For the first time in the country's history, a sitting U.S. president will issue a formal apology for the federal government’s role in the Indian boarding school system.

The White House says President Joe Biden will issue the apology during a speech in Arizona on Friday.

It comes after the Interior Department released an investigative report into the abusive boarding school system, recommending the government apologize for its role in the schools.

Up until the late 1960s, the federal government ran or operated hundreds of Indian boarding schools across the country. The Interior Department says the schools used corporal punishment to enforce their rules, including withholding food and flogging children. The schools would also rename American Indian children with names in english, cut off Native American students’ hair and try to strip students of their religious and cultural practices.

All of that led to devastating ripple effects for the children and their families.

“Essentially it broke up families, it took children away from their families and communities, sometimes sent them thousands of miles from their homes to boarding school where they were essentially stuck there sometimes for years,” Haaland told Spectrum News.

The Interior Department, under the Biden administration, underwent a thorough investigation led by Haaland into the schools, revealing nearly 1,000 children died while they were in the abusive school system. The causes of death included disease and abuse.

The report also released a series of recommendations, and the first one was for the U.S. government to issue a formal acknowledgment and apology for its role in adopting a national policy of forced assimilation of Indian children.

On Friday, Biden will issue that apology at the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona.

“It means so much to me that the president is acknowledging this really terrible era of our nation’s history, an era that so many Americans never even knew about,” Haaland. “I’m proud and incredibly moved by this humanitarianism.”

Other recommendations in the Interior report include have the federal government work to revitalize Native languages weakened by the schools and to create a federal memorial. As part of the Interior Department’s Federal Boarding School Initiative, Haaland held a listening tour with survivors and descendants around the country