BY FELICITY MEAKINS
KATHERINE — This year the Katherine Regional Stolen Generation committee chose to rename Sorry Day — May 25 — "Healing Day", in a move intended to highlight that reconciliation begins, not finishes, with an apology.
Ninety five per cent of Indigenous families in Katherine have been affected by previous governments' policies of removing children from Indigenous parents. This was evident in the large crowd that turned out for the May 25 march down the Stuart Highway.
Marie Allen, a victim of such policies of removal, told protesters that the policy's negative effects are not in the past but are still being felt these families: "Substantial research shows that effects on stolen generations and their families to this day are insecurity, a lack of self esteem and worthlessness, depression and suicide, delinquency and violence leading to imprisonment and drug abuse.
"It has been also demonstrated that forcibly removed people aren't better off heath-wise, education-wise nor employment-wise."
Lana Quoll, also one a victim of removal policies and author of So far from home: Stories of the Stolen Generations, suggested that the federal government should put the same amount of money as was used for forcibly removing children to redressing the effects of this policy.
Katherine's non-Indigenous mayor, Jim Forscutt, responded to these comments with defensive remarks delivered in "Aboriginal English". "I have got 'sorry' too. What about my people? My father, my mother died when I was a kid. I think we all hurt somewhere along the line but we have to learn to live together too."
From Green Left Weekly, June 5, 2002.
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