Watch Live: Biden delivers apology in Arizona for Indian boarding school atrocities

President Biden is in Arizona on Friday to issue a formal presidential apology to Native American communities for the atrocities committed against Indigenous people during a 150-year era of forced federal Indian boarding schools. 

The president chose to speak at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, although his apology is for all tribal communities that suffered. From 1819 through the 1970s, the federal government and religious institutions established boarding schools throughout the country to assimilate Alaska Native, American Indian and Native Hawaiian children into White American culture by forcibly removing them from their families, communities and belief systems. Many children who attended these boarding schools endured emotional and physical abuse, and hundreds of them died.

"I'm heading to do something that should have been done a long time ago," Mr. Biden told reporters before boarding Marine One on Thursday afternoon. "Make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years."