Biden apology: What were the Native American boarding schools?

Joe Biden is set on Friday to become the first president to apologize for a 150-year policy that sent thousands of Native American children to boarding schools in an attempt to assimilate them to white culture.  

The apology will come during Biden's visit to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, his first diplomatic visit as president to a tribal nation.  

The news is huge to Native American communities who have been waiting a long time for an acknowledgement of the deadly policy that ripped children away from their tribes and homes.

"This apology is a natural and meaningful next step in the process of truth-telling and accountability. We hope that this work will not only continue but be expanded in the next administration, as it is extremely important to the healing of our Native Nations and the protection of our diverse cultures," the Association on American Indian Affairs said in a statement.

What was the policy? 

The policy began in 1819 under President James Monroe and was accelerated in 1869. The government, in collaboration with some churches, set out to take Indigenous children and put them in boarding schools to assimilate to Western society.  

The schools took children from their tribes and isolated them, forbidding them to use their own language or embrace their culture.  

By 1926, almost 83 percent of American Indian children were sent to these schools, according to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.  

“Education primarily focused on trades to make Native students marketable in American society. Male students were taught to perform manual labor such as blacksmithing, shoemaking, and farming amongst other trades. On the other hand, female students were taught to cook, clean, sew, do laundry, and care for farm animals,” NATIVE Inc. said.  

What happened inside of these schools? 

Native American students were not allowed to wear any cultural clothing, keep their hair long or speak in their own languages.  

An investigation by the Department of the Interior found there were more than 400 such schools, and that abuse and mistreatment were rampant inside them. 

“Punishments varied and included privilege restrictions, diet restrictions, threats of corporal punishment, and even confinement. Additionally, Native students were neglected and faced many forms of abuse including physical, sexual, cultural, and spiritual. Sexual, physical, and emotional violence was rampant. Even when teachers were charged with abuse, boarding schools refused to investigate,” NATIVE said.  

Almost 1,000 children died at these schools due to disease or malnutrition, the government agency found. In total, almost 60 gravesites were uncovered.  

“They suffered physical, sexual, cultural and spiritual abuse and neglect, and experienced treatment that in many cases constituted torture for speaking their Native languages. Many children never returned home and their fates have yet to be accounted for by the U.S. government,” the boarding school coalition said.  

The policy behind the schools wasn't ended until 1969. 

The aftermath and Biden's apology 

The upcoming apology is highly anticipated as the horror that happened in the boarding schools has become more apparent in the last few decades.   

“It’s extraordinary that President Biden is doing this,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary, told The Washington Post. “It will mean the world to so many people across Indian Country.”  

Haaland’s grandparents were subjected to the schools as they were growing up.  

When the Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted in 1978, Congress said it found ‘‘that an alarmingly high percentage of Indian families are broken up by the removal, often unwarranted, of their children from them by nontribal public and private agencies and that an alarmingly high percentage of such children are placed in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes and institutions,” according to NATIVE. 

Biden is expected to make an apology and also highlight his administration’s work to strengthen relationships with Native American tribes.  

HIs administration saw the largest ever federal investment for Tribal Nations in the American Rescue Plan, at $32 billion.