Why should we apologise when many Aboriginal people are actually better off because they were removed from dysfunctional families?
It is true that some Indigenous children were removed from their families on genuine welfare grounds. It is also true that some children who were removed received some advantages, for example in education, but the overwhelming impact of the forced removal policy was damaging. Some people involved in the removal of children genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. But as we now know, they were not. It’s important to understand that the “stolen generations? refer to those children who were removed on the basis of their race alone. In contrast with the removal of non-Indigenous children, proof of neglect was not always required to remove Indigenous children. That one of their parents was of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent was enough. The predominant aim of the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families was to absorb or assimilate children with mixed ancestry into the non-Indigenous community. As Brisbane’s Telegraph newspap
