Biden apologizes for Native American boarding school atrocities

United States President Joe Biden apologized Friday on behalf of the government for the atrocities committed against Indigenous children in hundreds of public boarding schools, where they were deprived of their language and culture and, in many cases, neglected and abused.

Biden was joined at the act by his Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve in the US government, whose grandparents and one of her great-grandparents were forced to attend these boarding schools far away from home.

The apology follows formal declarations in Canada, where thousands of children died at similar boarding schools, and other countries around the world where historic abuses of Indigenous populations are increasingly being recognized.