Washington.- The US President Joe Bidenasked for forgiveness this Friday on behalf of the Government for the atrocities committed in hundreds of public boarding schools for indigenous children for 150 years, in which they were deprived of their language and culture.
“The federal government has never formally apologized for what happened, until today. As president of USA “I formally apologize for what we did,” he said during an event at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.
“The pain we cause will always be an indelible mark of shame, of blood, in the united states history“Biden added.
At least a thousand boys and girls died in these boarding schools, although the number could be much higher.
The president said he bears “the firm responsibility of being the first president to formally apologize to the native peoplesNative Americans, Hawaiians and Alaskans.”
“It’s too late. “There is no excuse why this apology has taken 50 years to arrive,” Biden said.
Biden recognizes the pain of indigenous communities
Between 1819 and 1969, thousands of indigenous children They were forced to attend these boarding schools run by publicly funded churches and religious organizations for the purpose of forcibly assimilating them into white society.
“For those who lived through that period, it was too painful to talk about. For our nation, too shameful to recognize. But just because history is silent doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. It happened,” said the president.
Biden was accompanied in the act of redress by his Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haalandthe first Native American to be part of the United States Government and whose grandparents and one of her great-grandfathers were forced to attend these boarding schools.
“My maternal grandparents were only 8 years old when they were taken from their communities and forced to live in a Catholic boarding school until 13. My great-grandfather was also taken, sent by train thousands of miles from our small town of Mesita. Many children like them never returned home,” the secretary said.
Almost a thousand children died in boarding schools in the US
Haaland, who belongs to the Pueblo tribe of Laguna (New Mexico), launched an investigation three years ago into the residential schools and, last July, published a report that revealed that at least 973 indigenous minors died from illness or malnutrition in the US government boarding school system.
As a result of the investigation, graves, some unidentified, were found in 65 of the more than 400 boarding schoolsand the Department of Home Affairs formally urged the Executive to apologize for the trauma inflicted on generations of Indigenous children.
The visit comes as Biden seeks to build his legacy before leaving office. White House in January 2025 and less than two weeks until the November 5 elections.
