OLYMPIA, Wash. — President Joe Biden made history on Friday as the first president to ever issue a formal apology for the oppressive and abusive systems upheld by the federal government's Indigenous boarding schools.
For 150 years the U.S. removed Indigenous children from their homes and sent them away to the schools, where they were stripped of their cultures, histories and religions and beaten for speaking their languages.
“We should be ashamed,” Biden said to a crowd of Indigenous people gathered at the Gila River Indian Community outside of Phoenix, including tribal leaders, survivors and their families. Biden called the government-mandated system that began in 1819 “one of the most horrific chapters in American history,” while acknowledging the decades of abuse inflicted upon children and widespread devastation left behind.
At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government's abusive boarding school system, according to an investigation released in July.
Washington state had 15 of these boarding schools, which was among the most in the western United States.
Biden's apology brought tears to the eyes of teachers at a different kind of Native school on the Nisqually Reservation.
"It's significant because it's long overdue," said Misty Kalama, teacher at the Wa He Lut Indian School on the Nisqually Indian Reservation.
Kalama is a language keeper, she teaches students the traditional language spoken by Nisqually members for generations.
She said she never thought she would hear the United States say it was sorry while she was alive.
Kalama said the apology could help heal a community still suffering generational trauma.
”Finally our government is building this bridge in the form of this apology, something that we can both join together and meet on that bridge," said Kalama, "The government and our Native people."