GRAHAM LEE BREWER, AP; President Biden to apologize for 150-year Indian boarding school policy
"President Joe Biden said he will formally apologize on Friday for the country’s role in forcing Indigenous children for over 150 years into boarding schools, where many were physically, emotionally and sexually abused, and more than 950 died...
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system shortly after she became the first Native American to lead the agency, and she will join Biden during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president as he delivers a speech Friday at the Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix.
“I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen,” Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico, told The Associated Press. “It’s a big deal to me. I’m sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country.”...
The forced assimilation policy launched by Congress in 1819 as an effort to “civilize” Native Americans ended in 1978 after the passage of a wide-ranging law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, which was primarily focused on giving tribes a say in who adopted their children."
