Nevada Gov. Apologizes for Abusive Indigenous Schools: 'Acknowledging This Role Will Not Heal the Pain'

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak has apologized for the state’s involvement in the residential school system—a government-operated network of boarding schools that aimed to assimilate Indigenous children into white society.

According to the Reno Gazette, Sisolak confirmed the State of Nevada is fully cooperating with a federal investigation into the Stewart Indian School located near Carson City. The institution, which operated from 1890 to 1980, is one of the 350 residential schools being that is being investigated for abuse and the potential deaths of Indigenous children, who were forcibly removed from their reservations and families.

“Though it was the federal government that established a policy to ‘kill the Indian to save the man,’ it was the state of Nevada that sold the bonds to fund this school, and it’s the state that now manages much of this land,” the governor said. “On the behalf of this state I want to make an apology. “Acknowledging this role will not heal the pain. … However, this is the beginning, and I’m proud to be the governor to take that first step.”

The probe, led by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, came after the remains of more than 200 children were found at the site of a former residential school in Canada.

“While it may be difficult to learn of the traumas suffered in the boarding school era, understanding its impacts on communities today cannot occur without acknowledging that painful history,” Haaland wrote in a memo dated June 22, 2021. “Only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future we are all proud to embrace.”