Aboriginal Leaders Look At Community’s Future

(13 Feb 08 – RV) The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference called a government apology to the nation’s aborigines an historic and prophetic moment in the life of the Australian nation. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told parliament today that past policies of assimilation, under which aboriginal children were taken from their families to be brought up in white households, were a stain on the nation's soul. The parliamentary apology comes 11 years after a major report into past assimilation policies found that between one in three and one in 10 aboriginal children had been taken from their families between 1910 and 1970. The Bishop’s Conference issued their own statement asking for forgiveness in 1998. The President of the Conference, Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson, told us that aboriginal leaders are now looking to their community’s future…