Next month we may finally see an overdue gesture by the Australian government to acknowledge mistakes of the past and the injury caused to the people who were here before British settlement. PM Kevin Rudd has ruled out compensation payments, but unlike his predecessor, is embracing aboriginal reconciliation and the word is he intends to say “sorry” next month at the opening of parliament. An important symbolic step hopefully, towards jointly moving on and looking towards a better, brighter future.
A history of the Stolen Generations (from news.com.au)
1869 Removals begin: The policy of taking Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and placing them in orphanages and internment camps starts in the then colony of Victoria. The removals are based on an opinion that the “full-blood” tribal Aboriginal population is unable to sustain itself and is doomed to inevitable extinction.
1967 Referendum: The referendum allowing Aborigines to be counted as Australians instead of being processed under the Flora and Fauna Act passes with a 90 per cent majority. It gives the Federal Government the power to make laws for the indigenous population and is the largest affirmative vote in the history of Australia’s referenda.
1969 Removals stop: The government policy of removing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island children from the families officially ends.
1988 Native Title: A High Court case – Mabo v. Queensland No. 1 – finds that the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act, which attempted to retrospectively abolish native title rights, is not valid according to the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. Two years later, national indigenous organisations begin pushing for an inquiry into the Stolen Generations.
June 1992 Mabo: In a landmark case brought by the Meriam people (of the Murray Islands in the Torres Strait) in Mabo v. Queensland No. 2, the High Court of Australia finds that the declaration of terra nullius – or “land belonging to no-one” – assumed from British colonisation in 1788, is irrelevant. Instead the court recognises a form of native title.
Dec 1992 Redfern address: Prime Minister Paul Keating delivers a landmark address at the Australian launch of the International Year for the World’s Indigenous People in Sydney’s Redfern. He acknowledges the injustices perpetrated by non-Aboriginal Australians and places reconciliation on the national agenda.
1995 – 1997 Human rights: The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission heads an inquiry into the removal of indigenous children from their families. The final report, Bringing Them Home is released in Federal Parliament two years later in 1997. It estimates that between 1910 and 1970, at least one in every 10 indigenous children has been forcibly removed from their families and placed in church missions, institutions, adopted or fostered. It also recommends that Australian parliaments offer official apologies and funding be made available to agencies to allow indigenous people forcibly removed to record their history.
1998 Sorry Day: A year after the release of the Bringing Them Home report, the first National Sorry Day events are held across Australia.
1999 “Deep Regret”: Prime Minister John Howard formally recognises past injustices to Aborigines by moving a motion of deep and sincere regret in Federal Parliament. He refuses to use the word “sorry”. The following year, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva criticises the Howard government for its manner in attempting to resolve the Stolen Generations issue. Australia is also the target of a formal censure by the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
2008 Apology: The newly elected Government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announces on December 11, 2007, that an official apology will be made to indigenous Australians in the first sitting of Parliament on February 13, 2008.