It seems that Australia’s new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wants to correct the historical acts of his country.

For decades aborigines were treated with disgrace; from 1910 until the 1970s aboriginal children were taken away from their parents and they were placed in white homes and orphanages.

According to some Australian publications, the destroying of these families was due to the theories of the English intellectuals who believed that aborigines were a degenerate nation and that they should be exiled.

An estimated number of 100,000 mostly mixed-blood aboriginal children were separated from their families under state and federal laws.

Mr. Rudd, in the first act of his government, yesterday made a public apology to aborigines for the bad treatment that they faced for so many years. In his statement, the Prime Minister characterized the policies the aborigines were confronted with as an attempt by white Australia to remove them from the population.

“The pain is searing, it screams from the pages, the hurt, the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses." These were the words that Mr. Rudd used to express the fact that he is against the acts of his descendants.

He called this gesture towards the aborigines a “first step.” Moreover the state government of Tasmania donated $4.5 million to Stolen Children while last year, a man in South Australia won a $525,000 settlement because he was taken away from his mother when he was a baby.

Just like Australia, the Canadian government apologized to its native people and Bill Clinton also apologized to America’s former slaves. Kevin Rudd’s act comes after 11 years of refusal from John Howard’s government to apologize to the aborigines.

Australia’s Prime Minister said Wednesday that he wants “a future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stakes in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country,” as quoted by Australian media.