BISMARCK, N.D. (KXNET)—On Friday, President Joe Biden became the first sitting president to apologize for the federal policy implementing Native American boarding schools. An investigation by the U.S. Department of the Interior, released in two parts, found Native American children were forcibly removed from their families and enrolled into schools, attempting to assimilate them into White culture, leading to their abuse and many deaths. KX News spoke with North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission Executive Director Brad Hawk. Hawk is an enrolled member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. He's also the North Dakota Indian Affairs Commission Executive Director. Hawk said the apology from the president is well-needed. But he also said he and many other Native Americans are now looking to what comes next."We're hoping for the action afterwards. And I think when we're talking about how to address some of the issues in the tribal communities, we feel that the federal government will be part of fixing some of the issues that we see," Hawk said. Though the president's apology is a step in the right direction, Hawk said there are many more steps to be taken in making things right. "It is kind of sad, I mean, to think about the history of that. Because, you start looking and thinking about family members that have gone through this. And so, just to see where we're at as tribal nations in North Dakota and South Dakota, I mean, we really have a lot of work to do to get a lot of our language and culture back," Hawk said. President Biden's apology comes more than two years after Pope Francis issued a similar apology during his trip to Canada in 2022. He apologized for the ways in which quote "many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples." The report from the U-S Department of the Interior also found that the U.S. government, at the time, contracted with several religious institutions and organizations including the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions to support or operate schools in the federal Indian boarding school system. The pope also apologized for ways in which "the members of the church and of religious communities cooperated, not least through their indifference in projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation promoted by the governments of that time."