How Biden’s election year apology could force real change for Native Americans

PERSPECTIVES: Presidential apologies usually mean nothing. Could this time be different for Indian Country?

In what many are calling a historic moment, president Joe Biden delivered an apology on Friday to the Gila River Indian Reservation near Phoenix for the forcible removal of Native children from their homes. In an effort to “kill the Indian, save the man,” these children—some as young as 3 years old—were stripped of their language and culture, subjected to torture and sexual abuse, and nearly 1,000 were murdered over a period of 150 years at 523 different schools across the United States. This cultural genocide caused unimaginable generational trauma that resonates today. This is the first time a U.S. president has acknowledged wrongdoing in perpetuating generations of systemic violence through residential schools.

Exactly a century ago, Congress passed the Snyder Act granting U.S. citizenship and voting rights to all U.S. born Native Americans. Though voting remains a challenge due to a lack of access to transportation and gas, rejection of Tribal ID cards at polling sites, and structural barriers like neglected roads and homes without proper mailing addresses, Native voters have the power to shape this election.

This isn’t merely theoretical. The United States has 574 federally recognized Tribes and nearly 6.8 million American Indian and Alaska Natives. Approximately 4.7 million are over 18 and eligible to vote. South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson (D) won in 2002 with just 500 from voters on Pine Ridge Reservation. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) credited her write-in victory in 2010 to the support from Alaska Native voters. North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D) attributed her 2012 win by a 1% margin to Native voters. Montana Senator John Tester (D-MT) won both his 2006 and 2012 races thanks largely to the Native vote.

“Native American voters tend to favor Democrats,”  Gabriel R. Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution told the Associated Press. “But they’re more likely to vote Republican than Latinos or African Americans. They’re often motivated by issues that directly impacttheir communities, like land rights and environmental protections.” Native American voters receive less attention than other groups from dominant political parties. But this election is different.

Earlier this month, the Harris-Walz campaign launched radio and TV ads targeting the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the U.S. and the size of West Virginia, to highlight Vice President Kamala Harris’ plans for Indian Country. The campaign has invested $370 million in advertising on reservations through Tribal TV and radio to secure the Native vote.

Biden’s apology, though decades overdue, fulfills the first of eight recommendations made by the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report, Volume II. The 105-page document released by the Department of the Interior in June was written by Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Bryan Newland (Bay Mills Indian Community) at the direction of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo), the first Native American cabinet secretaryin U.S. history.

Barack Obama signed an apology resolution in 2010, though it received little press because it was passed as part of a much larger defense appropriations spending bill.

NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy group, responded to Biden’s apology with five specific demands: passing the U.S. Truth and Healing Commission Bill, immediate clemency for Leonard Peltier, investment in Indigenous language revitalization, rescinding Wounded Knee medals of honor, and reforming the troubled Tuba City Boarding School.

In previous election cycles, such demands might have been dismissed as unrealistic. But now 2024′s electoral math has created a perfect storm of political necessity and moral imperative.

Christine Diindiisi McCleave (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Nation), CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, called the apology a political move just a couple weeks away from the presidential election.

Harris is currently trailing behind Former President Donald Trump in the polls in states with large Native American populations like Arizona, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah. All states where there is significant Tribal presence.

“I don’t mind being a political pawn,” McCleave said during an Instagram Live. “Native Americans are no stranger to that. What I hope comes out of this apology is they pass the truth and healing commission and Native people use their political power in Arizona and elect Kamala Harris. It’s a political ploy, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”

The timing of this apology – weeks before a crucial election – offers both opportunity and leverage. While presidential apologies often ring hollow, this one arrives when Native votes could decide key races.

The parallel to Clinton’s 1997 Tuskegee apology is telling. The unethical experiment resulted in the unnecessary suffering and death of Black men and their families in Alabama. So, what really changed after Clinton’s very well-worded apology? Disparities in health outcomes still exist for Black people in America: Black women are three times more likely than white women to die of pregnancy-related causes. The Black infant mortality rate is twice the rate for white infants. Black people are more likely to die from cancer and heart disease than whites, and are at greater risk for the onset of diabetes. As the saying goes, “An apology without change is just manipulation.”

Biden’s apology could inspire more Native Americans to vote – not just for a president who won’t roll back decades of progress on Tribal sovereignty, funding, and the environment – but down the ballot on key local initiatives that could mean real change for Indian Country, to McCleave’s point.

Native advocacy groups are organizing voter registration drives and coordinating with Tribal leaders. They’re working to translate national power to local power, focusing on state and municipal elections where Native votes wield even greater impact. After Election Day, their objective will be to maintain pressure on the elected representatives to ensure promises made in October aren’t forgotten by November.

At this point in history the bar is in the ground when it comes to many of our expectations for our next president. However, the coming weeks represent a rare convergence of moral imperative and political necessity. Native organizers have spent decades building coalitions and articulating clear demands for justice. With electoral math suddenly aligning with these long-standing calls for change, there’s unprecedented potential to transform symbolic gestures into concrete action.

The real test isn’t Biden’s words, but whether his administration—and its potential successor—will finally meet the demands Native leaders and organizations have been making for generations.