9 The BIA.'s Apology to Native Americans: An Essay on Collective Memory and Collective Conscience

The year 2000 marked a new millennium for the global populace, and thus, a particularly important occasion for collective reflection on where we-as distinct nations and peoples-had been, and where we were headed. An important part of this process, of course, was to acknowledge who "we" are: what is the collective identity of the United States of America as a nation? Who are "Americans" as a people? Moments like these are rare, and the process of self-reflection comes at a significant cost. Because, of course, to understand who "we" are, we must acknowledge where "we" come from. The creation of the United States has its own mythology, reflected in notions of "pilgrim pride," the brash forging of a new "democracy" free of European hierarchies and monarchies, and the scrappy and entrepreneurial "pioneers" who "settled" the "Wild West." The reality of the United States, however, reflects a seamier and more unsavory side based on the plantation labor of enslaved Mricans and the massive dispossession of Native peoples from their lands, cultures, and lives. We all know that equality never was an organizing principle of this Nation. And today, hundreds of thousands of Americans, including the survivors of these past horrors, continue to experi­ ence the often profound social, political, cultural, and economic inequalities that permeate our society. It was against this fabric of emerging social conscience and consciousness that Kevin Gover, the Assistant Secretary for Indian Mfairs during the Clinton administration, apologized to Indian nations and to Indian people, for the past harms wrought by the Federal Indian policy, as implemented by the Bureau of Indian Mfairs. The occasion was the 175th anniversary of the establish­ ment of the Bureau of Indian Mfairs. In Assistant Secretary Gover's speech, delivered on September 8, 2000, he commented on the appropriateness of self-reflection: