--- title: National Sorry Day: Australia Apologizes to Its Stolen Generations description: Australia atones for policies that ripped some 50,000 Aboriginal children from their families between 1910 and the 1970s. canonical: https://time.com/3890518/national-sorry-day/ author: Jennifer Latson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-05-26T02:00:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T07:28:55.897Z article:section: History og:title: This Is Why Australia Has a 'National Sorry Day' og:description: Generations of Aboriginal children were wronged by social-engineering policies og:url: https://time.com/3890518/national-sorry-day/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3df33bbb8804a5eb/6988519055a8591147a8c2de/95488744.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4288 og:image:height: 2412 og:image:alt: Sorry Day In Australia og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Is Why Australia Has a 'National Sorry Day' twitter:description: Generations of Aboriginal children were wronged by social-engineering policies twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3df33bbb8804a5eb/6988519055a8591147a8c2de/95488744.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is Why Australia Has 'National Sorry Day' > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Jennifer Latson](https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson May 26, 2015 2:00 AM UTC  Rhonda Randall and Sharon Mumbler stand proud with their "Sorry" scarf as Kevin Rudd's Broadcast apology to Aboriginal Peoples of Australia at Penrith Council on February 13, 2008 in Penrith, Australia. Rhonda Randall and Sharon Mumbler stand proud with their "Sorry" scarf as Kevin Rudd's Broadcast apology to Aboriginal Peoples of Australia at Penrith Council on February 13, 2008 in Penrith, Australia. Newspix—Newspix via Getty Images by [Jennifer Latson](https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson May 26, 2015 2:00 AM UTC In 1998, a coalition of Australian community groups declared May 26 “National Sorry Day”: an annual day of atonement for the social-engineering policy that ripped an estimated 50,000 children from their Aboriginal families between 1910 and the 1970s. But it took Australia’s government another decade to utter an official apology. By some accounts, the policy of removing mostly mixed-race children from their Aboriginal tribes was well-intentioned. Officials and missionaries, arguing that the children would have more advantages in mainstream Australian society, took them to be raised in orphanages, boarding schools or white homes, [according to a 2008 TIME story about the eventual apology.](http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1709198,00.html) Other justifications smacked of eugenics, as with the [argument by A. O. Neville](http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/1496210/book-a-o-neville-australia-s-coloured-minority-its-place-in-the-community-currawong-publishing-co-1947), Australia’s Commissioner for Native Affairs in the 1930s, that people of Aboriginal descent could only be assimilated by “breeding out the color.” The policy created six decades’ worth of what Australians call the “stolen generations,” children who lost their cultural and familial identities, and many of whom never saw their relatives again. But Australian politicians were slow to embrace “National Sorry Day,” which has since been renamed “National Day of Healing.” In 1999, conservative Prime Minster John Howard expressed “deep and sincere regret that indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations,” but stopped short of apologizing. His administration argued, as TIME reported, that “it was not responsible for the actions of past governments and that admissions of wrongdoing could open the door to compensation suits.” It took a new party and a new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, to say sorry. Rudd made the apology his government’s first parliamentary act, just after his 2008 swearing-in. [He vowed](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/world/asia/13aborigine.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%5B%22RI%3A5%22%2C%22RI%3A12%22%5D) “to remove a great stain from the nation’s soul, and in a true spirit of reconciliation to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia.” Although Rudd ruled out the possibility of compensating those affected by the policy, he committed $4.5 billion to a project meant to break down barriers to healthcare, education and employment among indigenous people, [the New York _Times_ said_._](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/anatomy-of-an-authentic-apology/) That doesn’t mean that this complicated area of Australia’s history is necessarily a thing of the past. In recent years, protesters have argued that Aboriginal children are still being routinely removed from their families, only now under the auspices of child welfare, [according to _The Guardian_](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/21/john-pilger-indigenous-australian-families). Aboriginal grandmothers who survived the first wave of stolen generations told _The Guardian_, “We live in a state of fear again.” **_Read more about Australia’s apology, here in the TIME archives_**: [Resurrection Day](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1713693,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3890518/national-sorry-day/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3890518/national-sorry-day/"},"headline":"This Is Why Australia Has 'National Sorry Day'","datePublished":"2015-05-26T02:00:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T07:28:55.897Z","description":"Generations of Aboriginal children were wronged by misguided social engineering policies","url":"https://time.com/3890518/national-sorry-day/","keywords":["Australia","Children","Race","Apology"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3df33bbb8804a5eb/6988519055a8591147a8c2de/95488744.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jennifer Latson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3df33bbb8804a5eb/6988519055a8591147a8c2de/95488744.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Sorry Day In Australia","caption":"Sorry Day In Australia","creditText":"Newspix—Newspix via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/australia/","name":"Australia"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3890518/national-sorry-day/","name":"This Is Why Australia Has 'National Sorry Day'"}}]}] ```