Governor Hochul Visits Seneca Nation and Issues Formal Apology for New York State’s Role in Operating Thomas Indian School (May 20, 2025)
Governor Kathy Hochul visited the Cattaraugus Territory of the Seneca Nation of Indians Tuesday to issue a formal apology for New York State’s role in the operation of the Thomas Indian School.
Hochul met with President J. Conrad Seneca and other leaders of the Seneca Nation before sitting down with survivors and those families still impacted by the atrocities that occurred at the Thomas Indian School. The event took place on the site of the current Seneca Nation Administration Campus which used to house the Thomas Indian School in Irving, NY.
Originally established by Presbyterian missionaries on the Cattaraugus Territory in 1855, Thomas Indian School was owned and operated by the State of New York from 1875 until it closed in 1957. Thomas Indian School, and other residential boarding schools across the United States and Canada, operated under the government’s policy of forced assimilation of Native children.
Hochul said, “In order to move forward and avoid repeating the sins of the past, New York must acknowledge its role in the historical atrocities committed at the Thomas Indian School – and the enduring trauma that was inflicted upon the Senecas and all Indigenous peoples across New York. Today, on behalf of the State of New York, I apologize to the Seneca Nation of Indians – and the survivors and descendants from all Nations – who attended the Thomas Indian School. We cannot change the horrors of the past, but I recommit to the truth, justice, reconciliation, accountability, and healing that are so essential to move forward together.”
Hochul said that while the school initially was set up as an orphanage, it instead became “a place of nightmares,” “…a place — a some would call a torture chamber — a site of sanctioned, ethnic cleansing is what was going here; trying to eradicate the long, proud story of the Senecas and other places. This occurred from Canada and elsewhere in our country. Children were forcefully removed from their families, stripped of their names, their languages and their traditions. Sometimes they were subjected to unimaginably horrific physical, emotional and sexual assaults.”
Seneca Nation President J.C. Seneca said, “Today is an important reckoning with a very dark and tragic period in history. It is a day that many people thought would never happen. Healing takes time, but it also requires accountability for the pain that people caused. We still feel the pain. Now, with Governor Hochul’s words of apology, our healing process can continue.”
At least 2,500 children from various Indigenous Nations were separated from their families and forced to attend the school. Children from the Seneca, Cayuga, Tuscarora, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk, Poospatuck (Unkechaug), Shinnecock, and other Indigenous Nations passed through the doors of the school. Some of those children never returned home. They were stripped of the traditional language and culture, and suffered abuse, violence, hatred, and sometimes death, at the hands of school officials. Thousands of children are known to have died at the residential boarding schools. It is believed that the deaths of hundreds — if not thousands — more were never documented. The devastating impacts the boarding schools had on Native American families and communities, including the decimation of family structures and traditional language, are still keenly felt today.
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