Fund for Aboriginals

Sydney

(ENI) – The National Council of Churches in Australia’s executive body has recommended the establishment of a “healing commission” and a national government fund to compensate or otherwise help Aboriginals who, as children, were removed from their homes and educated in church-run institutions.

The council, which represents 13 churches, including Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran, also called upon the nation to act upon a recent report on “the stolen generations.”

The report, from the federal government’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, said that between one in three and one in 10 aboriginal children were taken from their families between 1910 and 1970 for racist reasons that amounted to genocide.

The report also said victims should receive compensation.