Reactions mixed to boarding school apology
WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. In Canada, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.
Shondiin Mayo and Pauly Denetclaw
ICT
GILA RIVER INDIAN COMMUNITY — For some, even a long-awaited apology was not enough to endure reliving the pain and trauma of Indian boarding school.
Instead, after waiting decades for the United States to admit wrongdoing, they opted to send their children or grandchildren to join the hundreds of other Native people in accepting President Joe Biden’s historic apology on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, at the Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen, Arizona.
The apology — and the admission that the government policy was wrong — brought joy and relief to many in the crowd, but also a flood of tears at the suffering.
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Michael Mazzocco, Delaware Nation and chair of the Phoenix Human Relations Commission, stepped in for his mother. She had planned to attend Biden’s speech but decided it would be too overwhelming after seeing what boarding schools had done to his grandmother, aunts and uncles.
“There is a moment to celebrate — the United States admitting that they did something wrong is something to celebrate,” he told ICT. “[Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s] work in this area is something to celebrate. And President Biden's lack of ego and his extreme humiliation is something to celebrate, because not many leaders operate that way.”
Nonetheless, he said, “There was still a lot of sadness surrounding it.”
President Joe Biden, left, and Gila River Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis greet the crowd on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. at the Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen, Arizona, where Biden delivered an historic apology on behalf of the United States for its ugly boarding school history. (Photo by Mark Trahant/ICT)
For Dolores Jimerson, Seneca, Bear Clan, the apology brought a flood of memories.
“It was very healing to watch the apology, also very emotional,” said Jimerson, the behavioral health education director for the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. “I was moved to tears as memories of the stories my father and other family shared over the years about their experiences at boarding school came flooding through my tears.”
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—Historic Apology: Boarding school history 'a sin on our soul'
It was a day of mixed reactions, with bipartisan praise for the apology coming from the far reaches of Indian Country along with demands from critics that more be done.
The apology was just the first step, they said, in what must be an extensive effort for healing and reparation in Native communities and families where generational trauma endures.
A first step
Frederick Lane of the Lummi Nation, a survivor of Chemawa Indian School, spoke via phone with ICT, struggling to be heard over the barking crowd of his five pet chihuahuas. He attended the school in the 1980s, and his father graduated in the 1950s.
Lane was senior class president at Chemawa and very interested in accountability and transparency from leadership, something they were reluctant to provide, Lane said.
But he was impressed by Biden’s speech, weeping as he thought of the children at Chemewa who never made it home.
“It means a lot to hear an apology from the commander in chief,” he said.
This 1905 photo shows Native students at the Chemawa Indian Training School near Salem, Oregon. The school opened in 1886 and remains open today. (Photo courtesy of Pacific University)
Cheryle Kennedy, chairwoman of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, also has connections to the Chemawa school in Salem, Oregon. At more than 125 years old, it is the oldest continually operating boarding school for Native children in the United States.
Kennedy’s father worked as an electrician at the school and her brother and sister were born at the hospital on the grounds. The school remains of particular interest to the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde as it sits on ceded Grand Ronde land, Kennedy said.
As for the apology, Kennedy said, “It’s been a long time coming.”
But she also wants to see funding to address generational trauma and mental health care included in both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Services budgets. She also hopes to see better state and country-wide education that provides accurate and culturally informed curriculum about the Native nations and people within each state.
“Now, after the generational damage that has been done, what are you [Biden] going to do to demonstrate you sincerely mean [the apology]?” Kennedy asked.
Gena Kakkak, chairwoman of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, was one of five tribal leaders who traveled with Biden to Arizona for the announcement. She called her mother from the phone on the plane telling her she was on Air Force One with the president. It was an emotional moment for the two.
“I let her know that we’re sitting here, and we deserve to be here,” Kakkak told ICT.
Kakkak praised Biden for the apology but noted that it’s a good first step.
“This is an important step towards healing,” she said. “It's the beginning of creating spaces for healing across our nations, and honoring our survivors and those that didn't make it home; acknowledging and recognizing the trauma that we've been dealing with over the last 150 years, but there's a lot more work to do.”
Now, she said, the federal government must work to address the impact of boarding schools on Indigenous nations.
“A big piece is our identity. Reclaiming our identity. Reclaiming our language, and being able to fund those initiatives that help us do that,” she said. “Help us create spaces for that. I think that's going to play a key role in our path to healing.”
Kakkak was able to share this and more with Biden on their plane ride over.
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“Our tribal sovereignty needs to be respected,” she said she told the president.
Margaret Jacobs, a Nebraska history professor and author of “After One Hundred Winters,” which examines national reconciliation efforts in the U.S., Australia, Canada and New Zealand, said she was overjoyed to finally see a formal apology issued by a sitting president.
However, she questioned the approach Biden took to deliver that apology. When prime ministers in Australia and Canada issued similar apologies in 2008, they delivered those apologies before their respective parliaments and invited numerous aboriginal and First Nations leaders to attend. They also announced their plans to issue those apologies well in advance, which gave Indigenous people an opportunity to prepare events and ceremonies to celebrate the historic events.
“Communities created events around it,” Jacobs said. “Many schools and workplaces closed so people could attend the event. These were really momentous days in those nations.”
She said she hopes national leaders and local communities can work together in the coming days, weeks and months to honor the significance of the boarding school apology and perhaps host listening sessions where non-Native people can hear stories from boarding school survivors and their descendants.
“This is a huge deal, and I wish that we could have a kind of sacredness around it, a reverence around it to fully honor what happened to people and what happened to their families and their tribes,” she said. “I think it's a huge deal, but I just want more.”
Demanding action
Many tribal nations and Native-run organizations demanded that Biden’s apology come with action, for repatriation of remains, reclaiming languages and identity, and continuing to investigate the hundreds of boarding schools and the plights of tens of thousands of children who attended them.
Although Haaland made reference to “a 10-year national plan driven by tribal leaders” that would include language revitalization and other reforms, details of the plan were scant in Friday’s announcement.
A final report issued after a year-long study by the Department of the Interior into boarding schools included a series of recommendations for the government, starting with an apology.
The report also recommended creation of a Truth and Healing Commission to further investigate boarding schools, which appears to be stalled in Congress, despite efforts to bring it to a vote. It also calls for a national memorial to acknowledge those who endured the hardships, and financial support for tribal programs that include repatriation, education, language revitalization, mental health support and community rebuilding.
Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota and the chief executive and founder of NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy group, provided a list of demands Friday for the Biden administration to follow up with after the apology.
“Today’s speech can’t just be a speech from the president about what he has done for Indian people during his administration, it has to be about what this country is going to continue to do for Indian people moving forward,” Tilsen said during a Friday press conference.
In addition to winning passage of the Truth and Healing commission, Tilsen called for rescinding Medals of Honor given to U.S. Army members for the Wounded Knee Massacre, working to make unprecedented investments into Indigenous language and education; and launching an investigation into the Tuba City Boarding School, an Arizona school operated by the Bureau of Indian Education where students have alleged sexual and physical abuse by teachers.
He also called for release from prison of Leonard Peltier, who is currently serving two consecutive life sentences in connection with the deaths of two FBI agents in South Dakota in 1975. The Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe elder is serving his time in the Coleman I Maximum Security Prison in Coleman, Florida, and was denied parole earlier this year. He has long maintained his innocence.
“Before you leave office, if you want to cement your legacy with Indian people in this moment, free Leonard Peltier,” Tilsen said during the press conference. “Free the longest-living Indigenous political prisoner, humanize him. Acknowledge him as a boarding school survivor, let him come back to his homelands that he was taken from long ago.”
Margo Gray, executive director of the United Indian Nations of Oklahoma, is a descendant of federal Indian boarding school survivors. She is Osage and is the sister of former Osage Nation Chief Jim Gray. She was also an actor featured in the Martin Scorces’ film “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
The apology, she said, was “long overdue.” Now she wants the Truth and Healing Commission to win passage in Congress to provide additional funding.
“That's where a lot of the money is going to come from for the healing,” she said. “It’s the next step in the right direction for justice. I think another tribal leader said it best, ‘It is just a long list of things that have happened to Indians in this country.’”
Gray said that she went to the first hearing on the Haaland’s “Road to Healing Tour,” which crossed the country taking testimony from survivors and family members. Many survivors testified to the panel.
“It was gut wrenching,” she said. “I was in the room … My feeling is that this administration has done the right thing.”
Political unity
The apology also drew support from Democratic politicians, though they, too, acknowledged that more work is needed to help Native communities and families heal.
“To have the President of the United States formally acknowledge the harms of our past and issue a direct apology to tribal nations is powerfully important,” said U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.
“It’s long past time for our government to fully come to terms with the horrific legacy of Indian boarding schools, which were designed to systematically strip away Native language, religion, and heritage — in brutal and traumatic ways. The next step is to pass our bipartisan bill to establish a Truth and Healing Commission so that we can help Native families and communities in Washington state and across the country heal from this painful chapter in our nation’s history.”
She said she will continue to work with the Biden administration to deliver investments in tribal community.
“As a voice for Washington state’s tribes in the Senate, I will continue to fight to live up to our commitments to our tribal partners with action and real, meaningful investments,” she said.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, likewise praised the apology but looked ahead to the future support for tribes.
“The Federal Indian Boarding School era was a shameful, dark chapter in American history,” he said. “A presidential apology is an important step toward repairing the harm and acknowledging the ongoing, generational trauma caused by these historic wrongs to tribes who have lived on this land since time immemorial.”
But more work is needed, he said.
“As Chair of the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, I have secured $21 million to date for Interior Secretary Haaland’s Indian Boarding School Initiative to examine and help repair these devastating, historic wrongs,” he said. “I’ll keep fighting to secure funding for this important initiative and to uphold our commitment to honoring the solemn promise that the United States has made to tribal communities to fulfill our trust and treaty obligations.”
Also contributing to this report were ICT staff members Kevin Abourezk, Nika Bartoo-Smith, Kalle Benalle, Felix Clary, Kadin Mills, Mary Annette Pember, Luna Reyna, Amelia Schafer and Shirley Sneve.
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