Arizona's Indian boarding school history
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Native American children photographed praying at the Phoenix Indian School in June 1900. Photo: CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
President Joe Biden traveled to the Gila River Indian Community on Friday to formally apologize for the role the U.S. government had in abuses committed at Indian boarding schools that Native American children were forced to attend in the 1800s and 1900s.
Why it matters: Native American children nationwide were forcibly removed from their homes and suffered whippings, sexual abuse and severe malnourishment and were forced to perform manual labor across 408 boarding schools from 1819 to 1969 as part of the U.S. government's campaign to compel their assimilation.
- More than 900 children died nationally, per a recent U.S. Department of the Interior report.
The big picture: The federal government funded 47 Indian boarding schools in Arizona, the most of any state except Oklahoma, according to the Department of the Interior.
Zoom in: The Phoenix Indian School was Arizona's only boarding school operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs outside of a reservation, according to the Arizona Memory Project.
- In the school's earliest days, children were subject to military-style instruction, could not speak their Native languages, and were forced to wear American-style uniforms and cut their hair to match American norms.
- "It's cheaper to educate Indians than to kill them," Indian commissioner Thomas Morgan said at the establishment of the school in 1891.
Between the lines: In the 1930s, the Phoenix Indian School abandoned the assimilation mission and ended the elementary program.
- It became a more traditional high school for Native Americans who didn't have high schools on their reservations. It closed in 1990.
- Three buildings, including Memorial Hall, remain at Steele Indian School Park, and a visitor center opened in 2017 to remind Phoenix residents of the school's history.
The bottom line: "Federal Indian boarding school policy, the pain it has caused, will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history," Biden said Friday.