US election 2024 live: Harris campaigns for abortion rights as Trump calls US ‘trash for the world’

Sam Cabral
American reporter

image source, Reuters

In about 20 minutes, President Joe Biden will issues a formal presidential apology Native Americans for the US government’s role in boarding school.

From the early 1800s to the 1960s, thousands of Native children were torn from their families and homes and sent to boarding schools that sought to erase their cultural heritage and assimilate them into white American culture.

There were over 500 such schools, funded by the government and often run by churches.

Biden will speak at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, his first visit to a Native American reservation as president.

“I would never have guessed in a million years that this would happen,” Deb Haaland, Biden’s interior secretary and the first Native American cabinet member in U.S. history, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“I’m sure it’s going to be a big deal for all of Indian Country.”

An investigation launched by Haaland found that at least 18,000 American Indian and Alaska Native children were taken from their parents in the 19th and 20th centuries. Nearly 1,000 deaths have been documented, although the figure is estimated to be much higher.