A Day for the World to Say Sorry
From Australia’s National Sorry Day Toward an International Day of Truth, Repentance, and Repair
A PeaceGrooves Reflection
There are words so overused that they risk becoming weightless. Sorry is one of them. We say it when we bump into someone in a hallway, when we answer an email too late, when we make an insignificant mistake. Yet there are times when sorry is not small at all. There are wounds so deep, so deliberately inflicted, and so long denied that the speaking of sorrow becomes an act of public truth.
Australia’s National Sorry Day, observed each year on May 26, is such a day. It remembers the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families, communities, languages, and cultures under government policies now associated with the Stolen Generations. The date marks the anniversary of the 1997 tabling of the Bringing Them Home report, the landmark national inquiry that gathered testimony from survivors and documented the devastation caused by these removals. The report called not only for recognition of what had happened, but for apology, healing, reparations, family reunion, access to records, and measures ensuring such violations would never recur.
National Sorry Day did not begin as a sentimental holiday….
Read the full essay at PeaceGrooves.
#AboriginalAndTorresStraitIslanderPeoples #AnabaptistPeaceWitness #Australia #buildingAJustFuture #colonialism #globalPeace #Healing #historicalMemory #IndigenousJustice #InternationalSorryDay #NationalSorryDay #Nonviolence #Peacebuilding #PeaceGrooves #publicApology #Reconciliation #rememberingThePast #reparations #Repentance #RestorativeJustice #SocialJustice #StolenGenerations #truthAndReconciliation
Brandon Anthony Bedard
Slow Mover
🕊️KittyKat🕊️~On the turning away~ Pink Floyd 🪴🌸
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