The first Sorry Day was held in 1998, one year after the report 'Bringing them Home' was first tabled in parliament.
The report, which resulted from a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission inquiry, documented the forced removal of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, between 1910 and the 1970s. The children who were removed have come to be known as the Stolen Generations.
On the 13th of February 2008, more than ten years after the 'Bringing Them Home Report' was tabled, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a historic, formal apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples; particularly the Stolen Generations and their families and communities, for laws and policies which had 'inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.'
The apology included a proposal for a policy commission to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in 'life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.'
