Australia to Apologise to Aborigines
January 30, 2008 The Epoch Times
It´s been 10 years since the Australian government´s Bringing Them Home report on the ‘Stolen Generation’ children was released. The report detailed the way in which until the 1960s Aboriginal families were torn apart with children forcibly taken and placed in orphanages or fostered out to white Australian families in the hope of gradually assimilating them to white Australian culture.
Since that time Australia has been torn by an internal debate regarding whether the Australian government should apologize for this troubled history. Throughout the time of the conservative party’s 11 year dominance of the government, its leader John Howard refused an apology for fear that it would open the door to reparation claims.
Now with the newly elected Labor party in power, it has enacted upon its campaign promise to carry out a formal apology to the Aboriginal people of Australia on February 13.
Search for Common Ground’s blog is up and running!
Especially now in the United States, as we head into the tense and volatile arena that is the American electoral process–and where we often experience an excessive focus on divisive identity politics–we see a need to bring your attention to examples in the American news media that have a positive impact by discussing that which brings us together and unites us; our humanity, our empathy, our hopes and our aspirations.
Each week we shall be sharing with you examples from the print media, the broadcast media, and the blogosphere. We hope to receive your comments and contributions in order to make this blog a lively place to search for our common ground.
