Phoenix Indian School was one of more than 400 Indigenous boarding and residential schools in the U.S., a national program that sought to erase Native culture.
On Friday, at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, President Biden will issue a formal apology for the United States government’s involvement in the 150-year-long program. This apology will be the first of its kind.
The “Indian boarding schools” gained prominence when the federal government passed the Indian Civilization Act of 1819 in support of the schools’ stated goal to “civilize” Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians.
Arizona was home to 47 federal Indian boarding schools — not including the private or religious schools in the state that received federal funding.
While at these schools, Native children were given English names, forced to perform manual labor, and faced abhorrent physical abuse.
Nearly 1,000 Native children died in these schools, many of them buried in unmarked graves, a recent investigationby the Department of the …