Biden’s statement comes 16 years after former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for Canada’s role in the Indigenous residential school system — a topic filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie document in their film Sugarcane, about St. Joseph’s Mission School near the Sugarcane reserve in British Columbia.

President Joe Bidenin Arizona on Friday apologized to Native Americans for the federal government forcing their children into boarding schools where he said they were abused and deprived of their cultural identity.