Biden’s first trip to Indian Country is to formally apologize for federal boarding schools

President Joe Biden is planning to formally apologize for the nation’s 150-year campaign to assimilate Native children while meeting with a Valley-based tribe in Arizona on Friday.

It’ll mark his first diplomatic visit to Indian Country and close the chapter on his administration’s efforts to investigate hundreds of federal Indian boarding schools through the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will accompany him to the Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen, where he’ll meet with tribal elders and members from the Gila River Indian Community.

She stopped at this very same school alongside Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland in January 2023 as part of the year-long “Road to Healing Tour” to hear about abuses stemming from that painful past.

“We heard so many really sad and emotional stories,” Haaland told KJZZ News, “but I believe you know, this time there will be some joy attached to this visit. Everybody will be thrilled to see President Biden.”

The White House stated that the outgoing Biden is “beginning to right this historical wrong.” This announcement comes a few months after a July report from the Interior Department confirmed that at least 973 Indigenous children died in the custody of the abusive U.S. boarding school system that remained operational until 1969.

This latest report also called for a formal apology from the federal government.

Biden’s trip comes less than two weeks before Election Day, but after Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz each campaigned across the Gila River Indian Community earlier this month.

Hours after the White House’s announcement, the Trump campaign called this visit “nothing more than a photo op,” with Halee Dobbins, the Republican National Committee's communications director for Arizona and Nevada, writing in a statement that Biden should instead apologize for “nearly four years of failed Democrat policies that have destroyed the reservations’ energy supply, fueled historic inflation, and made Native American communities less safe.”