WASHINGTON In an emotional scene, President Joe Biden on Friday formally apologized to Native Americans for the U.S. governments decades of horrific treatment of thousands of Indigenous children in federal Indian boarding schools.

I formally apologize as president of the United States for what we did, Biden said in forceful remarks at an event at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.

Its long, long, long overdue, he said. Quite frankly, theres no excuse this apology took 50 years to make. The federal Indian board school policy will always be a marker of shame. A blot on American history.

The Interior Department ran hundreds of these boarding schools from 1819 to 1969 all over the country, with one goal: to assimilate and eradicate Native Americans. The government forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families and communities, and shipped them off to far-away boarding schools. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children endured extensive psychological, physical and sexual abuse. Some died. Others disappeared.

The goal of these schools, as the founder of one of the flagship boarding schools, Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, put it in 1879, was to Kill the Indian, save the man.

On Friday, Biden called federal Indian boarding schools one of the most horrific chapters in American history.

We should be ashamed, he said, as some in the audience openly cried. A chapter that most Americans dont know about. The vast majority dont even know about it.