She lit the cauldron at the opening of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and became the 400 metres gold medallist. But Cathy Freeman is also one of many Australians whose Aboriginal forebears were torn from their homes as babies. Freeman is frank about her disgust over the “stolen generations” but says that an apology by Parliament will represent a healing for her family.

Cecilia Barber, her mother, was born on Palm Island, off Townsville, northern Queensland. Cathy Freeman was taken from her mother and placed in a church-run dormitory. She said: “I will never really understand what it is like for a mother to have to protect her child and being unable to do it. It was disgusting. Horrible.” A landmark report in 1997 established that every indigenous family between 1910 and 1970 was affected by forcible removal of children under assimilation policies. They were placed in orphanages run by churches or charities or fostered out to be integrated into European culture. Some were brutalised or abused.

The apology on Wednesday will be the removal of “a blight on the nation's soul”, Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, said. There is no doubt that the issue has captured the nation's consciousness. Newspaper letters pages spill over with — mostly positive — commentary. In some cities barbecues and choirs will feed and entertain crowds gathering around big screens.

Exactly what they will be watching or listening to remains unclear. Mr Rudd, who will make the apology in front of 100 members of the stolen generations, has presented only a sketch of the principal content: that the apology will be from the Australian Parliament to “the stolen generations, their descendants and families”. There will, however, be no provision for financial compensation.

The apology has the support in principle of the Opposition, led by the Liberal Party, but Brendan Nelson, the Opposition Leader, has expressed a preference that the words forcibly removed be used instead of stolen, which implies criminality. And “sorry” remains the hardest word, with Mr Nelson arguing that many of those responsible for removing Aborigines had been acting in good faith.

His indigenous affairs spokesman, Tony Abbott, said yesterday: “Some kids were stolen but some were rescued and some kids were helped, so you have to be true to the real history of our country, not to a fanciful history of our country.”

Australia's original inhabitants, who number 450,000 in a population of 21 million, are the poorest ethnic group and are most likely to be jailed, unemployed, illiterate and suffer from poor health. Their life expectancy is 17 years shorter than other Australians.

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