Biden visited Arizona on Friday to apologize for the horrors of the federal Indian boarding schools that ran for over 150 years, and also trumpet the administration's policies to help Native American communities.

President Joe Biden formally apologized to Native Americans for the “sin” of a government-run boarding school system that for decades forcibly separated children from their parents, calling it a “blot on American history” in his first presidential visit to Indian Country.

A federal report had called for a reckoning for a century and half of removing Native children from their families. The U.S. government hopes to assuage cynicism and begin a new chapter of healing for Native people.

President Joe Biden is the first president to formally apologizes for the U.S. government’s role in running hundreds of Indian boarding schools for a 150-year period that stripped Native American children of their language and culture in a systematic effort to force them to assimilate into White society,

Oregon tribal leaders have long pushed for a formal apology for the government’s role in the schools where widespread mistreatment and abuse occurred.

It will mark the first time a president has apologized for the schools, which ripped apart generations of Native American families.