From the early 18th century to as recent as 1969, the U.S. government paid church denominations to run boarding schools to assimilate Native American children into Anglo-American culture. Children were taken from their tribal communities, forced to abandon their language and cultural customs and subject to numerous forms of abuse.
In Phoenix last month, President Joe Biden gathered officials, residents and boarding school survivors from Native American tribes to officially apologize for the government’s role in this generational harm.
One of the many tribal communities affected by this U.S. policy was the Shawnee tribe, who historically resided in Ohio before the federal government forcibly moved them.
WYSO’s Indigenous Affairs reporter Adriana Martinez-Smiley spoke with the Shawnee tribe’s chief, Ben Barnes who was present for the address, to hear his thoughts on the president’s acknowledgment and apology.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
ADRIANA MARTINEZ-SMILEY: I'm wondering if you could set the scene for the day. What were some things that you observed? What reactions were you seeing from people that were there to witness it?
BEN BARNES: Well, it was really hot that day, unusually hot even for Phoenix in late October. But there was still a very large number of elderly people that wanted to be there.
And so we gathered at the Gila River Indian School and we sat on the football field and there was a lot of patience shown by a lot of people, almost like a pregnant pause amongst the audience, waiting and waiting, knowing that here within an hour or so, the president would come on stage. There was an anticipation that you could feel, and it was palpable.
I've been trying to sit with my emotions for a few days on how I feel and reflect upon the day's events. But the one thing I know for certain is that the boarding school survivors, they really needed to hear it. They've been waiting all their lives to hear ‘I'm sorry.’ And to hear it from the commander-in-chief, the President of the United States, for the survivors I visited with, it meant everything.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: Was there anything that surprised you about the day while you were there? It doesn't necessarily have to relate to the president at all, but the space.
BARNES: I'm not a survivor, so I think I look at the event a little differently. It was about the survivors getting the apology that they felt they needed.
However, as the leader of the Shawnee Tribe, I would have liked to have seen some ideas and the president to make some commitments on what's next in regards to boarding schools. I would also like to have seen him address those survivors not just stopping at an apology, but to actually make an executive order in some fashion.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: In Canada, Sept. 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which is a day to recognize those that have survived or did not survive their time in boarding schools and the U.S. doesn't have a holiday that observes anything like that. What are your thoughts on that?
BARNES: Well, I can tell you that those of us in Indian Country, we are memorializing September 30th, Orange Shirt day to remember all the boarding school survivors. The boarding school policy was a tool to destroy communities and remove land from those communities. It wasn't just an act to educate children. It was an act to take lands and sovereignty away from Indigenous tribal nations. And so we will honor it whether or not we have a declaration from the president.
"We've waited too long. We've waited too long for these boarding school survivors. We've waited too long for those that did not survive or they died waiting for this day to come."
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: Now, I'm sure this is something that would be difficult to summarize, but if you were to try, what impact, would you say, have the boarding schools had on the Shawnee Tribe?
BARNES: Every person's been affected by boarding schools in some way. Even people that say, ‘Hey, I had a good boarding school experience.’ Well, it's not just the boarding school affecting the children. It's the lack of those children in the communities.
Can you imagine when children are forced or coerced out of their communities, or there's collusion to move all the children out of the community? Imagine what a day looks like when there's no laughter of children, where there's children not learning the songs, the language, the culture of their elders, of their grandparents, of their aunts and uncles.
There's damage not just to the kids that went to these places and had bad experiences. The communities that they come from were all adversely affected because of the generational loss of systems of knowledge that were being passed down from mother to child, father to son, mother to daughter, grandparents to grandchildren.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: Why do you think it's taken this long for a U.S. president to issue an apology for federally backed boarding schools?
BARNES: I think it's because we haven't had a Secretary of Interior that was a Native American. I think (Deb Haaland’s) advocacy is really what’s put it on the radar. She's been a champion on the boarding school issue, so I think that's really where the credit ultimately is.
I think we need to have more Natives in public office serving Native country, whether that's elected officials or whether it's in the administration, the administrators, the political class. So that these stories can come out and get the attention they need.
MARTINEZ-SMILEY: You were touching on this earlier, but moving forward, what action do you want to see from the current or even future presidential administrations around this issue?
BARNES: I want to see the signature of Senate Bill 1723 or on House Resolution 7227. That's what I want to see. I want to see the commander-in-chief reach across the aisle to the other party and make sure that one way or the other, those bills pass and are sent on to the other chamber so that we can get that put into law.
We've waited too long. We've waited too long for these boarding school survivors. We've waited too long for those that did not survive or they died waiting for this day to come.
