Reconciliation and Social Justice Library

Bringing them Home - The Report

Acknowledgment and apology

• Government statements
• Church statements

The first step in any compensation and healing for victims of gross violations of human rights must be an acknowledgment of the truth and the delivery of an apology. Van Boven's principle 15 concerns `satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition' including, as necessary,

(a) Cessation of continuing violations; (b) Verification of the facts and full and public disclosure of the truth; (c) An official declaration or a judicial decision restoring the dignity, reputation and legal rights of the victim and/or of persons connected with the victim; (d) Apology, including public acknowledgment of the facts and acceptance of responsibility; (e) Judicial or administrative sanctions against persons responsible for the violations; (f) Commemorations and paying tribute to the victims; (g) Inclusion in human rights training and history textbooks of an accurate account of the violations committed in the field of human rights and humanitarian law; (h) Preventing the recurrence of violations ...

For victims of gross human rights violations, establishing the truth about the past is a critically important measure of reparation (Orentlicher 1994 page 457). For many victims and their families, an accurate and truthful description of past policies and practices and of their consequences is the first requirement of justice and the first step towards healing wounds (Danieli 1992 page 210). Also essential is an acknowledgment of responsibility (Danieli 1992 page 208). Related to calls for truth and acknowledgment of responsibility, the Inquiry has heard demands for apologies to the individuals, families and communities who have survived the removal of Indigenous children.

The Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples recently recommended the establishment of a public inquiry to investigate the Canadian policy of removing Indigenous children to residential schools. It is proposed that the inquiry should in turn `recommend remedial action by governments and the responsible churches ... including as appropriate, apologies by those responsible' in addition to the payment of compensation (1996b Volume 5 page 143).

The Inquiry was told that both governments and non-government agencies, including the churches and missions, should acknowledge their part in the separation of Indigenous families and apologise to the victims. ATSIC submitted,

The prospect of apologies to indigenous people has been raised on many occasions. There is no uniform view about reparations but there is a consistent view of indigenous people as to the necessity for apologies ... an apology must be matched by a commitment to rectify past mistakes through reparation and compensation.

... ATSIC considers that reconciliation must surely begin with this one elementary condition: an apology. Indigenous people may then feel that the issue of separation, and the injustices it caused, have been acknowledged by those present-day government and non-government organisations who are directly connected with organisations responsible for past policies and practices (submission 684 page 32).

`[T]he assimilation policy that operated in this country be [should be] denounced officially by governments across the country' (Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement submission 484 recommendation 18); `public acknowledgment and apologies [should] take place from the Australian population including especially government organisations, church bodies' (SA Aboriginal Child Care Agency submission 347 recommendation 5). Link-Up (NSW) called for `a full public disclosure of the facts of separation', admissions of responsibility from governments `for the development and implementation of the policies and practices of separation', admissions of responsibility from the churches for their roles and extension of apologies to the survivors for their `engagement in practices of genocide, forced assimilation and ethnic cleansing' (submission 186). The Aboriginal Legal Service of WA recommended,

That the State government [and the Commonwealth government] make a public statement in Parliament acknowledging the devastating impact of the policies and practices of removing Aboriginal children from their families on individuals, their families and the Aboriginal community, and express regret, and apologise on behalf of the people of Western Australia [and Australia] (submission 127 recommendations 3 and 5).

Government statements

Australian governments have only very recently admitted the history of forcible removals and its effects. While governments recognise the harms suffered, as the following statements evidence, only the Government of New South Wales has extended an apology.

Addressing the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1988, Australia's Representative stated,

[Australia] acknowledged that the Public Policy regarding the care of Aboriginal children, particularly during the post-war period, had been a serious mistake (quoted by Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement submission 484 on page 18).

Launching the 1993 Year of the World's Indigenous People, then Prime Minister Paul Keating stated,

It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.

It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me. As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us (Redfern, 10 December 1992).

The South Australian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Michael Armitage, stated in the House of Assembly in September 1994,

I remind members of the appalling and breathtakingly paternalistic practice of taking Aboriginal children from their families, ostensibly to provide for them in a so-called `better fashion' ...

There would be few Aboriginal people beyond school age who were not raised without the threat, if not the actuality of family dislocation. It will take decades yet before the consequences of these policies are worked through.

The consequences of past mistakes are carried from generation to generation. Reconciliation appropriately involves an honest acknowledgment of the impact of colonisation, both historically and up to the current day (quoted by Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement submission 484 on page 48).

In its submission to the Inquiry, the Tasmanian Government stated that it,

... recognises that past legislation, practices and policies have adversely affected Aboriginal people. This has had implications to Aboriginal people in Tasmania over successive generations (final submission page i).

The Queensland Government submitted,

The extent of government control over the lives of the indigenous people of the State that occurred in the past, and the associated high degree of government and institutional interference with indigenous family life, have had wide-ranging and often tragic impacts on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Queensland over successive generations.

Many of those policies and practices, and the beliefs that engendered them, are not acceptable today (interim submission page 2).

The Victorian Government submitted,

The Government has acknowledged before the Commissioner, that the early history of child welfare in Victoria is hallmarked by policies and practices which evolved in accordance with the views of the Victorian community of that time. Many of these approaches to child welfare would be unacceptable today (final submission page 3).

On 14 November 1996, New South Wales Premier Bob Carr, in a speech on reconciliation in the Legislative Assembly, stated that removals were `done in the name of the State and in the name of this Parliament'.

That is why, Mr Speaker, I re-affirm in this place, formally and solemnly as Premier, on behalf of the government and people of New South Wales, our apology to Aboriginal people.

And I invite the House to join with me in that apology, and in doing so, acknowledge, with deep regret Parliament's own role in endorsing policies and actions of successive governments which devastated Aboriginal communities and inflicted, and continues to inflict, grief and suffering upon Aboriginal families and communities.

I extend this apology as an essential step in the process of reconciliation.

Acknowledgment and apology - Parliaments and police forces

Submissions to the Inquiry similarly called on the churches to acknowledge their respective roles and extend apologies to the children, their families and communities.

[That] Churches acknowledge what happened, support Aboriginal initiatives to begin healing process, open up their archives providing information about people's families and resolve any outstanding land issues with relevant communities (Broome and Derby Working Groups submission 518 recommendation 3.2.8).

Church statements

Most churches recognise the devastating effects of the forcible removal policies and practices.

Centacare Catholic Community Services on behalf of the NSW Catholic Church's diocesan welfare agencies deeply regrets the enormous suffering to individuals and the aboriginal people as a community as a result of the massive social dislocation caused by the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families (Centacare Catholic Community Service submission 478 page 5).

There is no doubt that the policy of taking children from their natural families has had devastating effects on many of the people who were taken away, on their families and on the community as a whole. Although many of the people have since become leaders in the Aboriginal community, many others have been devastated by the experience ...

As well, the second generation have felt the effects of the deprivation suffered by the generation that was taken away. For them the loss also of parenting, relationship and life-skills, of how to give and receive love has been devastating. There has been a loss of identity, of self-respect and hope (Uniting Church in Australia first submission 457 page 10).

Agencies of the Catholic Church in Australia have acknowledged their role and its effects while other branches have extended apologies in submissions to the Inquiry. On 18 July 1996 representatives from three national groups of the Roman Catholic Church delivered a Joint Statement to the Inquiry.

On behalf of our constituent national groups we sincerely and deeply regret any involvement Church agencies had in any injustices that have been visited upon Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. It is apparent with hindsight that some Church agencies, along with other non-government organisations, played a role in the implementation of government policies and legislation which led to the separation of many children from their families and communities.

We sincerely regret that some of the Church's child welfare services and organisations, which were amongst those non-government organisations in Australia that provided residential services and institutional care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families by agents of the state, assisted governments' implement assimilationist policies and practices.

To the best of our knowledge, at no time have the Church's child welfare services and organisations been given any legislative power or authority to forcibly or physically remove any children from their families ... We do accept that there were cases where the actions of Church child welfare services and organisations were instrumental in keeping children separate from their families and in this respect the Church holds some responsibility in playing a role for the state to keep these children separate from their families (Chairman, Bishops' Committee for Social Welfare, Chairperson, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council and National Director, Australian Catholic Social Welfare Commission, extract from page 1).

We Pallottines freely admit and regret our mistakes in this area. Our attitudes were in some ways typical of the prevailing mindset of the general population. We deeply regret every hurt visited on Aboriginal and Islander people who have been taken from their heritage of family, community, culture and language. We apologise for any role which any of our group, however well meaning, might have played in such activities (Society of the Catholic Apostolate (Pallottines) submission 433 page 1).

We are also mindful of the role our order played in the devastation that is now known as the removal of the Stolen Generation and we are endeavouring to come to terms ourselves with the hurt and pain that this policy of assimilation has caused those Aboriginal people that were removed from their families and the members of the families that were left behind to grieve their loss. In the spirit of Reconciliation we offer unreservedly our apologies for any hurt our role in this process has caused and offer whatever resources we have available to us to help people come to terms with the hurt that has occurred (Kimberley Sisters of St John of God submission 521 page 6).

To those who have suffered personal deprivation and hurt in Church institutions because of the effects of this policy, the Church of this Diocese unreservedly apologizes. Further, She regrets the great suffering that continues in the hearts of some people and extends to them a compassionate wish for peace and reconciliation (Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Broome submission 519 page 3).

The Anglican Church Social Responsibilities Commission referred to apologies extended by other parts of the Anglican Church of Australia.

The SRC joins with other parts of the Anglican Church of Australia in offering its unreserved apology for the involvement of Anglicans, both individually and corporately, in the policies and practices that allowed the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island children from their families. It may be that the church had no direct control over the policies themselves. It may be that its members and agencies, to the extent that they were involved, acted as part of already existing networks of welfare arrangements. It may be that many of those involved believed that they were acting in the best interests of the children concerned. It may also be that many of them did not understand the full implications of their actions, performing only the tasks immediately in front of them. The SRC does not wish to impute any particular motives to those involved. It simply states that no amount of explanation can detract from the now observable consequences of those misguided policies and practices. A great wrong has been done to the indigenous people of Australia. It is for participation in that wrong that this apology is offered (Anglican Church Social Responsibilities Commission submission 525 pages 3-4).

The National Assembly of the Uniting Church passed the following resolution in September 1996.

... that Standing Committee, on behalf of the Uniting Church in Australia, acknowledge to the Aboriginal community:
* the trauma and on-going harm caused to individuals, families, the Aboriginal community as a whole and the entire Australian community by the practice of separating Aboriginal children from their parents and raising them in institutions, foster homes or adoptive homes;
* that the church thought it was acting in a loving way by providing them with homes, but was blind to the racist assumptions that underlay the policy and practice;
* the fact that these assumptions, spoken and unspoken conveyed destructive, negative messages to the children about Aboriginal culture and their Aboriginality;
* that fact that although it was the intention and policy of the church to provide children who had been separated from their parents with a loving, secure environment in which they were encouraged to develop their gifts and graces, and although faithful women and men who worked in the institutions often provided such an atmosphere, there were also times when the reality contradicted the intention and goal, and where children even met violence and abuse at the hands of some of the very staff whom they should have been able to trust;
* that there were many good, faithful and self-sacrificing houseparents, foster parents and adoptive parents who provided loving homes for the children in their care, and encouraged their self-esteem, their growth, their pride in Aboriginal culture and their achievement; many of the people who grew up in the institutions have continued a close relationship with former house parents until the present time (second submission 457).

The Federal Aborigines Board of the Churches of Christ, the Anglican Church Diocese of Perth and the Baptist Church of WA acknowledged their complicity as did the Catholic Social Welfare Commission (submission 479 page 2).

Churches of Christ recognize and acknowledge the pain suffered by the children and parents who experienced separation. We recognise our complicity in a system which we understood at the time to be beneficial but now is seen to have been destructive. To the degree which we were a part of the destruction processes we seek forgiveness and offer our repentance. We also acknowledge that we sought to do what was most appropriate and for some the experience was positive and for such people we affirm the outcome (Churches of Christ Federal Aborigines Board submission 411 page 8).

It must be acknowledged that, no matter how well intentioned the motives of the Church were in its involvement in separating children from their families, it's complicity has contributed to the dislocation of the people concerned, and therefore to their loss of land, language, and identity.

It is evident that the present high rate of continuing social dislocation and Aboriginal imprisonment is direct result of the separation of children from their families in which the Church was complicit (Anglican Church of Australia, Diocese of Perth submission 410 page 2).

In retrospect, however, Baptist Churches of Western Australia acknowledges that its efforts to reach out with Christian compassion, practical care and spiritual help were unfortunately combined with an unconscious complicity with the Government policy of assimilation of `part-Aboriginal' people. While rightly deploring the degrading impact of European settlement upon Aboriginal peoples, and taking no part in the removal of children, Baptist Churches of Western Australia failed to provide a clear prophetic voice to challenge the Government policies of the day and the general community philosophy of racial superiority. We failed to publicly proclaim, in respect of Aboriginal and Islander peoples, the Biblical view of the intrinsic worth of all people as individuals made in God's image (Baptist Churches of Western Australia submission 674 page 2).

The Australian Association of Social Workers also expressed its regrets.

We know and sincerely regret that social workers, and unqualified workers known as `Social Workers', were actively involved in the removal of aboriginal children from their families even up to relatively recent times. As far as we are aware, our professional association has not made any comment or apology about the involvement of social workers in the separation of families which has had such a dramatic impact on aboriginal communities ... The Association acknowledges that social workers were involved in the forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families in every state and territory in Australia during this century (Australian Association of Social Workers submission 721 pages 1 and 2).

Doomadgee Inc is the successor of the Aborigines Inland Mission at Doomadgee in Queensland.

... we are sensitive to the perception of some Doomadgee Aborigines that missionaries were sometimes too firm in their administration of discipline, or too assertive in their presentation of the Christian gospel. To these Aborigines we express our sincere apologies. The desire of all the missionaries was to achieve the very best outcomes for Aborigines and anything perceived by them to fall short of this is a matter of deep regret to us (Doomadgee (Inc) submission 78 page 8).

Acknowledgment and apology - Churches and others

Comparable experience suggests that satisfaction should go beyond a single instance of acknowledgment and apology. Victims should be appropriately commemorated (Correa 1992 page 1478). The Inquiry received a number of submissions as to forms of commemoration.

Public tribute must be paid to the survivors, and those who have not survived the policies and practices of separation. Public recognition of the ongoing courage and determination of Aboriginal people to resist the genocidal policies of separation is essential. Commemoration can and should take place at different levels. Nationally, there should be a `Sorry Day' commemorating Aboriginal survival of the holocaust which is accorded the same recognition as ANZAC day. On a local level, communities may wish to establish commemorative places, or have a `Welcome Home Day' (Link-Up (NSW) submission 186).

Other proposals concerning forms of commemoration include establishing education centres, naming of streets, endowing scholarships, memorial services and monuments (see also van Boven 1992 page 15). Commentators have observed that commemoration is important not only for victims but also for the society as a whole.

Commemorations can fill the vacuum with creative responses and may help heal the rupture not only internally but also the rupture the victimization created between the survivors and their society. It is a shared context, shared mourning, shared memory. The memory is preserved; the nation has transformed it into part of its consciousness. The nation shares the horrible pain (Danieli 1992 page 210).

Commemoration