Similar to the experiences of Native American Indians and Blacks in the U.S., the history of how aborigines in Australia have been treated is well-documented. This history includes blatant and systematic discrimination, physical brutality, and the forced separation of mixed-race aborigine children from their parents to be raised “White,” referred to as the “stolen generation.”

Within this context and as CBS News reports, in a move that has strong symbolic -- if not practical -- meaning, the Australian government will now issue a formal apology to aborigines for the historical practice of forced child-parent separation (portrayed in the critically-acclaimed 2002 movie Rabbit Proof Fence):

Australia will issue its first formal apology to the country’s indigenous people next month . . . a milestone that could ease tensions with a minority once subjected to policies including the removal of mixed-blood children from families on the premise that their race was doomed. . . .

[Government leaders] have previously ruled out financial compensation for the impoverished minority. . . . Australia’s original inhabitants, Aborigines number about 450,000 among a population of 21 million. Aborigines are the poorest ethnic group in Australia and are most likely to be jailed, unemployed and illiterate. . . .

From 1910 until the 1970s, around 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and saving the children was a humane alternative.

A national inquiry in 1997 found that many children taken from their families suffered long-term psychological effects stemming from the loss of family and culture.

I commend the new Australian government for taking this action, although I am disappointed that financial reparations are not included. Nonetheless it is a positive symbolic step forward into acknowledging the injustices of the past.

Perhaps our own government can learn something about this in regard to our own history of how our government has treated its indigenous and enslaved populations through the centuries.