Japan's Ainu This video includes discussion of whether the Japanese government should apologise for the historical treatment of Ainu people. Aljazeera, 4 Feb 2010.
No Rights, No Regret: New Ainu Legislation Short on Substance by Higashimura Takeshi. This is an article that is critical of the new Ainu Law because it doesn't recognise Ainu rights or include apology to Ainu people for the discrimination they have received. Nippon.com, 26 Apr 2019. Asia-Pacific Human Rights Center, June 2019.
Going Native: Tokyo’s thriving Ainu community keeps traditional culture alive Part 2 Includes Hiroshi Imazu a lower house lawmaker from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who led a group that wrote the resolution recognizing the Ainu as indigenous in 2008, explaining why he thinks Japan does Not need to apologize to the Ainu people for their historic treatment. Metropolis, 26 Feb, 2009.
Japan’s Indigenous Ainu community don’t want a theme park – they want their rights This article explains, in paragraph 2, that Ainu elder, Shizue Ukaji, wants "the government make a formal apology to us Ainu for the historical injustices imposed on us". Equal Times, 10 December 2020.
Shizue Ukaji explains in a little more detail why she wants an apology to Ainu people from the government as a first step in reconciliation between Japan and the Ainu at the bottom of p172 and top of page 173 in "A Quest for What We Ainu Are".
'Empty words': Rights groups say Japan's bill recognizing Ainu as indigenous group falls short This article reports on a meeting at the Tokyo Foreign Correspondents Club in which Ainu activists criticized the New Ainu Law which recognizes the Ainu people for the first time as “an indigenous group,” saying that despite the wording, it treats them as a tourist attraction and does not do enough to reverse the historical discrimination they have suffered or provide them an apology. Japan Times, 2 Mar 2019. See the video of the meeting on the right in Japanese with an English translation.