The Aboriginal people will be offered formal and official apology during the first assembly of the Canberra government on February 13, the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promised during last November’s elections. This would include acknowledging the impact the European colonization has had for the past three centuries in the Aboriginals’ way of life and the mistreatment they have been submitted to for hundreds of years.

“We apologize for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on our fellow Australians,” the apology reads. A special mention will be that of the thousands of Aboriginal children who have been taken from their parents by the government, and now became known as the “Stolen Generations,” a symbol of mistreatment of the continents’ oldest inhabitants.

The Government held in place a terrible policy at the beginning of the 20th century, separating thousands of children from their families in an attempt to “protect” them. The reason was that the Aboriginals were a doomed race and the only thing to do was to apparently “save” the children. The result of over 60 years of policy: 100,000 stolen children ended up living in poor conditions, with no contact whatsoever from their families and no protection from the government that took them in.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin, who have previously mentioned the idea of financial compensations for families that lost their children during that period, forgot to mention it again, which turns everything into a more symbolic act, rather than a real commitment to helping the Aboriginals.

A spokeswoman for Macklin said however that this was just the beginning in a process meant to reverse the inequalities between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, and although the apology is just a symbolic act, things will not stop here. That remains to be seen, as mere apologies don’t seem enough to wash away the wounds of the past. This could be a step towards a better future for Aboriginal people, at least theoretically speaking.