Mark Trahant
ICT
The American story is complicated and contradictory. And yet the words Friday from President Joe Biden will be clear and simple. It will be an apology for the federal government’s boarding school policy. That clarity – and reversal of what was done in the past – will take place at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona during an official presidential visit.
More than a century ago President Chester Arthur first visited a tribal nation (on horseback) as an official visit. That president was promoting a policy of assimilation – and the boarding schools were the instrument of cultural erasure. In a message to Congress he asked for a “liberal appropriation for the support of Indian schools, because of my confident belief that such a course is consistent with the wisest economy. … They are doubtless much more potent for good than the day schools upon the reservation, as the pupils are altogether separated from the surroundings of savage life, and brought into constant contact with civilization.”
He told Congress that it was time to end the policy of dealing with tribes as nations (“and a savage life”) and instead focus on “efforts to bring them under the influences of civilization.”
The president’s trip to the Wind River Reservation was supposed to make it so. A bill in the Senate would have divided the land individually. But neither the Shoshones nor the Arapaho agreed with that notion, so Arthur had to reverse the policy and leave the reservation intact (a policy that led to two major intra-tribal disputes). One of the Arapaho leaders, Sharp Nose, had sent his son to a boarding school to “learn how to do as the white men do … We give our children to the Government to do as they think best in teaching them the right way, hoping that the officers will, after a while, permit us to go and see them.”
Sharp nose never saw his son again. He died in 1883.
Arthur’s trip to Wind River was not intentional. He was traveling to Yellowstone to fish. That was a common route to Indian Country. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge was visiting South Dakota and opted to visit Pine Ridge.
(This happens a lot: The White House in 1927 called it the first visit by a sitting president to a tribal nation.)
The White House history reports that President Coolidge greeted some 500 Lakota who sang and danced. Tribal leaders pressed the president about their ownership of the Black Hill.
Instead Coolidge, like Arthur, championed assimilation and boarding schools.
And the Lakota have never accepted payment for the Black Hills.
Other presidential visits are less about policy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited tribal nations at least four times, Quinault, in Washington state, Blackfeet in Montana, Fort Peck in Montana, and Cherokee, North Carolina. At Blackfeet, the president was honored and given the name “Lone Chief.”
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan met with Navajo President Peterson Zah and Hopi Tribal Chairman Ivan Sidney in an attempt to resolve the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute – the mess created by Chester Arthur’s executive order.
Richard Nixon did not visit a tribal nation but his staff really wanted him to do so twice. (The memos from WH aide Brad Patterson to his colleagues were passionate.) He was invited to celebrate with Taos Pueblo over the return of Blue Lake. However, instead of going, the president sent the teenage daughter of his vice president, Spiro Agnew. Nixon’s second non-visit would have been to Tsaile to launch what was then Navajo Community College (now Diné College).
The language of sovereignty – not assimilation – is now the story framework. This started with President Bill Clinton’s visit to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and Shiprock, New Mexico, in 2000. Clinton talked about technology and learning – and the power of Diné College.
President Barack Obama, like Clinton, talked about technology and the talent of Native Youth, leading to several initiatives including Generation Indigenous.
And during Obama’s visit to Alaska he was even more direct about the importance of protecting the Native way of life. “My administration also is taking new action to make sure that Alaska Natives have direct input into the management of Chinook salmon stocks (plus) everything from voting rights to land trusts.”
Presidential visits to tribal nations are punctuated by the complicated and contradictory policies of the United States. A century ago it was all about assimilation, erasure, and yes, boarding schools. Today the language is about culture, sovereignty and protecting the value of Native youth.
President Joe Biden’s visit is from this chapter of sovereignty. He’s also the first U.S. president to make a direct apology for the disastrous boarding school policy.
Mark Trahant, Shoshone-Bannock, is editor-at-large for Indian Country Today.
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