Episcopal leaders welcome President Biden’s apology to Indigenous peoples, acknowledge church’s involvement in boarding schools

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal leaders welcomed President Joe Biden’s Oct. 25 formal apology to Indigenous peoples over the federal government’s 150-year involvement in boarding schools that separated Native American children from their families to strip them of their language and culture and assimilate them into white-dominant society. 

“After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program, but the federal government has never formally apologized for what happened, until today,” Biden said. “I formally apologize as president of the United States of America for what we did. I formally apologize.”

Biden made his apology to all Native Americans while speaking at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, a reservation on the south side of Phoenix. The Indigenous boarding school system destroyed the lives of generations of Indigenous children and their descendants.

“The Episcopal Church welcomes President Biden’s apology today while recognizing that our own journey of truth-telling and reconciliation continues. Through General Convention Resolution A127 and Executive Council Resolution MW062, we have committed $2.5 million to a comprehensive investigation of our church’s role in the boarding school system,” Indigenous Episcopal leaders, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and House of Deputies President Julia Ayala Harris said Oct. 25 in a statement responding to Biden’s apology. 

The Rev. Bradley Hauff, the missioner for The Episcopal Church’s Office of Indigenous Ministries who is Lakota and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe – as well as the son of boarding school survivors; Pearl Chanar, an Athabaskan tribal member, co-chair of the church’s boarding schools research commission and a boarding school survivor; Warren Hawk, also a co-chair of the boarding schools research commission and a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe; and Miskopwaaganikwe Leora Tadgerson, chair of the church’s boarding schools advocacy committee and the Diocese of Northern Michigan’s director of reparations and justice who is a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and the Wiikwemkoong First Nation, joined Curry and Ayala Harris in the statement. 

Arizona had the second highest number of known Indigenous boarding schools in the United States – behind Oklahoma. None of the identified boarding schools in the Diocese of Arizona were operated by The Episcopal Church, although the diocese is conducting its own archival investigation to make sure none were overlooked.

The exact number of Indigenous children who attended boarding schools in the 18th and 19th centuries is unknown, but at least 60,889 of them were enrolled by 1925, according to a study conducted by historian David Wallace Adams in the 1990s. By 1926, nearly 83% of Indigenous children were attending boarding schools. The schools were designed to assimilate Native Americans into the dominant white culture and erase Indigenous languages and practices.

“Kill the Indian, save the man” was the rationale for that system offered in 1892 by Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, which served as the flagship boarding school in the United States from its founding in 1879 through 1918.

The Episcopal Church is known to have operated at least 34 of the 523 boarding schools in the United States identified by the nonprofit National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, more commonly known as NABS. Most of the 34 Episcopal-operated schools were located west of the Mississippi River, but “there is evidence that Episcopal dioceses and congregations on the East Coast helped to financially support the schools,” according to the statement.

“The Episcopal Church must fully understand its role and involvement in boarding schools,” the statement said. “That is why we are pursuing a thorough fact-finding process while supporting community-based healing initiatives led by Indigenous communities.”

Nearly 1,000 Native American children are known to have died during the 19th and 20th centuries in boarding schools throughout the United States, according to a July report by the U.S. Department of the Interior. However, some experts estimate the number is closer to 40,000. In many cases, children faced physical, sexual and mental abuse.

“The pain it is caused will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history. For too long, this all happened with virtually no public attention, not written about in our history books, not taught in our schools,” Biden said. “But just because history is silent, doesn’t mean it didn’t take place. It did take place. While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing. Injustices are heinous, horrific and grievous. They can’t be buried, no matter how hard people try. …We must know the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation.”

The Episcopal Church has two Indigenous-led boarding school groups that are working together under a $2.5 million budget allocated by Executive Council, yet they have distinctive mandates. General Convention’s fact-finding commission focuses on researching and documenting the church’s historic involvement and complicity in the boarding schools. Executive Council’s committee focuses on advocacy work.

The two groups first met in person in October 2023 in Seattle, Washington, to discuss how to interpret and apply the resolutions that enacted the boarding school groups, General Convention Resolution A127 and Executive Council Resolution MW062, and met again in January 2024. Later in the springtime, the groups hired Veronica Pasfield – an Anishinaabekwe, a member of the Bay Mills Indian Community and a historian – as an archival consultant.

“Our reckoning centers tribal sovereigns, and our research confirms the findings of the Department of the Interior: Indigenous day and boarding schools were largely created and funded by treaties between tribes and the federal government,” the statement said. “The Department of the Interior contracted with The Episcopal Church to create and maintain Indigenous schools. Tribal trust monies and/or treaty agreements funded, in whole or in part, Episcopal-contracted schools. Thus, the current work of the Episcopal commissions is seeking the engagement and guidance of Tribal Nations.”

The Episcopal Church is partnering with NABS, the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery and other organizations as research and advocacy work continue.

During the 81st General Convention in June 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky, The Episcopal Church’s Office of Indigenous Ministries hosted a panel discussion on the church’s historic role in operating boarding schools. Boarding school survivors shared their stories and Pasfield shared progress made so far with archival discovery.

Also at the 81st General Convention, the House of Bishops and House of Deputies unanimously voted to adopt Resolution C032, “A Prayer to Remember the Innocents,” which expresses the church’s remorse for its role “in the irreparable harm suffered by Indigenous children who attended Indigenous boarding and residential schools in the 1800s and 1900s, and acknowledges that the effect of that harm carries on in boarding school survivors and their descendants.”

The Episcopal Church’s Washington, D.C.-based Office of Government Relations is in touch with the Department of the Interior over work and research on the boarding schools. The office is also pushing for Congress to pass legislation supporting a federal truth and healing commission for Indigenous boarding schools.

“We continue to pray for all Indigenous children who were in residential boarding schools—those who died there, those who survived, and their descendants who still carry this legacy,” the Episcopal leaders’ statement said. “As we say in our Prayer to Remember the Innocents, ‘We will always remember them.’”

-Shireen Korkzan is a reporter and assistant editor for Episcopal News Service. She can be reached at skorkzan@episcopalchurch.org.