Governor Kathy Hochul plans to visit the Seneca Nation's Cattaraugus Territory on Tuesday to apologize for the state’s role in the Thomas Indian School, and to meet with survivors.
This is a visit that is months if not years in the making. The formal announcement of the visit came Friday, but Seneca Nation President J. Conrad Seneca secured the commitment back in March.
“I asked her, I said, ‘Would you consider coming to our territory and apologizing — as President Biden did — on behalf of the state of New York for what happened during that era of the boarding school that existed on Seneca territory?’” he said. “And without hesitation, she said yes.”
The request was Seneca’s top priority going into the meeting as a newly installed president working to reset relations with the state and forge a more productive working relationship. The apology was one of several issues for which the Senecas are seeking attention they see as long overdue.
And Hochul, he said, was more than receptive — calling the apology, “a moral responsibility,” he said.
“And so that was, that's a really big deal,” Seneca said.
The Thomas Indian School was a state-run boarding school that operated from roughly 1875 until the late 1950s. This was one of more than 400 such boarding schools that existed across North America in the 19th and 20th centuries — leaving lasting scars.
Indigenous children were taken from their families and housed in often brutal and inhumane conditions. They were punished for speaking their language, practicing their traditions and instead sentenced to forced manual labor and subjected to physical, mental and sexual abuse.
“No words or actions will ever be able to undo the pain and suffering of the Seneca people and other Indigenous peoples across the state,” Hochul said, her remarks included in a statement with Seneca jointly announcing her upcoming visit. “By visiting the Seneca Nation and the site of the Thomas Indian School we will mark a new day in our relations."
She described the apology as a means to “officially recognize the horrifying shortcomings of our past."
Seneca describes the schools as "basically a prison for these children trying to break them and get them to assimilate into, again, white society.”
“The children that went there had great difficulty as they grew up into adulthood, had families and children and were not equipped, you know, basically, to be able to care and love their children in a way that's normal,” he said. “Our people suffer still today from the intergenerational trauma and the effect of that school within our communities.”
Seneca has a direct connection to that history. He grew up in the territory. His father was in the Thomas Indian School. And his office today is on the school’s former campus.
“So I live it every day here where I'm at,” he said. "It's never going to be forgotten, but ... my hope is that something like this (Hochul’s visit and apology), you know, we can heal from.”
And to begin building a foundation to address other outstanding issues. A new gaming compact is one. The current agreement term has long expired, and the latest negotiated deal was scuttled by Rochester lawmakers who were left out of talks in which the state allegedly offered that a new casino could be placed in Monroe County.
The two sides are working to set up a meeting re-opening those discussions.
“It's not going to pick up where it left off,” Seneca said during an interview back in March, adding that he expected both he and the governor would be personally involved in those talks. “I think in a short period of time that we can come to some terms of agreement.”
For Seneca, though, it was important to build a foundation, which meant addressing long-standing issues.
And there are many. In recent weeks, he said, the two sides have had high-level meetings involving representatives from state police, environmental conservation, economic development and the Office of Addiction Services and Supports.
Hochul’s visit, he said, “sends a clear message that the governor is willing to be able to change the course of history, and that we can have a better relationship and work together on many issues to find resolve as we move forward down the road.”
