NORMAN, Oklahoma — President Joe Biden said Friday he would formally apologize for the country’s role in sending Indigenous children to residential schools for more than 150 years, 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: Make a formal apology to Indian nations for the way we’ve treated their children for years,” Biden said Thursday as he left the White House for Arizona. he said.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched an investigation into the residential school system shortly after becoming the first Native American to lead the agency, and Biden will join her on his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president when he delivers a speech in Gila on Friday. River Indian Community outside Phoenix.

“I never in a million years would have guessed something like this would happen,” Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, told the Associated Press. “This is a big deal to me. I’m sure this is going to be a big deal to all of Indian Country.”

His investigation 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 lands.

The investigation documented 973 deaths and 74 cemeteries associated with more than 500 schools, although it acknowledged the figure was likely higher.

No president has ever formally apologized for the forced removal of these children, described by the United Nations as genocide, or for the U.S. government’s actions to exterminate Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian peoples.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs held listening sessions and collected statements from survivors. One of the recommendations of the final report was an acknowledgment and apology for the residential school era. Haaland said she took it to Biden, who agreed it was necessary.

“With this apology, the President acknowledges that as a people who love our country, we must remember and teach the full extent of our history, even if it is painful. And we must learn from that history so that it is never repeated again,” the White House said. he said in a statement.

The policy of forced assimilation initiated by Congress in 1819 as an effort to “civilize” Native Americans ended in 1978 with the passage of a far-reaching law, the Indian Child Welfare Act. children.

Biden and Haaland’s visit to the Gila River Indian Community comes as Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on ads targeting Native American voters in battleground states including Arizona and North Carolina.

“This will be one of the most important moments of my life,” Haaland said of Biden’s apology on Friday.

It is unclear what action will be taken after the apology. The Department of the Interior is still working with tribal nations to return the children’s remains to federal lands. Some tribes are still at odds with the U.S. Army, which refuses to comply with federal law governing the return of Native American remains when it comes to those buried at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. “President Biden’s apology is a profound moment for indigenous people in this country,” he told the AP.

Hoskin said in his statement: “Our children were made to live in a world that erased their identities, cultures, and turned their spoken language upside down.” he said. “Oklahoma was home to 87 boarding schools attended by thousands of our Cherokee children. Today, nearly every Cherokee Nation citizen still feels this impact in some way.”

Friday’s apology could lead to more progress for tribal nations still pressing for the federal government to continue action, said Melissa Nobles, MIT chancellor and author of “The Politics of Official Apologies.”

“These have value because they validate survivors’ experiences and acknowledge that they are seen,” Nobles said. he said.

The US government has apologized for other historical injustices, including to Japanese families it imprisoned during World War II. President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 to compensate tens of thousands of people sent to concentration camps during the war.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a law apologizing to Native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy a century earlier.

The House and Senate passed resolutions in 2008 and 2009 apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow segregation. But these gestures did not open pathways to reparations for Black Americans.

In Canada, which has a similar history of subjugating First Nations and sending their children to residential schools for assimilation, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology in 2008. There was also a process of truth and reconciliation and then there was a plan to instill it in this country. Billions of dollars have been transferred to communities devastated by government policies.

Pope Francis issued a historic apology in 2022 for the Catholic Church’s collaboration with Canada’s Indigenous residential schools policy, saying the forced assimilation of Indigenous people into Christian society destroyed their culture, fractured their families and marginalized generations.

“I humbly ask for forgiveness for the evils that many Christians have committed against Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.

In 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for his government’s past assimilation policies, including the forced removal of children. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a similar concession in 2022.

Hoskin said he was grateful to both Biden and Haaland for leading the effort to reckon with the country’s role in a dark time for Indigenous peoples. But he stressed that the apology was only “an important step and must be followed by sustained action.”