President Joe Biden established the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument on Monday to memorialize a “dark chapter” in U.S. history, the era of Native American boarding schools.
Biden, speaking for the last time at the Tribal Nations Summit, remarked on the period spanning the 19th and 20th centuries that saw the federal government systematically separating Native American children from their families.
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The Carlisle School itself, originally founded in 1879, was the federal government’s first of more than 400 off-reservation boarding schools where children were subjected to physical labor that resulted in more than 1,000 deaths, according to the White House.
Biden said that, after speaking to tribal leaders over the past four years, he “felt it was really important for the president of the United States to stand up and right a wrong that had been ignored for a long time.”
“We’re not about erasing history. We’re about recognizing history — the good, bad, and the ugly. I apologize for the federal Indian boarding school era, a dark chapter,” the president stated several hours after Vice President Kamala Harris also spoke at the summit. “Today, we act to continue that healing process.”
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Biden added Monday that a core goal of such boarding schools was “to erase the culture of tribes by ensuring that children lost their language and their traditions” and announced a new government initiative to revitalize Native languages.
“It’s a vision that works with tribes to support teachers, schools, communities, organizations, in order to save native language from disappearing,” he continued. “This matters. It’s part of our heritage. It’s part of who we are as a nation.”
The president closed by saying it was an “honor of a lifetime to usher in a new era of tribal sovereignty and self-determination” that focuses on “dignity and respect.”
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You can watch Biden’s remarks in full below.
