The National Sorry Day has become an annual event where Indigenous and non-Indigenous people can acknowledge the pain caused by the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their parents who have become known as The Stolen Generation.

The Australian Government’s decision to forcibly remove up to 30 per cent of Indigenous children from their families over about 60 years until the 1970s is considered by many as the most devastating act bestowed upon Indigenous people by European settlers.

The government took Indigenous children, usually aged under five and often with one white parent, to church or state-run missions or institutions, or in some cases to white foster or adopted families.

Children were disassociated from their families and told they were orphans, forbidden from speaking their language or following their culture, given minimal education, provided with poor food and living conditions, and expected to move into low-grade domestic or farming work. Often they were also physically or sexually abused.

An example of life for those children - now known as The Stolen Generation – is documented in the film The Rabbit Proof Fence, based on a book by Doris Pilkington who told of her experience in a WA mission school.

Early governments were keen for society to be free of Indigenous people and their culture and believed that separating children from their families would help achieve that. It also viewed Indigenous people as idle and with few prospects and that the isolation of children from Aboriginal camps was the “only solution” to this “great problem”.

As the Australasian Catholic Congress was told by the Aborigines Protection Board in 1908: “In the course of a few years there will be no need for the camps and stations; the old people will have passed away and their progeny will be absorbed by the industrial classes of the country.”

There was also a paternalistic motivation – the government believed children would be better off in institutional care and that away from their families children could experience a ‘better’ start in life.

The outcome, in most cases, has been the opposite.

Generations of ‘stolen’ children have emerged into adult life with profound and lasting physical and emotional problems.

The European Network for Indigenous Australian Rights says most members of The Stolen Generation have grown up in a hostile environment without family ties or cultural identity.

Insecurity, lack of self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, depression, suicide, violence, delinquency, alcohol and substance abuse, and inability to trust are among the personal legacies.

Without a parental role model, many have had trouble bringing up their own children. In addition, the whole Indigenous community has felt anger, powerlessness, lack of purpose and a distrust of government, police and officials.

Evidence of the impact of the removal of children has emerged through other studies. For example, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody found that 43 of 99 deaths it investigated were people who were separated from their families as children.

A growing awareness of these serious outcomes of the ‘stolen’ years led to a national Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission inquiry in 1995 into the separation of Indigenous children from their families. This resulted in the release of the Bringing Them Home report in 1997.

The report found that the removal of children was a gross violation of human rights, it was racially discriminatory and was an act of genocide because it aimed to destroy a group.

It made 54 recommendations, including opening of records, family tracing and reunion services, and the need for reparations. Reparations included acknowledgement and apology by the governments and institutions concerned, restitution and rehabilitation and compensation.

In response, the Federal Government in 1997 committed 63 million dollars over four years to help families reunite, counselling, records preservation, a national oral history project and programs to preserve, revive and develop Indigenous culture and languages.

In 2001, the government allocated a further 53.9 million dollars over four years to continue and expand parenting programs, counselling services, support and training for mental health counsellors and family reunions.

In WA, the Department of Indigenous Affairs’ Family History Unit helps Indigenous people trace their family history and cultural ties. A WA Government initiative, the Bringing Them Home Reunion Program, funds family reunions for ‘stolen’ Indigenous people.

On August 26, 1999, the Australian Parliament passed a motion of Reconciliation from Prime Minister John Howard that reaffirmed a “whole-hearted commitment to Reconciliation as an important national priority for all Australians” and “expresses its deep and sincere regret that Indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations, and for the hurt and trauma that many Indigenous people continue to feel as a consequence of those practices”.

Government actions such as these are considered important steps in the process of Reconciliation, which aims to counter the injustices faced by Australia’s Indigenous people and move towards a more strongly united nation.

The whole country has had the opportunity to express sorrow for past injustices through the annual National Sorry Day, introduced on May 26, 1998, one year after the tabling of the Bringing Them Home report.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the country took part in peaceful marches to express their feelings about the past treatment of Indigenous people and continue to express this each May 26.

Finally after more than 200 years of changing policies – which began with laws which aimed to protect, then civilise, then train, and then to assimilate Indigenous people – Australian governments and people are ready to accept and celebrate the country’s first people.