New York Liberty basketball team honored with ticker-tape parade in Canyon of Heroes

NEW YORK (AP) — Jonquel Jones, Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and their New York teammates were showered with confetti as the Liberty celebrated winning the WNBA title in the Canyon of Heroes in downtown Manhattan.

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams joined the thousands who lined the streets on Thursday.

The Liberty won the franchise's first championship, defeating the Minnesota Lynx in overtime in a decisive Game 5 of the WNBA Finals on Sunday at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

“(To) see how many people were in the crowd, smiling, celebrating the Liberty," Ionescu said. "It really puts into perspective what it means to bring a championship to this city and how it really takes everyone.”

Veteran Liberty players from the early teams, including Teresa Weatherspoon, Vickie Johnson, Kym Hampton and Crystal Robinson, along with current coach Sandy Brondello. attended the parade and ceremony afterward at City Hall.

The parade route was full of fans of all ages, with many of the kids wearing jerseys of their favorite players. Jones carried her Finals MVP trophy atop her float, while Stewart and Ionescu went into the crowd, giving high-fives and taking selfies with fans.

“This is awesome. I’ve been a Liberty fan since they first started playing” said Sarah Davis of the WNBA’s debut in 1997. “It’s so cool that we won and we could celebrate with a parade.”

There have been over 200 ticker-tape and confetti parades in New York. The most recent to honor a women's sports team came in 2019 when the U.S. soccer team won the World Cup. Two years later, there was a parade to honor essential workers and first responders for their service during the coronavirus pandemic.

“On behalf of 20 million incredibly proud New Yorkers, I say welcome home to our champion women,” said Hochul, who thanked Liberty owners Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai for investing in the team. “Let’s do it again next year.”

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

Sabrina Ionescu holds the WNBA basketball championship trophy during the New York Liberty's parade Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

New York Liberty's owner Joe Tsai, left, and Clara Wu Tsai, right, pose with New York Liberty's center Jonquel Jones before the WNBA championship team's parade Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Members of the New York Liberty, including Jonquel Jones holding the MVP trophy, makes their way up Broadway during the WNBA basketball championship parade Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Members of the New York Liberty, including Jonquel Jones holding the MVP trophy, makes their way up Broadway during the WNBA basketball championship parade Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

New York Liberty MVP Jonquel Jones greets the crowd as she arrives on stage during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York mayor Eric Adams speaks during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Liberty owners Clara Wu Tsai and Joe Tsai applaud during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Liberty Courtney Vandersloot talks to fans during a ceremony in honor of the Liberty's WNBA championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Liberty Sabrina Ionescu waves during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Liberty MVP Jonquel Jones celebrates during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Liberty Breanna Stewart places the championship trophy on a table as she arrives on stage during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello speaks during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The New York Liberty mascot, Ellie the Elephant, kisses the championship trophy during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The New York Liberty, their supporters, local officials and others celebrate during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Liberty Kennedy Burke dances with the mascot, Ellie the Elephant, during a ceremony after a parade in honor of the Liberty's WNBA basketball championship at City Hall in New York, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

New York Liberty fans react while watching players parade down the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway celebrating the team's WNBA basketball championship, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

New York Liberty forward Jonquel Jones, center, waves as she rides on a float holding the MVP trophy to celebrate the team's WNBA basketball championship over the Minnesota Lynx, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Spectators react as a float with members of the New York Liberty make its way up Broadway during the WNBA basketball championship parade Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu holds up the WNBA basketball championship trophy while riding down Broadway during a parade celebrating the team's season championship, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

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.”

FILE - Elders from the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in southeastern Montana listen to speakers during a session for survivors of government-sponsored Native American boarding schools, in Bozeman, Mont., Nov. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

FILE - Russell Eagle Bear, with the Rosebud Sioux Reservation Tribal Council, talks to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland during a meeting about Native American boarding schools at Sinte Gleska University in Mission, S.D., on Oct. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)