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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — <\/span>President Donald Trump is holding a campaign rally on the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma on Thursday, putting him in the company of just a handful of U.S. presidents who have visited tribal nations while in office.<\/p>\n The rally is part of Trump\u2019s recent campaign push through deep red states<\/a>, where he has been stumping for Republican candidates and promoting his agenda ahead of November\u2019s midterm elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Choctaw Nation is renting its venue for the rally but not sponsoring the event, it said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope his visit provides an opportunity to learn more about what we do as a sovereign nation for our members and for all people in southeast Oklahoma,\u201d Choctaw Nation Principal Chief Gary Batton said in a statement.<\/p>\n Tribal delegations have been meeting with presidents in Washington since the Early Republic, but presidential visits to reservations have been few and far between. The purpose and tone of those visits has changed dramatically as the relationship between the U.S. and tribal nations has evolved.<\/p>\n What was likely the first visit to a reservation by a sitting U.S. president occurred by happenstance<\/a>. While traveling to Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1883, President Chester A. Arthur met with Shoshone and Arapaho leaders on the Wind River Reservation<\/a> and complimented the tribes\u2019 \u201cpractice of industrial pursuits,\u201d according to an account by Lt. Gen. Philip Sheridan at the time.<\/p>\n While there, Arthur\u2019s delegation pressed Shoshone Chief Washakie and Arapaho Chief Black Coal to consent to breaking up the reservation they shared into private parcels \u2014 a move aimed at dismantling tribal sovereignty and solving what Arthur termed the \u201cIndian problem.\u201d Both chiefs refused. <\/p>\n Other early presidential visits to tribal land similarly reflected an era when the U.S. tried to undermine tribal sovereignty and assimilate Native people into white society. Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s 1903 trek to Havasupai land at the bottom of the Grand Canyon preceded the forced removal<\/a> of that tribe to make way for a national park. <\/p>\n During his 1927 visit to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, President Calvin Coolidge promoted assimilationist boarding schools<\/a>. <\/p>\n President Bill Clinton made Pine Ridge a stop on his 1999 \u201cNew Markets Tour,\u201d billing the visit as the first by a sitting president to tribal land since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s 1934 trip to the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. Clinton acknowledged the federal government failed to meet its obligations to hundreds of tribal nations and called for investment in Pine Ridge’s economy. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have tried to have a more respectful, more proper relationship with the tribal governments of this country, to promote more genuine independence, but also to give more genuine support,\u201d Clinton said. <\/p>\n In 2014, President Barack Obama met with Dakota youths and attended a powwow on the Standing Rock Reservation<\/a> in North Dakota, speaking about expanding economic and educational opportunities in Indian Country and promoting tribes’ inherent right to govern themselves. The following year, Obama spent time in the I\u00f1upiaq village of Kotzebue<\/a> in Alaska, highlighting the impacts of climate change on Arctic communities. <\/p>\n In 2024, President Joe Biden traveled to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona to formally apologize<\/a> for the federal government\u2019s role in separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to attend boarding schools run by the U.S. and churches. A probe<\/a> by Biden\u2019s administration found that in addition to being stripped of their languages and cultures, many of those children experienced physical, emotional and sexual abuse. At least 970 died, and federal officials acknowledged the true number is likely higher. <\/p>\n Speaking alongside boarding school survivors and their descendants, Biden called that 150-year era a \u201cblot on American history.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a sin on our soul,\u201d Biden said. \u201cQuite frankly, there\u2019s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make.\u201d<\/p>\n The visit marked a rare acknowledgement of the assimilationist policies that shaped some of the earliest presidential encounters with tribal nations. <\/p>\n ___ <\/p>\n This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network<\/a> at The Associated Press. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n