The National Sorry Day in Australia

As you may or may not know, between 1910 and 1970 many Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families as a result of various government policies. The generations of children who suffered from this treatment are known as the Stolen Generations, and their wounds are something that is still in the process of healing.

So, you’re probably wondering, what is the National Sorry Day? It is an Australia-wide observance held on May 26^th every year. In this day, people come together and share the steps towards healing for the Stolen Generations, their families and communities. Many activities take place in this day, such as concerts and barbecues, reconciliation walks or street marches, Sorry Day flag raising events, speeches and so on, and in this day people can also write their feelings in “sorry books”.

However, even though this observance started being held since 1998, it took more than ten years after that for the government to make an official apology to Australia’s Indigenous people, and Kevin Rudd was the first Prime Minister to apologise to the Stolen Generations on February 13^th, 2008.

While watching and listening to his speech and seeing the faces of the Aboriginal people who were there, I could feel a strong emotion. Talking to a friend from Australia, she explained to me that this day was very important because Aboriginal people had been waiting and working hard for this apology for 11 years and more, and after this, the Aboriginal elders who were there forgave white people for what they did to them.

What if we take this to our current context in Chile? Perhaps in here we don’t have anything like the Stolen Generations, but we know that Aboriginal people were mistreated in many ways and what’s worse – they’re still being mistreated. Do you think that if our government decided to finally stop neglecting Indigenous people’s requests, listened to them and maybe, apologised, too, we could make our situation change for the better? Why or why not? What should we do? Should we keep pretending to be deaf and blind?