Biden Making an Apology He Says Is Long Overdue

President Biden will formally apologize on Friday for the country's role in forcing Indigenous children for over 150 years into boarding schools, where many were physically, emotionally, and sexually abused, and more than 950 died. "I'm doing something I should have done a long time ago: To make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years," Biden said Thursday as he left the White House for Arizona, per the AP. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system shortly after she became the first Native American to lead the agency, and she will join Biden during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president as he delivers a speech Friday at the Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix.

"I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen," says Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico. "It will be one of the high points of my entire life," she said of the apology. "It's a big deal to me. I'm sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country." The investigation she launched found that at least 18,000 children, some as young as 4, were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that sought to assimilate them into white society while federal and state authorities sought to dispossess tribal nations of their land. The investigation documented 973 deaths, while acknowledging the figure is likely higher, and 74 gravesites associated with the more than 500 schools.

No president has ever formally apologized for the forced removal of these children—an element of genocide as defined by the United Nations—or the US government's actions to decimate Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian peoples. The Interior Department conducted listening sessions and gathered the testimony of survivors. One of the recommendations of the final report was an acknowledgement of, and apology for, the boarding school era. Haaland said she took that to Biden, who agreed that it was necessary. "In making this apology, the President acknowledges that we as a people who love our country must remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful. And we must learn from that history so that it is never repeated," the White House said. (More Native Americans stories.)