WARNING: This story contains details of residential school experiences.
A former student of assimilationist federal Indian boarding schools in the US says the president’s apology on Friday was long overdue.
“They should have done it years ago,” said Rosie Yellowhair, 74, a member of the Navajo tribe from Steamboat, Ariz.
“I’m glad he did that, and I hope there are plans for the people who were hurt by it.”
Yellowhair attended boarding schools from age four through 12th grade, including boarding schools in Steamboat, Keams Canyon and Phoenix.
She recalled feeling lonely and trying to escape, being prevented from speaking Navajo and being punished by scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush, standing in a corner with books and being slapped on the ears.
An apology is a good first step but now there must be an effort to help people heal, Yellowhair said.
“I think it’s the beginning,” he said.
US President Joe Biden formally apologized to Native Americans on Friday for the “sin” of a government-run system that has been forcibly separating children from their parents for decades.
“It’s a sin to our souls,” Biden said during a visit to the Gila River Indian Community on the outskirts of Phoenix.
“To be honest, there is no reason for this apology to take 50 years to do.”
Biden talked about the abuse and death of Native American children caused by the policies of the US government, he said that “although darkness can hide a lot, it does not remove anything” and that the great nations “must know the good, the bad, the truth of who we are.” father.”
“I formally apologize as president of the United States of America for what we did,” Biden said.
“Indian boarding school policy – the pain we caused will be an important symbol of shame, a background in our recorded history. For a long time, all this happened without public attention, it was not written about in our history books, we are not taught in our schools.”
At least 973 Native American children died in the residential school system in the 150 years that ended in 1969, according to an Interior Department investigation that demanded an apology from the US government earlier this year.
At least 18,000 children, some as young as four years old, were taken from their parents and forced to go to the schools they wanted.
US President Joe Biden officially apologized on Friday to the Native people in the United States for the government’s role in the abuse and neglect of children sent to schools that are occupied by the states to make them into a white society. Brian Bull, a member of the Nimiipu (Nez Percé) tribe, says Biden has apologized ‘unchanged’.
Cody Groat, an assistant professor at Western University in London, Ont., said that US presidential pardons are extremely rare, making this an important development in US presidential history.
“The initial apology was very successful and really addressed the issue at hand,” said Groat.
“But I think towards the end of the apology, he started talking a little bit about his work, which almost ended the apology to some extent.”
Groat, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River whose grandparents were forced to attend the Mohawk Institute boarding school in Brantford, Ont., said the US and Canada have a linked history of policies of removing Indigenous children.
For more than a century in Canada, an estimated 150,000 Aboriginal children have attended residential schools, which are government-funded, church-run institutions similarly designed to rob children of their languages, cultures and family ties.
US-Canada connection
In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the program and the damage it caused, admitting that it was intended to “kill the Indian child.”
That statement, or at least the sentiment, is believed to have come from American Army captain Richard H. Pratt, founder and superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
“Every Indian in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in it, save the man,” Pratt said in a speech in 1892.
A clear connection between the two programs can be seen in something called the Davin report, Groat said.
In the late 19th century, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald appointed politician and journalist Nicholas Flood Davin to investigate the US system. In his 1879 report, Davin praised America’s policy of “aggressive civilization” in which the US removed children from their homes and placed them in boarding schools, recommending that Canada establish a similar system.
“Those were some of the policies they saw being displayed in American schools that they couldn’t incorporate into the wider Canadian system,” said Groat.
Harper’s apology preceded the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which concluded in 2015 that residential schools were a form of cultural genocide. Yellowhair said the US should establish a similar commission.
Groat said the discovery of potentially unmarked burials at a former Kamloops school in British Columbia in 2021 helped spur the census south of the border.
“I don’t think it’s a federal boarding school [investigation] “It would have happened without important international discussions regarding the identification of unmarked graves,” he said.
The national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available to provide support to survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour service at 1-866-925-4419.
Counseling and crisis support are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week by calling Hope for Wellness at 1-855-242-3310 or via online chat.
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