Biden’s Apology Energizes Push for Truth Commission on Indian Boarding Schools

President Joe Biden’s recent formal apology on behalf of the United States government to survivors and Native communities for the violent legacy of federal Indian boarding schools was historic, but an apology alone cannot erase the scars left by centuries of injustice.

The Indian boarding schools, which operated from 1819 through 1969, forcibly removed Native children from their communities and violently severed their connection to their languages and cultures, often cutting their hair and beating them for speaking their native languages.

In the wake of the apology, which Biden made on October 25, 2024, at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, many Native people throughout the United States have noted the significance of the apology, while also emphasizing that true reparative justice must include long-term commitments to policy changes and systemic reforms that support Indigenous communities in their efforts to promote healing, language revitalization and cultural preservation.

Truthout spoke with James LaBelle (Iñupiaq) — a survivor of the Wrangell Institute and Edgecumbe High School, both notorious residential boarding schools for Alaskan Natives — who attended the gathering with other survivors to hear Biden speak.

LaBelle, a past president of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, told Truthout that he has been trying to raise awareness about his experiences since he was 8 years old but felt that no one believed him. He is now in his 70s, and he said hearing Biden apologize on behalf of the United States was the validation that he and other survivors have been waiting for.

Biden “named every abuse that happened to us, he didn’t leave anything out,” LaBelle told Truthout, adding, “After hearing him speak, a group of us survivors were able to meet the president, shake his hand and afterward we gathered around each other and cried.”

However, LaBelle also noted that, “An apology is one thing, but it’s what happens next that tells the tale. Will the U.S. truth and reconciliation bill be passed? Will we get healing centers? Will we get funding for language revitalization? Our lands back?”

LaBelle said it is important for H.R. 7227 — a bill being considered in Congress that would form a U.S. Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies — to pass, because what he wants next is access to the records held by the churches that had contracts with the U.S. government to run residential boarding schools and that bear responsibility for the widespread abuse that was experienced by Native children.

“We need access to those records because it will help survivors find answers, ties to their communities, and help us undo the acculturation and assimilation that was forced on us,” LaBelle added.

In Biden’s apology, the president characterized the role of the U.S. government in enacting federal policies that aimed to assimilate Indigenous children through forced attendance at Indian boarding schools as “a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history.” He also went further by explicitly naming the violence that Native children experienced within the walls of those institutions, by naming what happened to those who did and didn’t survive.

“Children abused — emotionally, physically, and sexually abused. Forced into hard labor. Some put up for adoption without the consent of their birth parents. Some left for dead in unmarked graves,” said Biden. “And for those who did return home, they were wounded in body and in spirit — trauma and shame passed down through generations.”

“An apology is one thing, but it’s what happens next that tells the tale. Will the U.S. truth and reconciliation bill be passed? Will we get healing centers? Will we get funding for language revitalization? Our lands back?”

For more than 150 years, federal Indian boarding schools were used to destroy and erase Native cultures and identities. Many Native children who attended these schools died at a young age due to disease, malnutrition, and physical and sexual abuse, leaving scars that have endured across generations.

The recent discoveries of unmarked graves at the sites of Indian residential schools in Canada and the United States have unveiled a painful chapter in our histories long buried in denial and silence outside of Native communities. Researchers have confirmed that at least 973 Indigenous children were killed but believe the documented number will grow as efforts to continue. As awareness of the horrors that occurred within the residential boarding schools grows beyond Native communities, so too does the urgent call for justice and healing.

President Biden’s apology stands outside the usual approach of the U.S. government toward tribal nations. Historically, the United States has often justified its harmful policies toward Native communities through the lens of Manifest Destiny, framing actions such as termination policies as a “necessary evil” for the continuation of progress and expansion. An acknowledgment without such justification is a rare and significant departure from this longstanding pattern. But it is rarer still for a sitting president to personally take responsibility and address that acknowledgment and apology to the survivors and communities directly impacted.

Mark Macarro, chairman of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians in California and president of the National Congress of American Indians, told ICT reporters that people these days often “seem to discount the value of the formal announcement of an apology, an actual apology being done … But it really can’t be overstated how important this step is. It is rare for a president, a world leader, to apologize for the actions of a country, a country’s citizens, against another group of citizens within that country.”

In addition to acknowledging the specific harms committed by the U.S. against Native communities, Biden also acknowledged the advocates and community leaders who have fought for the public recognition of this history and the work of individuals like Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, whose grandparents were survivors of the Indian boarding school era.

In June 2021, Haaland created the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative as a landmark effort to address the enduring impact of federal Indian boarding school policies on Indigenous communities. Led by Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, the initiative included an unprecedented investigation, with reports released in 2022 and 2024 detailing the scale of the boarding school system, student deaths, burial sites and the involvement of religious institutions. The investigation also provided policy recommendations for Congress and the executive branch to support healing and redress, including the call for the United States to acknowledge and apologize for its role in this violent chapter of our history.

The Interior Department’s recent report has documented the atrocities committed, bringing to light a history once overlooked by official records. President Biden praised Haaland’s dedication, noting how fitting it was that she, as the first Native American cabinet secretary, is now leading efforts to confront these past injustices. His address repeatedly emphasized that the silence of history cannot conceal the injustices inflicted upon Native children at federal boarding schools and their communities.

“While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing,” he said.

He ended his speech by saying, “For too long, this nation sought to silence the voices of generations of Native children, but now your voices are being heard.”

While many Native people have expressed a sense that the apology is an important first step in the enormous reparations that the U.S. owes to Native communities, some within Indian Country questioned the timing and sincerity of the apology, noting its proximity to the 2024 election and Israel’s war on Gaza, which has drawn attention to broader issues of global Indigenous rights and justice. Native people have consistently stood in solidarity with Palestinians because of the parallels to our history.

For more than 150 years, federal Indian boarding schools were used to destroy and erase Native cultures and identities.

At one point during Biden’s speech, a Native woman in the crowd shouted, “What about the people of Gaza?” as other Native protesters yelled, “Free Palestine!” Some in the crowd booed, but President Biden implored the crowd to let the woman speak and responded by saying, “Let her go. There’s a lot of innocent people being killed. There’s a lot of innocent people being killed, and it has to stop.”

Since the escalation of Israel’s attacks on Gaza in October 2023, it is reported that there have been over 41,000 deaths, primarily among women and children, and over 100,500 injuries; much of the destruction only possible because of funding and weapons supplied by the U.S. government. The ongoing blockade and bombardment have created dire shortages of essentials like food, clean water and medicine, displacing almost the entire population of Gaza.

After Biden’s apology, responses from many Native individuals across social media expressed the hypocrisy of apologizing for the injustice and violence inflicted by the United States on Indigenous people while actively funding and supporting the same violence on the Indigenous people of Gaza.

Tara Houska, a well-known land defender and founder of the Giniw Collective, responded to Biden’s apology on X (formerly Twitter) by saying:

“You can’t build your holy land on the mass graves of other people’s children. You can’t apologize for the genocide of our people while committing genocide on another people. We are not your shield. #LandBack and arms embargo, now.”

Meanwhile organizations like the NDN Collective responded to Biden’s apology by organizing their own community action to demand passage of the U.S. Truth and Healing Commission bill to ensure continued funding and support for relatives who survived boarding schools; immediate executive clemency for boarding school survivor Leonard Peltier, freeing him from his 50-year incarceration; financial investment in Indigenous language and cultural revitalization programs; rescinding all medals of honor awarded to U.S. soldiers for the massacre at Wounded Knee, in which 300 unarmed Lakota people — mostly women and children — were slaughtered; a full-scale investigation conducted by the Bureau of Indian Education into failure by the Tuba City Boarding School system to address egregious misconduct; and support for nationwide reforms being demanded by parents and students to keep children safe at schools run by the bureau.

In pushing for additional actions such as these, and in refusing to remain silent about the mass killing that Israel is inflicting upon Palestinians, many Native groups have made clear that the commitment to justice expressed in the presidential apology must not stop with Indigenous people domestically but also extend to the global Indigenous communities whose own histories are rooted in the same colonial, imperialistic and capitalistic violence that we have experienced at the hands of the U.S. government.

Biden’s apology must be the beginning of continued efforts to honor survivors and create a just future for Native communities in the United States and around the world.