Healing the hurt: Emotional witnesses in Camberra listen as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologies for abuses against Australian Aborigines
Sometimes it's what a country owns up to, rather than what it is most proud of, that reveals its strength. Such was the case last week, when Australian political leaders united to apologize to Aboriginal people for the policies that created the so-called stolen generations, those who as children were separated from their families. Just before 9 a.m. on Feb.13, Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in his government's first parliamentary act, rose in a hushed chamber to deliver the apology indigenous people had long sought. It was time "to remove this great stain from the nation's soul," he said....
