LAVEEN VILLAGE, Ariz. (AP) — President Joe Biden did something Friday that no other sitting U.S. president has done: He apologized for systemic abuse of generations of Indigenous children endured in federally controlled boarding schools.

For 150 years, the United States removed Native children from their homes and sent them to schools, where they were stripped of their culture, history, and religion and beaten for speaking their language.

“We should be ashamed,” Biden told a crowd of Native people gathered in the Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix, including tribal leaders, survivors and their families. Biden called the government-imposed system that began in 1819 “one of the most horrific chapters in American history,” while acknowledging the decades of child abuse and widespread devastation left behind.

For many Native Americans, the long-awaited apology was a welcome acknowledgment of the government’s long-standing culpability. Today, they say, words must be followed by actions.

Bill Hall, 71, of Seattle, was 9 years old when he was taken from his Tlingit community in Alaska and forced to attend a boarding school, where he endured years of physical and sexual abuse that led to many years of shame. When he first learned Biden was going to apologize, he wasn’t sure he could accept it.

“But as I watched, tears started to fall from my eyes,” Hall said. “Yes, I accept his apology. Now what can we do next?

Rosalie Whirlwind Soldier, a 79-year-old citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, said she felt “a tingling in my heart” and was glad the historic wrong was being recognized. She nevertheless remains saddened by the irreversible harm caused to her people.

Whirlwind Soldier suffered severe abuse at a South Dakota school that left her with a painful limp her entire life. The Catholic facility, run and subsidized by the government, took away her faith and tried to eradicate her Lakota identity by cutting off her long braids, she said.

“Sorry, that’s not enough.” Nothing is enough when you harm a human being,” she said. “An entire generation of people and our future were destroyed for us. »

The schools were designed both to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native and Hawaiian children and to dispossess tribal nations of their land, according to an Interior Department investigation launched by Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to run the agency.

Introducing Biden on Friday, Haaland said that while the official apology is an acknowledgment of a dark chapter, it is also a celebration of Indigenous resilience: “Despite everything that has happened, we are still here. »

Haaland, a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna, commissioned the investigation in 2021. It documented the cases of more than 18,000 indigenous children, 973 of whom were killed. The report and independent researchers say the overall figure was much higher.

The report was accompanied by several recommendations from survivors’ testimonies of the school, including resources for mental health treatment and language revitalization programs.

Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Roe Lewis noted that Biden was committed to following through on these recommendations.

“This sets the framework for addressing boarding school policies of the past,” he said.

Benjamin Mallott, president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, who is Lingít, said in a statement that the apology must be accompanied by meaningful action: “This includes revitalizing our languages ​​and cultures and returning to the home of our indigenous children who have not yet returned. so that they can rest with their families and in their communities.

This view is shared by Victoria Kitcheyan, chairwoman of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, who sued the US military in January to obtain the return of the remains of two children who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.

“This healing won’t begin until tribes find a way to bring their children home and bury them,” Kitcheyan said.

In an interview Thursday, Haaland said Interior was still working with several tribal nations to repatriate the remains of several children who were killed and buried at a boarding school.

Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who last year introduced a bill to create a truth and healing commission to address harms caused by the boarding school system, called the apology “a historic step toward Long overdue accountability for harm caused to Indigenous children and their communities.

And Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who is vice chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, also congratulated Biden while saying it reinforces the need for a truth and healing commission.

“This recognition of the pain and injustices inflicted on Indigenous communities – while long overdue – is an extremely important step towards healing,” Murkowski said in a statement.

As Biden spoke Friday, tribe members stood, and many recorded the moment on their phones. Some wore traditional clothing and others wore shirts supporting Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

There was a moment of silence, a formal apology then an explosion of applause.

At the end of Biden’s remarks, the crowd rose to its feet again. There were cries of “Thank you, Joe.”

Hall, the Seattle boarding school survivor, and others have long called for resources to repair the damage. He worries that tribal nations will continue to struggle to recover unless the government intervenes, and he sees a long road ahead.

“It took a lifetime to get here. It will take a lifetime to get to the other side,” he said. “And that’s the saddest part. I won’t see it in my generation.

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By GRAHAM LEE BREWER and SEJAL GOVINDARAO Associated Press. Associated Press writer Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.