Indigenous leaders react to Biden’s apology for boarding schools

MONTREAL — Canadian Indigenous leaders say U.S. President Joe Biden’s apology for his country’s residential school system is only the first step toward healing generational damage.

Biden on Friday apologized for the U.S. residential school system that separated Native children from their parents for more than 150 years, calling it “one of the most important things” he has done as president.

The apology comes 16 years after former prime minister Stephen Harper apologized for Canada’s residential school system. This investigation follows an investigation into residential schools led by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the country’s first Indigenous cabinet secretary, that was initiated by the discovery of 215 suspicious unmarked graves at a residential school site in Kamloops, B.C.

“The federal Indian boarding school policy and the suffering it caused will always be a significant mark of shame, a stain on American history,” Biden said in a speech at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. “This is terribly wrong. “This is a sin committed on our soul.”

Phil Fontaine, a former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations who was one of the first Canadians to speak publicly about the abuse he experienced at a residential school, said Canada had a “tremendous impact” on the United States coming to terms with its own history.

“The US government can no longer turn a blind eye to the boarding school experience in the US,” he said. “And in the end they decided it was the right thing to do, and it absolutely is.”

In 2021, Haaland launched an investigation that found that at least 973 Native American children in the U.S. boarding school system died from disease and abuse. On Friday, Biden acknowledged that the real number is likely “much, much higher.”

The U.S. government implemented a policy of forced assimilation in 1819 as an effort to “civilize” Native Americans. For more than 150 years, Indigenous children were forced to attend schools, many of which were run by churches. Many children were physically, emotionally and sexually abused.

The investigation found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of more than 400 boarding schools across the country. Haaland, whose grandparents attended boarding schools, has held listening sessions on and off reservations across the United States for two years to allow survivors of the schools to tell their stories.

When the findings were released last summer, Haaland said the federal government should issue a formal apology.

“For decades, this terrible chapter has been hidden from our history books,” Haaland said Friday in Arizona. “But now our administration’s work will ensure no one ever forgets.”

Fontaine said the United States should now establish its own truth and reconciliation commission, as Canada did in 2008, and look at compensation for residential school survivors. Currently, a bill is pending before Congress that would establish a “truth and healing commission” to further document the history of residential schools and make recommendations for government action.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak said the history of U.S. residential schools reflects First Nations’ experiences in Canada.

“The impacts of these schools have touched generations,” Woodhouse Nepinak said in an emailed statement. “This recognition is important, but healing will take time. “I call on President Biden and the incoming president after next month’s election to meaningfully engage with Native American communities and ensure that this apology leads to real action to address the harm done.”

On Friday, Biden said the “vast majority” of Americans were still unaware of what he called “one of the most horrific chapters in American history.”

Fontaine said this was also the case in Canada before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave survivors the opportunity to share their experiences. In 2015, the commission published a final report concluding that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide. In total, 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families to attend residential schools in Canada, the last of which closed in 1996.

“This was a dark chapter unknown to most Canadians, but it has become a huge part of Canadian history that more Canadians than ever are exposed to,” Fontaine said. “And I believe this is entirely possible in the United States as well.”

But Eva Jewell, a professor of sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University and director of research at the Yellowhead Institute, believes it will take a long time for the United States to reach a “national understanding” of the residential school system.

“The political culture in the United States is extremely hostile to any form of justice-oriented education,” he said. “So I think where that happens it will probably be in pretty progressive situations.” Jewell said belief in American exceptionalism may explain why the apology took so long. “I think the political culture of the United States has a very unapologetic stance on its own history,” he said.

Stephanie Scott, executive director of Canada’s National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, said Biden’s apology was positive but “only a first step.”

“We have a long road ahead to address ongoing harms, reparations and continued disclosure of the truth to achieve reconciliation,” he said in a statement, adding that Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission could serve as a model for other countries.

The commission’s 2015 report documents how Canada’s residential school system was inspired by the United States. In 1879, lawyer and journalist Nicholas Davin wrote a report on American industrial boarding schools for Indigenous children and recommended that Canada create a similar system.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2024.

— With files from The Associated Press

Maura Forrest, Canadian Press