The U.S. Navy this weekend will issue the first of its formal apologies to native communities in Alaska for the assaults on two villages in the 1800s, when its ships bombarded homes, burning dwellings and food stores shortly after the United States bought the Alaskan territory from Russia in 1867.

The Navy is to issue the first of two apologies to the Lingít (also known as Tlingit), communities for the assaults on Kake in 1869 and Angoon 13 years later, with the message to be delivered by Rear Adm. Mark Sucato, a senior officer who oversees the Navy’s Alaskan shore presence, reported The Washington Post.

The U.S. military does not often apologize to Native populations for the actions taken against their people. That may be changing, with the apology to the Alaskans and Pentagon now reviewing dozens of commendations awarded for actions of soldiers in the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890, where soldiers slaughtered nearly 300 Lakota men, women, and children. 

The Navy said in a statement that its “wrongful actions” against the Alaskan villages inflicted “multigenerational trauma.”

The “pain and suffering inflicted upon the Tlingit people warrants these long overdue apologies,” spokeswoman Julianne Leinenveber said. 

Community leaders from the islands, located south of Juneau, said the gesture is welcomed, but enduring challenges continue. 

Garfield George, the housemaster of Deishu´ Hi´t, or End of the Trail House, is known as Kaaxooutch. He will help lead the ceremony in Angoon on Oct. 26 to commemorate the attack’s 142nd anniversary, and said the apology will “mean a lot.”

He added that it will correct the record about what what he called exaggerations and lies about the attacks that have held on for years. 

The official military accounts made it sound “like we deserved what happened to us and that’s just not true,” George said. 

The Lingíts and other local tribes trace their lineage to the Alaskan panhandle as far back as 10,000 years. 

But when the Alaskan territory was sold to the United States, tensions rose between the American soldiers and the natives after a sentry at the military’s fort in Sitka killed two unarmed Lingít men. 

One of the clan’s leaders demanded blankets and goods in exchange for the deaths, in accordance with local customs, but when the American commanders refused, the Lingít captured four fur traders, killing two. 

The USS Saginaw, dispatched by the Army that February, fired on the village of Kake, with troops then going ashore to torch its buildings. 

Joel Jackson, the president of the Organized Village of Kake, said has not been determined if the village will accept the Navy’s apology.

“It’s a start of what they need to do to help us heal our people, but by no means can it erase what they did,” he commented.

The U.S. Army is in talks with local leaders to apologize for a separate assault that destroyed another Lingít village, Wrangell, spokesman Matt Ahearn said, deferring questions about Kake to the Navy. 

Meanwhile, 13 years later, an explosion on a whaling ship killed a medicine man named Til’xtlein from Angoon. The village demanded 200 blankets, a payment “equal to his stature.”

However, E.C. Merriman, the commander of the U.S. forces, rejected their appeal for the blankets, demanding twice as many from Angoon and threatening to destroy the village if they were not delivered by the next day. 

When that did not happen, Merriman ordered the village to be bombarded. 

Angoon got a $90,000 settlement from the Department of the Interior in 1973, but never an apology until now. 

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