The Stolen Generation

Aborigines taken from their families in the name of assimilation seek an apology from white Australia

When the welfare officers came to take three-year-old Archie Roach from his tin-lined house in Framlingham in southeastern Australia, they told his mother they were escorting him to a picnic. His aunt tried to scare them off with a gun, but it wasn't loaded. Institutionalized in a Melbourne orphanage, young Archie was told his family had died in a fire. His minders tried to force his hair straight, breaking comb teeth in his frizzy curls. It was a vain attempt by whites to make an Aboriginal child more like them. It didn't work, and the combs weren't the only casualties.

Roach,...

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