On Friday, President Joe Biden apologized to Native Americans for the systemic physical and sexual abuse of generations of indigenous children in government-run boarding schools.

Over a period of 150 years, the U.S. government forcibly removed Indigenous children from their homes and sent them to schools where they were beaten for expressing their cultural identities or speaking their languages.

Biden told a crowd of Indigenous people near Phoenix that it was “one of the most horrific chapters in American history.”

J.C. Seneca, a long-time indigenous leader in New York state and a candidate for president of the Seneca Nation, helped inform the apology with a paper he drafted for U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on the establishment of “Missionary Schools," one of which was located on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in Erie County between 1875 and 1957. 

Seneca discussed the issue with Capital Tonight host Susan Arbetter.