President Biden on Monday announced a new national monument to tell the story of the more than 400 boarding schools where tens of thousands of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children were sent for assimilation.
Biden said the schools were "designed to sever ties between children and their tribal families, their language and culture."
Biden formally apologized for the Indian boarding schools in October, calling it one of the "most horrific chapters in American history." He announced the new monument during the White House Tribal Nations Summit.
"I don't want people forgetting 10, 20, 30, 50 years and pretend it didn't happen," Biden said.
The monument will be located in Carlisle, Pa., on what was the campus of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School — part of the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks — and will be managed by the National Park Service and the U.S. Army.
About 7,800 children from more than 140 tribes were sent to the Carlisle boarding school, which ran from 1879 to 1918. The school was a model for the federal Indian boarding school system, where more than 970 children died and survivors bore scars from abuse and separation.
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