Indigenous healing services boost ahead of Sorry Day
Healing workshops, on-country camps and the documentation of Stolen Generations survivors' experiences are set to be boosted by $3.5 million in funding.
The federal funding, announced ahead of National Sorry Day on Sunday, is aimed to prop up community-led services through the Healing Foundation across the next two years.
Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said the funding boost aimed to continue the decades-long recovery of survivors and their families.
"National Sorry Day is a time for all Australians to reflect and acknowledge - the strength, courage and resilience of Stolen Generations survivors, their families and communities, and those who never made it home," she said.
"The apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008 acknowledged the trauma and grief suffered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as a result of past government policies, particularly the forced removal of children from their families."
Ms Burney will mark Sorry Day 2024 with a visit to Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation's Walking Our Healing Journey event in Sydney.
Established more than a decade ago by a group of former residents of the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home, Coota Girls delivers survivor-led support.
Coota Girls' families and descendants will meet in Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens on Sunday for one of the many National Sorry Day events being held in major capital cities.
Sorry Day is held each year on May 26, the day before Reconciliation Week begins.
The date marks the 1997 tabling in federal parliament of the Bringing Them Home report, which examined the history of First Nations people who were forcibly removed from their families as part of the Stolen Generations.
It documented the experience of survivors and made 54 recommendations, some of which have not yet been implemented.
Reconciliation Week also marks the anniversary of the May 27, 1967 referendum that allowed Indigenous people to be counted in the census.
It also acknowledges Mabo Day on June 3, which celebrates the High Court decision that overturned the principle of "terra nullius" and paved the way for native title.
