“A sin that stains our soul”: US President Joe Biden presented this Friday, October 25, a historic apology to the Native American peoples, whose children were torn from their families for more than a century by the State to place them in boarding schools where they were mistreated, with the aim of forced assimilation.
The goal of these boarding schools was to erase Native American culture, language, and identity. According to a recent government report, many children have suffered physical, psychological or sexual violence there.
“I formally apologize, as president of the United States, for what we have done,” Joe Biden said from the Gila River Native American Reservation in Arizona after observing a moment of silence to honor “the people lost and the generations living.” with this trauma.” .”
At least 973 children died in these structures
These boarding schools existed from the beginning of the 19th century until the 1970s. According to the government report, at least 973 children died in these structures.
“The children came to school, they were stripped naked, their hair, which they were told was sacred, was cut. Their names were literally erased, replaced by a number or a name in English,” the US president listed.
Some were “forced to perform forced labor, some were adopted without the consent of their biological parents, others were left for dead and buried in unmarked graves,” he added in an impassioned speech.
This is “one of the most horrible chapters in American history,” Joe Biden insisted. “The pain caused will always be a major mark of shame, a stain on American history.”
The Church involved
These rare presidential apologies are “so historic that I’m not sure I can adequately express their impact,” Interior Minister Deb Haaland, the first Native American minister in the United States, said Thursday. “They mean so much more than words could ever express.”
It was under his leadership that a major investigation was launched in 2021, resulting in a detailed report. He also led a tour, called the “Healing Trail,” to 12 Native American communities, to give victims the opportunity to share their testimony.
“For more than a century, tens of thousands of Native children, as young as four years old, were separated from their families and communities and forcibly placed in boarding schools run by the U.S. government and religious institutions,” stated the minister. “That includes my own family.”
“For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden in our history books,” he added.
This year, American Catholic bishops formally acknowledged the Church’s role in “the trauma” inflicted on Native Americans and apologized.
The same practice of boarding schools was carried out in neighboring Canada, and the country has also opened its eyes in recent years to this dark page of its history. The wound was revived in 2021 with the discovery of more than a thousand anonymous graves on the sites of former Catholic residential schools for indigenous people.
During a visit to Canada in the summer of 2022, Pope Francis asked for “forgiveness for the evil committed.”
Series of measures to support Native American peoples
Joe Biden’s administration has implemented a series of measures to support Native American nations and improve relations with the federal state.
Several ancestral sites have been designated “national monuments,” decrees have been issued to impose “regular” and “robust” consultations with Native American governments by federal agencies, and several billion dollars have been invested in construction of infrastructure on Native American reservations.
Joe Biden’s trip also occurs in the middle of the presidential campaign, led by his vice president Kamala Harris against Republican Donald Trump, in an extremely close race.
In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly won Arizona, a key state that could, along with others, influence the outcome of the November election and is one of those where the Native American population is largest in the United States.
Source: BFM TV
