ALLEGANY TERRITORY, SALAMANCA, New York — On Friday, during a visit to the Gila River Indian Community, United States President Joseph Biden issued a formal apology to Native Nations within the United States for the federal government’s role in sponsoring, supporting, and operating residential boarding schools which Native students were forced to attend for more than 150 years. Seneca Nation President Rickey Armstrong, Sr. issued the following statement:

“This is a day that many people thought would never come. More than a century after the United States began its policy of forced assimilation aimed at Native people, a President of the United States has officially acknowledged and apologized for the atrocities this country forced upon countless Native communities, families, and children – atrocities whose deep, damaging effects our communities live with to this day.

President Biden’s apology on behalf of the United States is welcome and stirs a mix of emotions. The President’s words bring a measure of relief and validation that contribute in some way to the healing that survivors of the residential boarding school era and Native communities across the country continue to seek.

For more than 150 years, thousands of Native children were forced to attend the residential schools. For nearly all of them, the schools were a doorway to hatred, mental and physical abuse, and violence. Instead of having their minds opened and nurtured, they were systematically stripped of their clothes, their traditional language and culture, and often even their names. For far too many, the schools are where their lives ended.

The government called this movement assimilation. We know it better as attempted eradication. Piece by piece, the schools supported by the federal government and others tried to rip and strip away every connection those children had to their culture. The schools wanted to change the children so that no piece of their identity as Native people would remain.

This dark, deadly, and shameful treatment of our people, and the intergenerational trauma it caused, must be widely acknowledged, shared, discussed, and taught. The victims and survivors of the residential boarding schools were taught that they did not matter. They do matter, and the federal government must accept what it did to those children and to our communities.

While we are grateful to finally hear the United States acknowledge its actions, everyone can agree that this apology could have and should have come sooner. The despicable treatment of Native children at the schools was carried out over several decades and multiple administrations. Several more administrations have come and gone without taking ownership of what happened, even as other governments around the world have finally reckoned with their treatment of Native and Indigenous people in their own countries.

Now, at long last, the United States has finally broken its silence.

President Biden’s words are appreciated. Now we need action that speaks far louder than words.

Our communities are still broken because of what we were forced to endure. The disintegration of Native languages and customs, along with the strain caused to family structures, have spanned generations. Our pain is still very real. Many people still carry the hurt and darkness with them every day. Our communities still bear the weight of the trauma. Our path toward healing continues.

The federal government needs to support our communities with action and policy that address the long-lasting impacts of an era that should have never happened, pain and abuse that should have never been suffered, and young lives that never should have ended.”