“A sin that stains our soul”: US President Joe Biden presented a historic apology on Friday to indigenous peoples, whose children were taken from their families for more than a century by the state to place them in boarding schools where they were mistreated, with the aim of forced assimilation.
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The goal of these residential schools was to erase indigenous culture, language and identity. Many children have suffered physical, psychological or sexual violence there, according to a recent government report.
“I formally apologize, as president of the United States, for what we have done,” Joe Biden said from the Gila River Native Reservation, Arizona, after observing a moment of silence to honor “ the people lost and the generations living with this trauma.
These boarding schools existed between the beginning of the 19th century and the 1970s. According to the government report, at least 973 children died in these structures.
AFP
“The children arrived at school, were undressed, their hair, which they were told was sacred, was cut. Their names were literally erased, replaced by a number or an English name,” listed the American president.
Some were “forced into forced labor, some adopted without the consent of their biological parents, others left for dead and buried in unmarked graves,” he added in an impassioned speech.
AFP
This is “one of the most horrible chapters in American history,” insisted Joe Biden. “The pain caused will always be a significant mark of shame, a stain on American history.”
The Church involved
These rare presidential apologies are “so historic that I am not sure I can adequately express the impact,” Interior Minister Deb Haaland, the first indigenous minister in the United States, said on Thursday. They “mean much more than words could express.”
It was under his leadership that a major investigation was launched in 2021, resulting in a detailed report. She also led a tour, called “Path of Healing”, in 12 indigenous communities, to give victims the opportunity to share their testimony.
“For more than a century, tens of thousands of Native children, as young as four years old, were taken from their families and communities and forcibly placed in boarding schools run by the U.S. government and religious institutions,” declared the minister. “That includes my own family.”
“For decades, this terrible chapter was hidden from our history books,” she added.
The American Catholic bishops this year formally recognized the role of the Church in “trauma” inflicted on Indigenous people, and apologized.
In neighboring Canada, the same practice of residential schools was carried out, and the country has also opened its eyes in recent years to this dark page in its history.
AFP
The wound was rekindled in 2021 with the discovery of more than a thousand anonymous graves on the sites of former Catholic residential schools for indigenous people.
During a visit to Canada in the summer of 2022, Pope Francis asked “forgiveness for the evil committed.”
Series of measurements
Joe Biden’s administration has put in place a whole series of measures to support indigenous nations and improve relations with the federal state.
Several ancestral places have been designated “national monuments”, decrees have been issued to impose “regular” and “robust” consultation of indigenous governments by federal agencies, and several billion dollars have been invested in the construction of infrastructure in indigenous reserves.
Joe Biden’s trip also comes in the middle of the presidential campaign, led by his vice-president Kamala Harris against Republican Donald Trump, in an extremely close race.
In 2020, Joe Biden narrowly won Arizona, a key state which could, with others, swing the outcome of the vote in November, and which is one of those with the largest indigenous population in the United States. United.
