Opinion: My LDS family adopted an American Indian child in the 1970s. It was wrong, and the church should apologize.

A recent exposé described the abuse of American Indian children in boarding schools operated by the Catholic Church and sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior. In June, U.S. Catholic bishops apologized for the church’s efforts to strip away the identities of American Indian children for generations. Other churches should do the same.

Apologies cannot change the past, but they can pave the way for healing and reconciliation for those affected by forced assimilation and abuse. Apologizing is recognition by the contrite of wrongdoing. The federal government and all institutions involved, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, must formally apologize and commit to doing better in the future.

My foster brother, Leander, came to live with my family in Utah as part of the Indian Student Placement Program (also called the Lamanite Education Program) sponsored by the LDS Church. Sixth grade was a unique year because he and I were in the same class and, therefore, the same class picture. Among a small sea of 27 children and one teacher, there were 26 white, typically middle-class children (including me) and one Native American boy on the first row, my brother.

Indigenous children whose parents agreed could send their kids to live with mostly white, Latter-day Saint families in Utah to attend better schools and, of course, to be better Latter-day Saints. Often, parents and children were pressured to participate. However grand the motives, the goal of the program was — in my view — to “kill the Indian” to “save the man.” The emotional trauma of being forced to conform to unfamiliar cultural norms tolls across generations.

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Opinion: My LDS family adopted an American Indian child in the 1970s. It was wrong, and the church should apologize.

Opinion: My LDS family adopted an American Indian child in the 1970s. It was wrong, and the church should apologize.

Opinion: My LDS family adopted an American Indian child in the 1970s. It was wrong, and the church should apologize.

Opinion: My LDS family adopted an American Indian child in the 1970s. It was wrong, and the church should apologize.

Opinion: My LDS family adopted an American Indian child in the 1970s. It was wrong, and the church should apologize.