i’m in sydney this week with my grandmother, and this morning we got up early to watch The Apology broadcast live on TV. former prime minister of australia john howard refused for 11 years to say sorry to the indigenous people of this country, but kevin rudd has only been prime minister for 11 weeks and he’s prioritised this significant act for the first day of the new parliament. for seven decades, right up until the early 1970s, aboriginal and torres strait islander children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in foster care or adopted homes in an overt & systematic attempt to assimilate & disappear the indigenous peoples. for a long time, white australians such as my grandmother did not really know that this was happening – they didn’t know that the children were not being voluntarily given up by their families. in hindsight this seems hard to swallow, but it was widely believed that it was all being done with the best of intentions and for the good of the children. clearly this was not true. today kevin rudd said sorry to the aboriginal and torres strait islanders, a small word but an enormous step towards reconcilliation in this country. there was no mention of compensation & obviously that has to come, but there was much talk of a new beginning, as well as commitment from both major parties to work together on the issues ahead. it seems that most indigenous people welcome the apology in the spirit it was given. there’s been some flak about the speech by the leader of the opposition.