On February 13, Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister spoke to the Aboriginal people of Australia. He spoke for himself, for his government, the Parliament and, as he hoped, for all Australians. He tendered a much-awaited apology to the country’s Aboriginal population citing the “profound suffering, grief and loss” inflicted on them by decades of abuse and mistreatment.

His words, contained in an Australian parliamentary motion, were directed to the ‘stolen generations’ — the tens of thousands of mixed race children taken from their families in a strategy of white assimilation that was abandoned in 1970. “For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry,” Prime Minister Rudd said. “To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry... And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.” He also apologised to the indigenous peoples of Australia still living on the margins of Australian society.

This profoundly moving act is reminiscent of the haunting image of a penitent Willy Brandt kneeling in prayer and atonement at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial. The Australian apology is not just an attempt to undo historical wrongs. Acts committed in the past cannot be undone. It is a promise for the future. But it seeks to go beyond a commitment. It is an act of recognition. It is a recognition of pain and suffering as also the shared memory of pain.

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