President Biden to apologize for 150-year Indian boarding school policy

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President Biden to apologize for 150-year Indian boarding school policy

2024-10-25 02:48 Last Updated At：02:50

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to formally apologize on Friday for the country’s role in the Indian boarding school system, which devastated the lives of generations of Indigenous children and their ancestors.

“I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen,” said Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna. “It’s a big deal to me. I’m sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country.”

Shortly after becoming the first Native American to lead the Interior, Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system, which found that at least 18,000 children, some as young as 4, were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that sought to assimilate them, in an effort to dispossess their tribal nations of land. It also documented nearly 1,000 deaths and 74 gravesites associated with the more than 500 schools.

No president has ever formally apologized for the forced removal of Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children — an element of genocide as defined by the United Nations — or any other aspect of the U.S. government’s decimation of Indigenous peoples.

During the second phase of its investigation, the Interior conducted listening sessions and gathered the testimony of survivors. One of the recommendations of the final report was an acknowledgement of and apology for the boarding school era. Haaland said she took that to Biden, who agreed that it was necessary.

Haaland, whose grandparents were forced to attend a boarding school, said she was honored to play a role, along with her staff, in helping make the apology a reality. Haaland will join Biden during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president on Friday as he delivers his speech. “It will be one of the high points of my entire life,” she said.

It’s unclear what, if any, action will follow the apology. The Department of Interior is still working with tribal nations to repatriate the remains of children on federal lands, and many tribes are still at odds with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has refused to follow the federal law regulating the return of Native American remains when it comes to those still buried at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

“President Biden’s apology is a profound moment for Native people across this country,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement to The Associated Press.

“Our children were made to live in a world that erased their identities, their culture and upended their spoken language,” Hoskin said in his statement. “Oklahoma was home to 87 boarding schools in which thousands of our Cherokee children attended. Still today, nearly every Cherokee Nation citizen somehow feels the impact.”

Friday’s apology could lead to further progress for tribal nations still pushing for continued action from the federal government, because it’s an acknowledgement of past wrongs left unrectified, something “known and buried,” said Melissa Nobles, Chancellor of MIT and author of "The Politics of Official Apologies."

“These things have value because it validates the experiences of the survivors and acknowledges they’ve been seen and we heard you, and also there’s a lot of historical evidence to suggest this happened,” Nobles said.

In Canada, a country with a similar history of subjugating Indigenous peoples and forcing their children into boarding schools for assimilation, an apology from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017 was followed by the establishment of a truth and reconciliation process and the injection of billions of dollars into First Nations to deal with the devastation left by the government’s policies.

No such commission exists in the U.S. A bill to establish a truth and reconciliation process was introduced last year by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but it remains in the Senate.

Pope Francis issued a historic apology in 2022 for the Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native people into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations.

“I am deeply sorry,” Francis said to school survivors and Indigenous community members gathered in Alberta. He called the school policy a “disastrous error” that was incompatible with the Gospel. “I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a law apologizing to Native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy a century prior. In 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for his government’s past policies of assimilation, including the forced removal of children. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a similar concession in 2022.

Hoskin said he is grateful to both Biden and Haaland for leading the effort to reckon with the country’s role in a dark chapter for Indigenous peoples, but he emphasized that the apology is just “an important step, which must be followed by continued action.”

Putin ends BRICS summit that sought to expand Russia's global clout but was shadowed by Ukraine

2024-10-25 02:47 Last Updated At：02:50

KAZAN, Russia (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday closed a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, praising its role as a counterbalance to what he called the West's “perverse methods."

The three-day summit in the city of Kazan was attended by leaders or representatives of 36 countries, highlighting the failure of U.S.-led efforts to isolate Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

The conflict came up repeatedly at the meeting, which saw the first visit to Russia from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in more than two years and drew an angry reaction from Kyiv. Guterres called for “a just peace” in Ukraine, in line with the U.N. Charter, international law and General Assembly resolutions. He also urged an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza, Lebanon and Sudan.

At a news conference Thursday night, Putin was asked about former U.S. President Donald Trump's promise to end the fighting in Ukraine.

“What Mr. Trump said recently, what I heard, (is) he spoke about the desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine," Putin said. "It seems to me that he said it sincerely. We certainly welcome statements of this kind, no matter who makes them.”

Putin also was asked about whether any North Korean troops were in Russia, which he neither confirmed nor denied. The U.S. said Wednesday that 3,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia and are training at several locations.

“Images are a serious thing, if there are images, then they reflect something," he said when asked about satellite photos of troops.

Putin noted that lawmakers in Moscow earlier in the day ratified a pact with North Korea on mutual military assistance as part of a “strategic partnership” with Pyongyang..

“We have never doubted that the North Korean leadership takes our agreements seriously. What and how we will do within the framework of this article (of the agreement) is our business,” he said.

The summit covered the deepening of financial cooperation, including the development of alternatives to Western-dominated payment systems, efforts to settle regional conflicts and expansion of the BRICS group of nations.

The alliance that initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa when it was founded in 2009 has expanded to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have formally applied to become members, and several other countries have expressed interest in joining.

The Kremlin touted the summit as “the largest foreign policy event ever held” by Russia.

Speaking at what was dubbed the “BRICS Plus” session, which included countries that are considering joining the bloc, Putin accused the West of trying to stem the growing power of the Global South with “illegal unilateral sanctions, blatant protectionism, manipulation of currency and stock markets, and relentless foreign influence ostensibly promoting democracy, human rights, and the climate change agenda.”

“Such perverse methods and approaches -– to put it bluntly -– lead to the emergence of new conflicts and the aggravation of old disagreements,” Putin said. “One example of this is Ukraine, which is being used to create critical threats to Russia’s security, while ignoring our vital interests, our just concerns, and the infringement of the rights of Russian-speaking people.”

Russia has specifically pushed for the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network SWIFT and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.

In a joint declaration Wednesday, participants voiced concern about “the disruptive effect of unlawful unilateral coercive measures, including illegal sanctions” and reiterated their commitment to enhancing financial cooperation within BRICS. They noted the benefits of “faster, low-cost, more efficient, transparent, safe and inclusive cross-border payment instruments built upon the principle of minimizing trade barriers and non-discriminatory access.”

China's President Xi Jinping has emphasized the bloc’s role in ensuring global security. Xi noted that China and Brazil have put forward a peace plan for Ukraine and sought to rally broader international support for it. Ukraine has rejected the proposal.

“We should promote the de-escalation of the situation as soon as possible and pave the way for a political settlement,” Xi said.

Putin and Xi had announced a “no-limits” partnership weeks before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in 2022. They already met twice earlier this year, in Beijing in May and at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan in July.

Russia’s cooperation with India also has flourished as New Delhi sees Moscow as a time-tested partner since the Cold War despite Russia’s close ties with India’s rival, China. While Western allies want New Delhi to be more active in persuading Moscow to end the fighting in Ukraine, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has avoided condemning Russia while emphasizing a peaceful settlement.

Addressing the BRICS Plus session, Guterres urged an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Sudan. “We need peace in Ukraine, a just peace in line with the U.N. Charter, international law and General Assembly resolutions,” he said.

Russia's Kremlin-controlled media touted the summit as a massive policy coup that left the West fearing the loss of its global clout. State TV shows and news bulletins underscored that BRICS countries account for about half the world's population comprising the “global majority” and challenging Western “hegemony.”

TV hosts elaborately quoted Western media reports saying that the summit highlighted the failure to isolate Moscow. “The West, the U.S., Washington, Brussels, London ended up isolating themselves,” said Yevgeny Popov, host of a popular political talk show on state channel Rossiya 1.