NORMAN, Oklahoma (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to formally apologize Friday for the nation’s role in the attacks. Indian residential school systemDestroying the lives of generations of indigenous children and their ancestors.

“Never in a million years would I have predicted something like this would happen,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna. “This is a big deal for me. “I am sure this will be a big event for the entire Indian Country.”

Haaland launched a campaign shortly after becoming the first Native American to lead the Department of the Interior. investigation This has been incorporated into the residential school system, which has seen at least 18,000 children, some as young as 4, taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that seek to assimilate them in an attempt to dispossess tribal nations of their lands. Nearly 1,000 deaths and 74 cemeteries linked to more than 500 schools were also documented.

No president has ever formally apologized for the forced removal of Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children (defined by the United Nations as an element of genocide) or for any aspect of the U.S. government’s extermination of Native peoples.

Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the second stage of the investigation listening sessions and I collected testimony of survivors. One of the recommendations of the final report was to acknowledge and apologize for the residential school era. Haaland said she took it to Biden, who agreed it was necessary.

Haaland, whose grandparents were forced to attend boarding school, said she and her staff were honored to play a role in helping make the apology a reality. Haaland will join Biden on Friday as he delivers his speech during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president. “This will be one of the highlights of my entire life,” he said.

It is unclear what action will be taken after the apology. The Interior Department is still working with tribal nations to repatriate children’s remains on federal lands, and many tribes are still at odds with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which refuses to comply with federal law governing the return of Native American remains. As for those still buried at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. “President Biden’s apology is a profound moment for Indigenous people in this country,” he said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Hoskin said in his statement, “Our children were made to live in a world that erased their identities, cultures, and turned their spoken language upside down.” “Oklahoma was home to 87 boarding schools attended by thousands of our Cherokee children. “Today, nearly every Cherokee Nation citizen still feels this impact in some way.”

Melissa Nobles, MIT chancellor and author of “The Politics,” said Friday’s apology could lead to more progress for tribal nations still pressing for continued action from the federal government because it “is an acknowledgment of past wrongs that are known and buried, left uncorrected,” she said . Official Apology.”

“These have value because they validate the experiences of survivors and acknowledge that they have been seen and we are listening, and there is also a lot of historical evidence to show that this has happened,” Nobles said.

In Canada, which has a similar history of subjugating indigenous peoples and sending their children to residential schools for assimilation, an apology from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017 was followed by the establishment of a truth and reconciliation process and the transfer of billions of dollars. To First Nations to deal with the devastation left by the government’s policies.

There is no such commission in the US. A bill to determine the truth and reconciliation process was introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren last year, but the legislation is still in the Senate.

Pope Francis issued a historic apology in 2022 for the Catholic Church’s collaboration with Canada’s “disastrous” policy on Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Indigenous people into Christian society destroyed their culture, fractured their families and marginalized generations.

“I’m very sorry,” Francis told school survivors and members of the indigenous community gathered in Alberta. He called the school policy a “catastrophic mistake” that was incompatible with the Bible. “I humbly ask for forgiveness for the evils that many Christians have committed against Indigenous peoples,” Francis said.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a law apologizing to Native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy a century earlier. In 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for his government’s past assimilation policies, including the forced removal of children. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a similar concession in 2022.

Hoskin said he was grateful to both Biden and Haaland for spearheading this effort. guess basis He said he was concerned about the country’s role in a dark chapter for Indigenous peoples, but emphasized that the apology was only “an important step and it must be followed up with ongoing action.”