Rainer you noted "Unlike white children who came into the state's control, far greater care was taken to ensure that [Aboriginal children] never saw their parents or families again. They were often given new names, and the greater distances involved in rural areas made it easier to prevent parents and children on separate missions from tracing each other (van Krieken 1991 page 108)"

From what I understand, this same method also applied to the "so-called" orphans who were evacuated from the UK during WW2. Quite a number of these children were not orphans at all. One could ask where's the apology to them?

katheedavis

I didn't do anything wrong either - nor did my children - but I'm part of this nation and am excited that an acknowledgment for past wrongs and continuing consequences is now imminent. It is so overdue.

I didn't support my nation going to any of the wars in the twentieth century nor in Iraq - and there were many like me too. I don't remember getting a chance to have a say in those decisions. But nations are led by leaders who make mistakes and by leaders who make good decisions.

Foxy has given an excellent summary of what some other nations have done to apologise for shameful decisions and actions. And he gives a good account of the benefits to nations of issuing apologies.

The apology to be issued on Wednesday is from the Australian Parliament, as Vanilla points out. You can still have your personal position. And your children can still agree with you.

You say: "Ok, ok, we all know what was done to aboriginal children all those years ago." Do we? Can I be bold enough to suggest you haven't read the HREOC Report, "Bringing Them Home" nor Bruce Pascoe's "Convincing Ground: Learning to Fall in Love with Your Country" (ASP 2007).

"Sometimes a decade arrives when nations have the chance to turn away from bigotry and selfishness and turn to their countrymen and women and embrace them as loved members of the human family (Pascoe p. x)."

I'ts time for generosity of heart.

If the apology critics are prepared to look at the facts and not the emotional rhetoric, they would see that the apology was never intended for those who were removed for their own safety or well-being.

Rather it’s for those who were forcibly removed for no other reason than being half-caste or suspected of being half-caste and also for the families of those children. It was part of a planned agenda of cutural genocide.

It’s also for those who were put into abusive Mission environments and destined only to become household servants for wealthy landowners.
It’s for the trauma of being told that their parents had abandoned them or were dead.

This is something that was clearly and strongly recommended by an independent enquiry but tainted by wedge-playing opportunists for their own political interests.

It’s also not something that was done in the dim distant past.

This was done to human beings who were still classified as fauna until the sixties, at a time where I was still being taught about “Little Black Sambo” in primary school and that the aborigines were a dying race.

Thank-you Rache; I could not have put it as clearly as you have.

Rainier “As an Aboriginal person,”

What % aboriginal rainier?

“Leave the real world out there for the real people! We'll be fine without you!”

He said, talking down to everyone from the security of his academic tenured ivory tower, high above the common folk and clamour of the streets.

Isatoy ” captive by the government you were not stolen you were kidnapped”

There is a widely held view which claims those who were supposedly “stolen”, which you describe as “kidnapped” current, were, in fact saved from abuse, neglect and infant death.

Foxy “It happened during the 1930s”

Yes, the “science of Eugenics” was very popular at the time.

Today the “science” of Eugenics has no credibility.

If you want to blame the deficiencies of incompetent scientists and their fraudulent claims, do so. But do not presume to expect someone like me to carry any burden of guilt (either emotional or fiscal) for their misguided notions.

(A little off-topic) I would observe, today we hear scientists going off about global warming. One wonders how long before the “science of global warming” is seen as a crock of shite too.

Dear Col Rouge,

Let me bring you up to date with things. When John Howard came to office in 1996, his first act was to cut $A400 million from the
Aboriginal affairs budget -which he referred to contemptuously as the
"Aboriginal industry." Few doubted the real meaning of his words. He was speaking in Queensland, a state whose historic racism had, in the late nineties, demonstrated its resilience in the election to Federal Parliament of Pauline Hanson as an independent candidate, on an anti-Aboriginal, anti-immigration platform.

Once in office, Howard began to reverse the most significant gain made by the Aboriginal people. This was the Native Title Act, passed by Federal Parliament in 1993. Based on a landmark ruling by the Australian High Court the year before, the new law had removed from common law the fiction that Australia was uninhabited when Captain James Cook planted the Union flag in 1770. Known as 'Terra Nullus,'
it was used for most of two centuries to justify the dispossession of the indigenous population.

It's sad really that the things that most clearly and distinctly portray Australia to the world are Aboriginal things. Many people will accept the culture for the showcase, but not the activism.
People love Kathy Freeman, the Bangara Dance Theatre, but don't want anything to do with political organisations fighting for land rights.

And, by the way, they're not going to be made to feel guilty, because it's got nothing to do with this generation. That's what the previous Prime Minister said all the time... and maybe there was some truth in it a short time ago. I mean, maybe you could claim distance from the past.

Today, no living Australian can claim innocence, because Parliament has enacted the Native Title Amendment Act on behalf of the majority of this country, and that's the biggest single act of dispossession in our lifetime!