Share

Biden: Boarding schools "a sin on our soul"

  • Painting showing Canadian Royal Mountie police pulling indigenous children from their parents' arms.

    Kent Monkman’s The Scream references the horrors of the residential school system.

President Joe Biden last week apologized for the United States forcibly assimilating Indigenous children through a nationwide boarding school system.

This policy lasted from 1819 through the 1970s. And Friday, during a press conference at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, Biden became the first president to say sorry.

"All told, hundreds and hundreds of federal Indian boarding schools across the country. Tens of thousands of Native children enter the system. Nearly 1,000 documented Native child deaths, though the real number is likely to be much, much higher," Biden said. "Lost generations, culture and language, lost trust. It's horribly, horribly wrong. It's a sin on our soul."

Emma Tsosie '25, co-president of Native Americans at Dartmouth discusses President Joe Biden's apology for the U.S. policy that forced generations of Native American children to attend federal boarding schools.

Biden Apologizes for Residential Schools