Australia Expresses Regret for Injustice to Aborigines

The Australian Parliament recognized 200 years of injustice to the country’s indigenous people Thursday, saying it regretted “the most blemished chapter” in the nation’s history.

The historic motion came the same day that an Aboriginal woman taken from her mother at birth lost a legal battle considered crucial for Australia’s so-called “stolen generations.”

From the turn of the century until the 1960s, 100,000 Aboriginal children were taken from their parents under the belief that Aborigines were doomed and saving the children was the only humane alternative. Light-skinned Aboriginal children were seized and handed out to white families for adoption. Dark-skinned children were put in orphanages.

Two years after he refused to apologize to Aborigines taken from their families, Prime Minister John Howard presented a motion in Parliament that he called an attempt to reconcile black and white Australians.

Parliament expressed “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.”

The opposition Labor Party failed to strengthen the motion to include the word “sorry.”

Aboriginal reaction was mixed: Some leaders said nothing short of the word “sorry” and compensation to those in the stolen generations was acceptable.

However, Aden Ridgeway, the second Aborigine ever to sit in Parliament, helped draft the motion and denied it was a compromise.

“People ought to take heart that it gives an expression of even severe regret,” Ridgeway said.

In Sydney, Aborigine Joy Williams lost her case seeking unspecified compensation for her suffering, claiming New South Wales state breached its duty to care for her when they took her from her mother as an infant and placed her in an orphanage.

In a 432-page judgment, New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Alan Abadee said the case did not concern stolen generation issues because he found that Williams, 56, was not taken against the will of her mother.

Lawyers for Williams said they probably will appeal.