For a century they were kidnapped and held in boarding schools where they were forced to forget their culture, he lamented.

▲ Members of native communities sing at a school in Gila River, Arizona, after the president of the United States apologized for one of the darkest chapters of the country.Photo Afp

▲ Above these lines, the head of the Interior, Deb Haaland, the first indigenous American to assume a secretariat.Photo Ap

Ap, Europa Press and Afp

La Jornada Newspaper
Saturday, October 26, 2024, p. 20

Arizona. The US president, Joe Biden, yesterday offered a historic apology for the atrocities committed for more than a century with the kidnapping of thousands of native children, interned by the state in schools where they suffered systematic abuse and were forced to forget their culture.

I formally apologize, as President of the United States, for what we did.declared Biden about one of the darkest chapters of the country, and assured that Frankly, there is no excuse why this apology took 50 years..

In his first presidential visit to indigenous territory, in the Gila River community in Laveen Village, Arizona, the president assured that The federal Indian boarding school policy, the pain it has caused, will only be a significant mark of shame, a stain on our history.

He regretted that with the passage of time evaporated respect for tribal sovereignty in the United States, and that these attacks were directed precisely at indigenous minors, and even For too long, all of this happened virtually without public attention, without it being written about in our history books, without it being taught in our schools..

Boarding schools for Native Americans existed between 1819 and 1969, and thousands of native children were sent there to schools whose administration collaborated with the federal government and some Catholic churches, the Europa Press news agency recalled.

In these institutions children were targeted to sever connections to their ancestors and heritageadded Biden, who stressed that the country should feel ashamed for this episode, one of the most horrible.

I know that no apology can or will make up for what was lost during the darkest federal boarding school policy.said the president. Today we finally move towards the light.

The event was also attended by the head of the United States Interior, Deb Haaland, the first Native American to assume a secretariat.

The federal authorities They failed to annihilate our languages, our traditions, our ways of lifedeclared Haaland, adding: despite to everything that happened, we are still here.

Shortly after becoming the first Native American to head the Interior Department, Haaland launched an investigation into the residential school system, which found that at least 18,000 children, including some as young as 4, were taken from their parents and forced to attend institutions that sought to assimilate them, in an effort to dispossess them of the lands of their tribal nations. It also documented nearly a thousand deaths and 74 graves related to the more than 500 schools.

In the second phase of its investigation, the department held listening sessions and collected testimony from survivors. One of the recommendations of the final report was recognition and apology for the boarding school era; Haaland reported that she presented this suggestion to Biden, who agreed that it was necessary.