Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered a long-anticipated apology Wednesday to tens of thousands of indigenous people who as children were ripped from their families and sent to boarding schools, where many were abused as part of official government policy to "kill the Indian in the child."

Harper rose on the floor of a packed House of Commons and condemned the decadeslong federal effort to wipe out aboriginal culture and assimilate native Canadians into European-dominated society. "The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgiveness of the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly," Harper declared. "We are sorry."

Investigations have established that thousands of Indian, Inuit and Metis children suffered mental, physical and sexual abuse in 132 boarding schools, most of them run by churches. The first opened in the late 1800s; the last - in Saskatchewan - continued operating until 1996.

"The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history," said Harper, facing indigenous leaders who sat in a circle in the House chamber, some in traditional feathered dress.

The apology received a generally positive reaction from indigenous leaders. Mary Simon, an Inuit leader, told the House: "Let us not be lulled into believing that when the sun rises tomorrow, the pain and scars will be gone. They won't. But a new day has dawned."

The children's stories

have emerged bit by bit in recent decades, causing a national self-examination in a country whose citizens commonly view it with pride as a bastion of human rights.

In 2006, the government reached a $2 billion settlement, the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history. Officials promised to pay 80,000 former residential school students $10,000 each for the first year they attended the schools, most of which were run by churches, and $3,000 for each subsequent year. The settlement included additional compensation for sexual and physical abuse and established a truth and reconciliation commission, the first of its kind in an industrialized country.

 - The Canadian government apologized Wednesday to the country's native Indians for forcing thousands of aboriginal children to study in special schools to learn modern culture from the 1870s to the 1970s.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered the apology in Parliament, saying the sending of 150,000 aboriginal children to so-called Indian Residential Schools so they would forget their culture and assimilate into Canadian society resulted in their physical, mental and sexual abuse. Many of the children, who lived in substandard confitions, died from disease and malnutrition.

"Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, that it has caused great harm and has no place in our country," Harper said, according to The Earth Times.

Hundreds of residential school survivors, who were separated from their families and communities, and aboriginal leaders listened to Harper's speech in the floor and gallery of the House of Commons.

The Canadian government is paying $1.9 billion in compensation to some 80,000 survivors of the residential schools.

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do you guys think is too late to apologize to the indians natives, like Australia did to aboriginals in February?