!goyslopenjoyers I hope none of y'all have eaten a Quarter Pounder lately

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to formally apologize on Friday for the country's role in the Indian boarding school system, which devastated the lives of generations of Indigenous children and their ancestors.

"I would never have guessed in a million years that something like this would happen," said Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna. "It's a big deal to me. I'm sure it will be a big deal to all of Indian Country."

Shortly after becoming the first Native American to lead the Interior, Haaland launched an investigation into the boarding school system, which found that at least 18,000 children, some as young as 4, were taken from their parents and forced to attend schools that sought to assimilate them, in an effort to dispossess their tribal nations of land. It also documented nearly 1,000 deaths and 74 gravesites associated with the more than 500 schools.

No president has ever formally apologized for the forced removal of Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children — an element of genocide as defined by the United Nations — or any other aspect of the U.S. government's decimation of Indigenous peoples.

During the second phase of its investigation, the Interior conducted listening sessions and gathered the testimony of survivors. One of the recommendations of the final report was an acknowledgement of and apology for the boarding school era. Haaland said she took that to Biden, who agreed that it was necessary.

Haaland, whose grandparents were forced to attend a boarding school, said she was honored to play a role, along with her staff, in helping make the apology a reality. Haaland will join Biden during his first diplomatic visit to a tribal nation as president on Friday as he delivers his speech. "It will be one of the high points of my entire life," she said.

It's unclear what, if any, action will follow the apology. The Department of Interior is still working with tribal nations to repatriate the remains of children on federal lands, and many tribes are still at odds with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has refused to follow the federal law regulating the return of Native American remains when it comes to those still buried at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

"President Biden's apology is a profound moment for Native people across this country," Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said in a statement to The Associated Press.

"Our children were made to live in a world that erased their identities, their culture and upended their spoken language," Hoskin said in his statement. "Oklahoma was home to 87 boarding schools in which thousands of our Cherokee children attended. Still today, nearly every Cherokee Nation citizen somehow feels the impact."

Friday's apology could lead to further progress for tribal nations still pushing for continued action from the federal government, because it's an acknowledgement of past wrongs left unrectified, something "known and buried," said Melissa Nobles, Chancellor of MIT and author of "The Politics of Official Apologies."

"These things have value because it validates the experiences of the survivors and acknowledges they've been seen and we heard you, and also there's a lot of historical evidence to suggest this happened," Nobles said.

In Canada, a country with a similar history of subjugating Indigenous peoples and forcing their children into boarding schools for assimilation, an apology from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017 was followed by the establishment of a truth and reconciliation process and the injection of billions of dollars into First Nations to deal with the devastation left by the government's policies.

No such commission exists in the U.S. A bill to establish a truth and reconciliation process was introduced last year by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but it remains in the Senate.

Pope Francis issued a historic apology in 2022 for the Catholic Church's cooperation with Canada's "catastrophic" policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native people into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families and marginalized generations.

"I am deeply sorry," Francis said to school survivors and Indigenous community members gathered in Alberta. He called the school policy a "disastrous error" that was incompatible with the Gospel. "I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples," Francis said.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed a law apologizing to Native Hawaiians for the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy a century prior. In 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for his government's past policies of assimilation, including the forced removal of children. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a similar concession in 2022.

Hoskin said he is grateful to both Biden and Haaland for leading the effort to reckon with the country's role in a dark chapter for Indigenous peoples, but he emphasized that the apology is just "an important step, which must be followed by continued action."

This but unironically.

The president's batshit crazy wife made him move from the traditional residence, Cheongwadae ("the Blue House"), to this place because geomancers told her to. Apparently their feng shui studies didn't account for balloons full of garbage and shit.

One could call her a MILF except that she's committed the ultimate sin: She's childless!

I’m so hot, I make $650K a month — sneaky women steal my photos to catfish naive men online https://t.co/p1SK0ydWn1 pic.twitter.com/TCQpjiu6dr

— New York Post (@nypost) October 24, 2024

Egypt, one of the world's 15 most populous nations, has been certified malaria-free after a 'pharaonic' effort that began 100 years ago.

Killing nearly 600,000 people every year, almost all of whom dwell in Africa, the malarial transmission chain has been interrupted for three years in a row, proving that the Egyptian health authorities can ensure it remains a negligent public health burden.

"Malaria is as old as Egyptian civilization itself, but the disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to its history," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to mark the occasion.

The WHO praised "the Egyptian government and people" for their efforts to "end a disease that has been present in the country since ancient times," and added that Egypt and her 114 million inhabitants were now the second country declared malaria-free in the WHO's Eastern Mediterranean region.

Malaria has been traced as far back as 4,000 BCE in Egypt, with genetic evidence of the disease found in Tutankhamun and other ancient Egyptian mummies. With most of Egypt's population living along the banks of the Nile River, malaria prevalence has been recorded as high as 40%.

The statement detailed how Egyptian health advocates first took action to combat the spread of malaria in 1923 when the government prevented agricultural cultivation near settlements.

Only 44 countries in the tropical belts where malaria spreads have been declared malaria-free since the creation of the WHO. Near-neighbors UAE, and far neighbors Morocco, have also won the designation.

"Receiving the malaria elimination certificate today is not the end of the journey but the beginning of a new phase," said Egypt's Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar.

"We must now work tirelessly and vigilantly to sustain our achievement through maintaining the highest standards for surveillance, diagnosis, and treatment."

Malaria diagnosis and treatment are provided free of charge to the entire population in Egypt regardless of legal status, and health professionals are trained nationwide to detect and screen for malaria cases including at borders. Egypt's strong cross-border partnership with neighboring countries, including Sudan, has been instrumental in preventing the re-establishment of local malaria transmission.

SHARE This Momentous Public Health Victory On Social Media… !bloomers What good news have you heard lately?