President Joe Biden formally apologized on Friday for the U.S. government’s role in running abusive Native American boarding schools for more than 150 years, and was heckled at the event over his support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
“This to me is one of the most consequential things I’ve ever had an opportunity to do in my whole career,” Biden said in his apology at an outdoor football and track field in Laveen Village, Arizona, near Phoenix.
“It’s a sin on our soul. … I formally apologize.”
Several hundred people attended, many of them in traditional tribal dress. They cheered as Biden apologized for the generational trauma faced by the Native American community due to the boarding schools across the country.
Biden faced a brief interruption when a pro-Palestinian protester shouted: “How can you apologize for a genocide while committing a genocide in Palestine?”
The president replied, “There is a lot of innocent people being killed and it has to stop.”
U.S. support for Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel has led to months of demonstrations across the United States. Rights advocates have demanded an arms embargo against Israel as tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the region, and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have grappled with hunger and disease.
Israel and Washington deny genocide allegations brought against Israel at the World Court in relation to Gaza, and Washington has maintained its support for its ally.
Friday’s trip marked Biden’s first time visiting Indian Country while in office and is part of his effort to cement his legacy in his final months in the White House.
Arizona is also one of the seven battleground states in a tight race for the Nov. 5 U.S. election in which Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris faces Republican former President Donald Trump.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to be a cabinet secretary, had launched an investigation to recognize the troubled legacy of federal Native American boarding school policies.
An Interior Department investigative report released in July found that at least 973 children died in these schools. Haaland’s family members were among the children forced into the boarding schools.
From 1819 through the 1970s, the United States implemented policies establishing and supporting hundreds of American Indian boarding schools across the U.S. Their purpose was to culturally assimilate Native Americans by forcibly removing them from their families, communities, religions and cultural beliefs.
Like the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have in recent years reviewed past abuse toward Indigenous communities, including children in schools.