2024 US election live: Harris backs abortion rights, Trump calls US ‘trash bin for the world’

Sam Cabral
US reporter

image source, Reuters

In about 20 minutes, President Joe Biden will issue an official presidential apology to Native Americans for the US government’s role in managing residential schools.

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

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

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

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

“I’m sure it will 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. About 1,000 deaths have been documented, although the number is estimated to be much higher.