‘Stolen Generations’ Get Apology From Parliament Australian Parliament Apologizes for ‘Indignity and Degradation’ Inflicted on Aborigines

By ROHAN SULLIVAN

By Rohan Sullivan

The Associated Press

CANBERRA, Australia

Aborigines organized breakfast barbecues in the Outback, schools held assemblies, and giant TV screens went up in state capitals today as Australians watched a live broadcast of their government apologizing for policies that degraded its indigenous people.

In a historic parliamentary vote that supporters said would open a new chapter in race relations, lawmakers unanimously adopted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s motion on behalf of all Australians.

“We apologize for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these, our fellow Australians,” Rudd said in Parliament, reading from the motion.

Aborigines remain the country’s poorest and most disadvantaged group, and Rudd has made improving their lives one of his government’s top priorities.

As part of that campaign, Aborigines were invited for the first time to give a traditional welcome Tuesday at the official opening of the Parliament session – symbolic recognition that the land on which the capital was built was taken from Aborigines without compensation.

The apology is directed at tens of thousands of Aborigines who were forcibly taken from their families as children under now- abandoned assimilation policies.

“To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry ,” the apology motion says. “And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.”

The reading of Australia’s apology and the parliamentary vote was broadcast nationally, and people across the country watched .

More than 1,000 people gathered at two giant screens outside Parliament House watched Rudd’s speech in silence, many waving Australian and Aboriginal flags. Applause broke out occasionally, but mostly they listened intently.

“It’s great to get behind what the government’s trying to do: bring black and white Australians together,” said William Murray, a non indigenous 17-year-old student who traveled four hours by bus from Sydney to witness the occasion.

Aboriginal classmate Cyril Johnson, 17, also welcomed the apology.

“It’s really good everyone realizes now they did a bad job in the old days and the apology is really good,” Johnson said.

The apology places Australia among a handful of nations that have offered official apologies to oppressed minorities, including Canada’s 1998 apology to its native peoples, South Africa’s 1992 expression of regret for apartheid, and the U.S. Congress’ 1988 law apologizing to Japanese Americans for their internment during World War II.

The debate about an apology in Australia was spurred by a government inquiry into policies that from 1910 until the 1970s resulted in 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children being taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were dying out.

Most were deeply traumatized by the loss of their families and culture, the inquiry concluded, naming them the “stolen generations.”

the apology

The apology is directed at tens of thousands of Aborigines who were forcibly taken from their families as children under now- abandoned assimilation policies.

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