Australia: bridge of healing. (Reconciliation between Aborigines and the wider community).

In the largest march in Australian history, a quarter of a million people walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on 28 May to demonstrate their support for reconciliation between Aboriginal Australians and the wider community.

Aboriginal Australians form two per cent of the country's population. Their health and social conditions are far worse than any other group's, and they endure racial hostility and discrimination widely across the country.

In 1990, in an attempt to change this situation, the Australian Government established a Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. This Council has steadily brought Aboriginal communities together with the officials of their region--public servants, police, judges--in day-long discussions, which have given many a new understanding of Aboriginal people. In 1996 a new Australian Government was elected, which declared that Aboriginal interests had received too much attention, and they intended to `swing the pendulum back'. Hundreds of millions of dollars were cut from Aboriginal programmes.

This was popular in some parts of the community. But it made many others uneasy.

This was first evident on the publication of a report about the `stolen generations'--the Aboriginal children removed from their families, mainly from 1900-1970, to assimilate them into white society. The Government tried to ignore the report, but public concern refused to let them. Nearly a million people signed Sorry Books, which were presented to Aboriginal leaders on a National Sorry Day in 1998, organized by community groups throughout the country.

Many of the stolen generations were so moved by Sorry Day that they initiated a Journey of Healing, which aims to offer all Australians the chance to help overcome the continuing ill-effects of the removal policies. Again the Government ignored this initiative. But when they suggested that the stolen generations were exaggerating their plight, practically the whole Australian media rose up in opposition. Aboriginal issues have become front page news, and Australians are learning as never before about the ugly side of our past.

The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation had been mandated to lay a basis for future relations between Aboriginal Australians and the wider community. After widespread discussions over several years, a Declaration for Reconciliation was finalized. When the Government said they could not accept all of its proposals, it was renamed a Declaration towards Reconciliation.

The Declaration was launched at a ceremony in the Sydney Opera House which brought together the leaders of the Australian Government and of every Australian State, together with the Aboriginal leadership. Powerful speeches vied with the cultural riches of song and dance, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. The stolen generations spoke about the Journey of Healing, and the audience of 2,000 responded by joining enthusiastically in the theme song:

Come join the Journey, Journey of Healing

Let the spirit guide us, hand in hand

Let's heal our hearts, let's heal our pain

And bring the stolen children home again

We must take this journey together as friends.

To mark the launch, the Council invited all who wished to bridge the gap between our communities to symbolize this by walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. No-one knew how people would respond. But it will surely be seen as a turning point, not just because of the huge numbers but because of the spirit of the walk.

One story exemplifies this spirit. Before the walk a member of the stolen generations phoned me. She told of decades of abuse--physical, emotional and sexual--following her removal from her family, and said, `I can only walk with you if you remove your Journey of Healing banner. For me there can be no healing.'

After the walk she phoned again. `I went on to the bridge,' she said. `I looked up at the sky and saw "Sorry" written there. I looked around at the huge mass of people who had come because they want things to be different. Tears rolled down my cheeks. And I found healing. I have been angry for years. Now I see I don't have to live with that anger.'

Her words give hope that we can find a new way. If we are to do so, the longing expressed on the bridge--and in similar huge marches in other cities--must lead to costly initiatives aimed at overcoming Aboriginal disadvantage of every kind. That is the challenge before us now.