Dear Mr. President, it is now time to offer our apologies.

OPINION:

Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, is the oldest continuously operating federal school for Native Americans. I went there in 2013 when I was governor of Kansas to apologize with deep remorse for the consequences of ill-conceived assimilation policies and for the hardship, abuse, and deaths of the children who attended Haskell and were never returned to their families and ancestors.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government has rarely apologized to the Native Americans.

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At the back of the Haskell property, out of sight of the public, is a cemetery where children are buried, some as young as two years old. Their gravestones serve as an everlasting testament to a terribly disturbing and deadly federal policy of “kill the Indian, save the man.”

When the Indian was “killed,” many of the native men and women died as well, often when they were still children. Some even when they were babies.

Behind the cemetery lies swampy land, a low-lying area where many Native American children reportedly died trying to escape Haskell and return to their families. Their remains were never found, but their “blood cries out to us” even today.

The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Research Report, Part 2has recently been released and if we follow its recommendations, it can herald a path of healing for our country, the Native Americans, and our nation.

The first step is to admit the mistake, as Canada, New Zealand and Australia have already done, and apologize for it.

The President of the United States must do this. No one else will do. It must be done publicly and symbolically in the White House.

In 2004, while I was serving in the U.S. Senate, Negiel Bigpond and a group of Native American and spiritual leaders came to my Senate office to talk about healing the land. Negiel attended the Chilocco Indian School near Newkirk, Oklahoma. While he shared some of the good times he had experienced there during his education, he also spoke about the harsh conditions he had endured and the sometimes cruel and mean-spirited actions of his teachers and administrators. We talked about the utmost need for healing, but first I saw their pain.

Grown, handsome men and women, kind and humble, burst into tears of grief as they spoke of their own, and the federally ignored, traumas of their ancestors’ pasts.

Negiel and I would later travel together to Linn County, Kansas, where the Trail of Death ended for the Pottawatomie Indians after their forced removal from their old homeland of Indiana to the plains of Kansas. It was a very different environment for them and they suffered for it.

Six hundred Pottawatomie would eventually be buried there before being relocated to a permanent reservation west of Topeka. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced nearly 100,000 Native Americans, including the Pottawatomie, to leave their homelands east of the Mississippi and move west into what some early explorers then called the Great American Desert. Thousands died during this forced relocation.

Not to be too one-sided, there were also atrocities committed by the Indians. In addition, there were many Europeans who tried to help the Indians. Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne left her native France in 1818 to travel to Missouri and in 1841 she moved to Kansas to serve and pray for the Pottawatomie Indians.

But it is high time for healing.

In 2004, Negiel and I worked together to bring an apology from the U.S. federal government to the Natives. This inspired idea came from Negiel, but we both believe it comes from the Heart of God.

When I was in the Senate, I co-authored a bill with North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan and other co-sponsors that called for a formal apology from the United States to Native peoples. It was eventually passed and signed into law by then-President Barack Obama in 2010 as part of the annual defense budget bill. Most of the treaties the federal government made with Native tribes were not passed as standalone bills, but as supplements to defense budget bills, so it seemed appropriate to authorize an apology in the same way.

One of the requirements of the bill is that the President of the United States issue a formal apology. That has never happened. Now is the time.

With this historic report detailing the history of Native American education in America, which Negiel experienced firsthand, Americans need to hear the President of the United States say that this was wrong. But he cannot stop there. He must acknowledge the full extent of the destructive federal policies that have been applied to the Native Americans so that the sore of these past sins can be pierced and a healing process can begin.

Apologies are difficult, but necessary. They are difficult for individuals and even harder for nations. Mr. President, in your remaining days in office, you have a unique opportunity to be a healer. Please do so!

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Sam Brownback is a former United States Senator and Governor of Kansas. He served as the United States Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from 2018 to 2021 and is the chairman of the National Council for Religious FreedomHe is also a Senior Fellow at Worldwide Christian Aid.

Negiel Bigpond is a full-blooded member of the Yuchi Indian Tribe whose family was subjected to the Trail of Tears. He currently serves as an apostle of Morning Star Church of All Nations in Oklahoma.