February 1, 2008
Almost 100 years later, after a century of child removals under policies of protection, absorption, integration and welfare, the federal parliament stands on the brink of a historic national apology to the Aboriginal people we have come to call the Stolen Generations.
The apology will be the first order of business for Kevin Rudd's new government when the parliament meets on Wednesday February 13. What sort of apology will it be?
Alan Moir
Yet a divided Liberal Party still chokes on saying sorry. It refuses to accept that the state take responsibility for institutional injury to its indigenous citizens. Will they choose to fight on this issue. Some members have called the Stolen Generations a myth. Will Brendan Nelson find a way though and avoid being wedged into a corner?
The apology comes more than a decade after the 1997 National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families - Bringing Them Home, concluded that from 1910 to 1970 between one in three and one in 10 indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities and that not one indigenous family escaped the effects of forcible removal.
Stuart Rintoul writing in The Australian says:
Some children were taken from their families with good intentions and some who were taken have stared deep into the lives they left behind and concluded they were saved. But many were taken only because they were light-skinned to absorb them into the fringes of the Australian dream. These were children who were taken from their families with no intention of returning them, whose identities were changed, who cried themselves to sleep at night for want of their parents, who were taught to forget and were punished for remembering. They were prepared for lives as servants and labourers in outback Australia.
The choking comes from the conservative WA Liberals. Nelson is beholden to them for his leadership. A state rolling in money and which refuses to spend some of the surplus on helping overcome the disadvantages of its Aboriginal citizens.
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Gary
re your question: 'What sort of apology will it be?'
There is an acceptance that the push for compensation will be put to one side.There is also acceptance that the apology will be given not in the name of the Australian people, but the Australian government and that no guilt will be attached to the present generation.