Apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples
On 13 February 2008, the Parliament of Australia issued a formal apology to Indigenous Australians for forced removals of Australian Indigenous children from their families by Australian federal and state government agencies. The apology was delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and is also referred to as the National Apology, or simply The Apology.
Kevin Rudd on screen in Federation Square, Melbourne, apologising to the stolen generations
Crowds viewing a public broadcast of the federal parliament's apology in Elder Park, Adelaide
Copy of the apology speech, Parliament House, Canberra
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offered the apology on behalf of the nation.
The Stolen Generations were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals of those referred to as "half-caste" children were conducted in the period between approximately 1905 and 1967, although in some places mixed-race children were still being taken into the 1970s.
A portrayal entitled The Taking of the Children on the 1999 Great Australian Clock, Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, by artist Chris Cooke
The successive breeding out of "colour" in the Aboriginal population, demonstrated here in A. O. Neville's "Australia's coloured minority" book
The Lord Mayor's National Sorry Day in Brisbane, May 26, 2016, honoring Aboriginal culture and commemorating mistreatment of Indigenous Australians
Kevin Rudd on screen in Federation Square, Melbourne, apologising to the stolen generations.
