Yesterday, President Biden speaking at Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen Village, Arizona, issued a formal apology on behalf of the United States for the Federal Indian Boarding School Policies implemented between 1819 and 1969 to implement a policy of cultural assimilation. (Full text of President's remarks.) Investigative reports issued by the Department of Interior in 2022 and 2024 said in part:
Initial investigation results show that approximately 50 percent of Federal Indian boarding schools may have received support or involvement from a religious institution or organization, including funding, infrastructure, and personnel. As the U.S. Senate has recognized, funds from the 1819 Civilization Fund “were apportioned among those societies and individuals—usually missionary organizations—that had been prominent in the effort to ‘civilize’ the Indians.” The Federal Government at times paid religious institutions and organizations on a per capita basis for Indian children to enter the Federal Indian boarding schools that these institutions and organizations groups operated.
The reports disclose that of the 408 Indian Boarding Schools, 210 had a religious affiliation. (List of religiously affiliated boarding schools.) 132 were Protestant; 77 were Catholic; and 5 had other religious affiliations.
President Biden in his remarks yesterday described the experience of Native American children at these schools:
Children would arrive at schools. Their clothes taken off. Their hair that they were told was sacred was chopped off. Their names literally erased and replaced by a number or an English name....
Another survivor described what it was like at the boarding school, and I quote, “When I would talk in my Tribal language, I would get hit. I lost my tongue. They beat me every day.”
Children abused — emotionally, physically, and sexually abused. Forced into hard labor. Some put up for adoption without the consent of their birth parents. Some left for dead in unmarked graves.
And for those who did return home, they were wounded in body and in spirit — trauma and shame passed down through generations.