Indigenous communities today.
John St. Clair is the former chairman of the Eastern Shoshone Business Council. He said the president’s apology was welcome, but it’s a “small step in the right direction.”
“The apology needs to go deeper than just the boarding school issue. It needs to deal with physical genocide, extermination and decimation of the buffalo,” he said.
St. Clair helped to bring home the remains of William Neikok, an Eastern Shoshone boy who died at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania at the end of the 19th century.
The Northern Arapaho Tribe has also brought home remains of multiple children who died at the Carlisle Indian School and were the first tribe to do so in 2017.
Northern Arapaho Business Council Chairwoman Karen Returns To War echoed that the apology was “long overdue.”
“Our children were taken away from our families. Because of this, we lost generations of parenting skills, we lost language, and we lost our traditions,” she said. “The Northern Arapaho people have, fortunately, been able to carry on our traditions and our ceremonies.”
Returns to War’s grandfather went to Carlisle and emphasized the value of education in the teachings he passed down. She said that’s one silver lining of the boarding school system.
“We were able to use the education and the importance of education to make sure that I and my own family, my children and my grandchildren, are able to live comfortably,” she said.
Eastern Shoshone tribal member Lynette St. Clair is an education consultant and retired educator. She said acknowledging intergenerational trauma rooted in the schools and passed down through families can help people move through the healing process.
“It can help break the cycles of trauma transmission, but it can also lead to deeper understanding for those who don’t understand our communities, who don’t have a deeper understanding of our long term consequences of boarding school abuse,” she said.
St. Clair said Biden’s apology was validating, but added that “hopes and prayers only go so far.”
“It should have been accompanied by concrete actions to address the impacts of boarding school abuse and to support the healing and the well-being of the survivors and descendants,” she said.
St. Clair said that could look like more support services for revitalizing Indigenous languages and cultures, more training to help educators teach about boarding schools and assimilation policies, and more funding for local organizations like the Doya Natsu Healing Center, which provides mental health support for community members.
Cherokee Brown is Northern Arapaho and facilitates workshops focused on healing from intergenerational trauma with the Wind River Community Alliance.
“I hope they prove it. It’s good for Biden to offer an apology, but that isn’t enough,” she said. “Anyone can say they’re sorry, but to really mean it, that’s what it’s about. And to do something about it, like repentance and restitution. What are you going to do about it?”
According to the Department of Interior’s report, the federal government put over $23 billion into the boarding school system between 1871 and 1969. The dollar figure was adjusted for inflation. Brown said she would like to see those resources returned in a way that lets tribal communities steer the healing process without restrictions or barriers.
“Biden should understand that our needs are different. Even when it comes to healing, you can’t put a price on traditional healing, you can’t put a price on family,” she said.
For Brown, that healing looks like understanding, forgiveness and more acknowledgment of the history of boarding schools in textbooks and classrooms.
“When we heal ourselves, we’re healing our ancestors. And when we heal ourselves, we’re healing the ones that are still coming, the ones that aren’t born yet, because then we’re not passing those traumas down,” she said.
