Sorry and Beyond

Brian Butler’s grandmother was taken from her family by government officials in 1910. She was 12 years old. Twenty years later her daughter, Brian’s mother, was also taken.

‘Sorry and Beyond tells important truths, but it also contains a message of hope. We can all be agents of change.’

- Kevin Rudd

Thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, like Brian Butler’s, have been coping with the impact of child removal for more than a century. Sorry and Beyond describes the growth of the grassroots movement that exposed the truth about Australia’s removal policies and worked for healing and justice.

Born in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, the movement was joined by nearly a million non-Indigenous Australians in the 1998 Sorry Day and Journey of Healing campaigns, which paved the way for the Federal Parliament’s unanimous apology in 2008. 

As the Journey of Healing campaign has shown, community initiatives have played a vital part in overcoming the immense damage done.

The journey isn’t over. Sorry and Beyond is a call to continue the work of healing this national trauma.

Here is a committed history of understanding and fighting for the Stolen Generations over the last 50 years. Read of the battle for recognition in the teeth of half a dozen obdurate Ministers for Aboriginal Affairs. And the state of play today: unfinished business.
You’ll find not a word of theoretical jargon in this passionate narrative by two of the leading players working right at the coalface. This is one ripping yarn.

- Professor Peter Read, co-founder, Link-Up Nsw Aboriginal Corporation

Production details

• Paperback
• 230mm x 152mm
• 240pp
• Released 1 May 2021
• ISBN 9781925302745

Content

1. Why were they removed?
2. Aboriginal fight-back
3. The National Inquiry
4. The Sorry Day Committee
5. The Journey of Healing
6. The bridge walks
7. The buzz-word of the Sydney Olympics
8. Rabbit-Proof Fence
9. The struggle for a memorial
10. A national day of healing
11. Canadian First Nations support
12. The Apology
13. Since the Apology
14. A programme for healing
15. A relationship of mutual respect

Afterword by John Bond
Appendix 1: Seven steps of an apology – Kevin Rudd
Appendix 2: Text of Stolen Generations memorial, Canberra
Bibliography
Index

About the author

Brian Butler is from central Australia and, since his teens, has devoted himself to reuniting families separated by the removal policies, and healing the harm caused. He was the first Director of South Australia’s Aboriginal Child Care Agency, and for 15 years chaired the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care. He was an ATSIC Commissioner for South Australia, and was nominee for Senior Australian of the Year in South Australia. He has served on the boards of many Aboriginal organisations,
and is a consultant to South Australia’s Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People.

John Bond has worked in 30 countries, written for many publications,
and has been a member of the Institute of Journalists UK. He served as Secretary of Initiatives of Change International, which tackles injustice and works for peace and reconciliation in more than 50 countries. He served as Secretary of the National Sorry Day Committee from 1998 to 2006 and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his work on the committee.

About the cover

Cover design by Design By Committee