"Stolen" Aborigines weep for lost families

By Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Aborigine Lola Edwards wept on Wednesday when she heard Australia's prime minister say sorry for the country's past assimilation policies, under which black children were forcibly taken from their parents.

Edwards, 61, still remembers the taste of blackberries in her mouth the day she was "stolen" at the age of four from her mother's arms by a welfare officer.

"To this day, I have this, this feeling about the taste of blackberries. I was holding on to mum's dress, she took me blackberry picking, and the welfare officer said that we were going to a circus," Edwards told Reuters.

Tens of thousands of aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their parents under a government policy of assimilation from the 1880s to the 1960s. Those children are called the "Stolen Generations" or "People of the Bleaching".

Edwards only discovered she was aboriginal decades later, when she received a telephone call from the sister she never knew she had, and was finally reunited with her mother in 1980.

"All I think about is my dear old mum and dad who had us taken out of their arms. I have every reason to be bitter and twisted, but I am not. This is the history of Australia, this is the real history of Australia and this is what happened to me as one of the Stolen Generations," said Edwards.

"For all the Stolen Generations here today and those who never made it, today is a very special day," she said.

New Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the national apology to Aborigines would "remove a great stain from the nation's soul".