President Joe Biden apologised directly to a Native American community on Friday (Oct 26) for the United States’150-year history of running abusive Native American boarding schools. 

Biden spoke to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, becoming to first US president to issue an apology for the program.

In his speech, Biden acknowledged the physical, emotional and sexual abuse suffered by hundreds of Native American children in those schools as well as the toll intergenerational trauma has taken on families and communities.

He called the apology “long overdue” and called the program “will always be a significant mark of sham – a blot on American history.”

From 1819 through the 1970s, the United States implemented policies establishing and supporting hundreds of American Indian boarding schools across the nation.

The purpose of these federal boarding schools was to culturally assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children by forcibly removing them from their families, communities, languages, religions and cultural beliefs, the Interior Department said.

US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to be a cabinet secretary, had launched a probe to recognise the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies. An investigative report by the department found that at least 973 children died in these schools.

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