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Australia Plans To Apologize To Aborigines

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By ROHAN SULLIVAN, The Associated Press

Published: January 31, 2008

MOUNT DRUITT, Australia - As a girl, Mari Melito Russell felt out of place. She was darker than the other children at school, she felt more comfortable in the forest than her suburban home and she had vivid dreams of an Aboriginal woman beckoning her.

At age 24, she learned a shocking truth that helped explain her unease and set her on an agonizing search for an identity snatched away from her the day she was born.

Russell is among thousands of Australian Aborigines forcibly removed from their families under policies that lasted for decades until 1970, leaving deep scars on countless lives and the nation's psyche.

Australia's government said Wednesday it would formally apologize to the so-called "stolen generations" as the first item of business of the new Parliament on Feb 13.

The issue has divided Australians for decades, and an apology would be a crucial step toward righting injustices many blame for the marginalized existence of Australia's original inhabitants, its poorest and most deprived citizens.

"It's not going to bring back my life," Russell, 72, said Wednesday at her home on Sydney's outskirts. "It's not going to bring back my mum. It's not going to take away the abuse that I had to endure when I was growing up. But at least it's a start."

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected last November and whose pledge to apologize overturns a decade of refusals by his predecessor, has ruled out paying compensation. But he says he is determined to help all Aborigines achieve better health, education and living standards.

From 1910 until 1970, about 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws that argued the race was doomed and that integrating the children was a humane alternative.

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