LAVEEN, ARIZONA — The Coalition of Large Tribes, an intertribal organization representing the interests of the more than 50 tribes with reservations of 100,000 acres or more, encompassing more than 95% of the Indian Country lands and more than half the Native American population, welcomes President Biden’s sincere apology today, recognizing the wrong and painful history of federal Indian boarding schools. For a century, hundreds of such schools took Indian children away from their families and robbed tribal communities of generations—all under the United States’ assimilationist policies that aimed to strip tribes of our land, language and culture. President Biden disavowed those policies and shared that the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to supporting Indian Country’s path to healing from those grave injustices.

COLT Vice Chairman Tracy “Ching” King observed, “Indigenous communities have been subjected to trauma at every scale and dimension imaginable – individual, collective, historical, intergenerational, and more – with physical, mental, spiritual and systemic violence intending to destroy us as tribal nations by taking our children and their beliefs, culture, and relationships with the natural world. This trauma feels very fresh, but President Biden’s apology is a start to our healing.”

“The purpose of the Indian Boarding School Policy was to assimilate American Indians and Alaska Natives and dispossess us of our lands. The lands wrongfully taken from tribal nations in support of Indian Boarding Schools are valuable and should be returned to help us address the many intergenerational social ills from which we still suffer caused by the Indian Boarding Schools,” said COLT Executive Director OJ Semans. “The Department of the Interior’s own reports recognize that land back is a key foundation for healing. COLT calls for enforcement of early 20th Century federal statutes which require reversion of lands no longer used for missionary purposes.”

Semans explained that, “Even 100 years ago, Congress recognized abuses by churches were ongoing and enacted laws to undo their land-grabs of many thousands of acres of reservations. The Indian Boarding Schools and associated mass dispossession of lands were tools of assimilation policies that the United States has disavowed and must remediate. Enforcement of the federal land reversion statutes is long overdue.”

“As I, and other COLT leaders have shared on the floor of the United Nations in New York and Geneva, restoring our tribal lands is the foundation of our cultural and spiritual healing,” said COLT Treasurer Lisa White Pipe, Vice President of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. “The Rapid City Indian Boarding School is vitally important and would be an ideal first step in land reversion enforcement because it has its own specific reversion statute, in addition to the generally applicable ones Congress enacted, and those lands were intended to benefit Lakota tribal nations in common. Reversion of the Rapid City Indian Boarding School parcels into Trust with the Department of the Interior would fulfill Congress’s vision and begin the intensive healing our people need.”

Navajo Nation Council Delegate Eugenia Charles-Newton attended the Biden apology event in person, along with other COLT leaders. She applauded President Biden’s words, and looked ahead to the Administration’s actions to support trauma healing, “Indigenous cultural knowledge and practices should be made available for trauma healing and mental health services should be indigenous lead, with peer learning and support spaces, and be provided with tailored training for practitioners and communities.”

Vice Chairman King said, “The United States can help us heal by giving back what boarding schools took from Indians—land, dignity, language and culture.” COLT’s recommendations for actions to address the legacy of Indian boarding schools and support the healing of tribal communities include:

1. Enforce Federal Land Reversion Statutes and Advance International Relationships as Recommended by DOI:

2. Support Restored Dignity for Native Americans by Repudiating Other Historic Wrongs, and Revoke All Wounded Knee Medals of Honor. On December 28, 1890, the U.S. Army intercepted the band of Miniconjou Lakota, mainly women and children, on their way to Pine Ridge Reservation. As the military called together the Sioux men to confiscate their weapons, soldiers began indiscriminately shooting. They killed the mostly unarmed Native men, as well as the women and children who were in a separate section of camp and began fleeing the site. The total death toll may be as high as 300, with women and children making up over-two thirds of the dead. Despite this brutality, U.S. soldiers were awarded approximately 20 individual Medals of Honor.

COLT requests President Biden keep his campaign promise from his letter on January 15, 2020:

3. Begin Intensive Investments in Trauma Healing Policy and Programs. COLT calls for dramatic investments in direct funding to tribes and organizations to implement culturally-informed healing modalities to maximize the trauma healing resources available in tribal communities. Adequate mental and behavioral health services are not available in tribal communities and when such services are available, they often do not recognize cultural knowledge and practices; as a result, current mental health services remain ineffective in reaching Indigenous people to resolve our individual and collective trauma. We urge support H.R. 7227 and S. 1723, the Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policies Act, and any other Federal act or policy that would provide trauma healing resources to address the inter-generational impacts of Indian Board Schools.

4. “Meaningfully Address Revitalization of Tribal Languages and Tribal Education.

COLT Welcomes President Biden’s Boarding Schools Apology, Looks Forward to Healing Commitments