Today is Sorry Day in so-called Australia. "Sorry" does not refer to apologies. It's based on Indigenous practices of Sorry Business; a collective process in times of grief & loss.
It's a day of remembrance for the 10000s of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families: the Stolen Generations. Taken between late 1800s to early 1980s, the children were placed in church-run institutions or (later) put up for adoption without parental consent.
Up until the late 1950s, the children were trained for domestic servitude and unpaid labouring and sent to white businesses and households. The abuse and neglect in the institutions and elsewhere was rampant. Many died in these places; not everyone who survived found their families; and most have passed away without seeing any justice.
Every Indigenous family has one or more members that were part of the Stolen Generations. And the trauma of this particular act of genocide is intergenerational.
Sorry Day was one of the recommendations of a royal commission - the Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Which was tabled with the Australian
Parliament on 26 May 1997.
Another recommendation was a national apology, and that occurred on 13 February. Otherwise, very few of the 54 recommendations have been actioned.
In more recent years, in addition to commemorating the Stolen Generations and advocating for their rights, this day is also for fighting for the rights of Indigenous children who are being taken away in record numbers.
Today, I think of my family members who were stolen by the government, and forced into servitude as children. Fuck the government, churches and others who participated in this race-based cruelty; who used Aboriginal blood, sweat and tears to build a white nation on stolen Blak land. Yes, Sorry Day is also a day of anger.
For more information, resources and testimonials, visit the Healing Foundation website > https://healingfoundation.org.au/stolen-generations/
This video is good (narrated by the late Uncle Jack Charles) > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqx8EYvRbQ
And a fact sheet > https://healingfoundation.org.au/sorry-day-factsheet/
#SorryDay #Indigenous #Genocide #StolenGenerations #ChildRemoval #Missions #ChildLabour #Aboriginal