On Oct. 25, President Biden offered his heartfelt “formal apology” for the 150 year federal Indian Boarding School policy that tore families apart (my own family included) and destroyed Native cultures. On behalf of my two uncles who ran away from the Phoenix Indian School and who lived out their lives in a small room above the Calderon Bar in Phoenix – always in fear of being forced to return to the Phoenix Indian School until the days they died in the early 1970s. And, on behalf of my father, who was deeply adversely affected by the resulting lessons the Phoenix Indian School taught him and his siblings. And, on behalf of my entire now-deceased Abril Family, I accept Biden’s sincere apology. I accept this apology for the harms caused to my own blood family because it is now time to begin to heal from this dark chapter of our shared past.
Julie C. Abril
Bayfield
