It was a landmark apology in federal parliament seven years ago that offered hope to members of the Stolen Generations.
"We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these, our fellow Australians," then prime minister Kevin Rudd told his parliamentary colleagues, and the nation, in 2008.
"We apologise, especially, for the removal or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country," he went on.
Mr Rudd's speech was widely applauded across the political divide and Australia more broadly as a step in the right direction, towards reconciliation.
Seven years later, prominent members of the Stolen Generations have gathered at a special forum in Canberra to discuss the enduring challenges for the healing process.
"I didn't need the apology, I don't think. But, when he said sorry to my parents, it was something I really needed to hear," Aunty Lorraine Peeters told the forum.
Aunty Lorraine was forcibly removed as a child and has devoted years to helping other members of the Stolen Generations heal.
She spoke of the deliberate attempts by authorities to split her from her family - even from her siblings, who were also taken from their mother.
"We were put in Cootamundra to be trained as domestic (workers) for white families. I was taken about 72 years ago," she said. "So, in that time, there hasn't been a great deal of things that have been done to help with this trauma. And I'm not only talking about my trauma as a Stolen Generation, I'm talking about the trauma of the race itself."
Aunty Lorraine says much of that trauma remains unaddressed to this day, despite Kevin Rudd's apology on behalf of the nation.
She is calling for a return to the recommendations of a report titled "Bringing Them Home" published in 1997.
The report spoke of broken ties to family, community and country that resulted from the removal of Aboriginal children from their families.
It highlighted the diminished physical and mental health that has resulted from psychological, physical and sexual abuse.
As well as the loss of language, culture and connection to traditional land for those taken.
"So, those recommendations, everything the Stolen Generations needed is in the Bringing Them Home report, but we don't go back and visit that enough," said Aunty Lorraine.
Yorta Yorta man Ian Hamm was removed from his family at the age of three weeks in 1964.
He told the Canberra forum of the loss of identity he felt as a young Aboriginal man growing up in a predominantly white country.
"What does it mean to be me? I know who I am in terms of having a mum and a dad, I have sisters and a brother - mum and dad's natural son. But what does it mean to be Aboriginal?" he mused before the crowd.
"People tell me I'm Aboriginal, but what does that mean? My only source of information was what people told me and what I saw on television. This is the '60s and the '70s, and that wasn't great."
Mr Hamm grew up in the country Victorian town of Yarrawonga and says he was advised while still at school he should apply for a job as a council worker.
It was advice he did not heed.
He would go on to become director of Aboriginal Affairs in Victoria and is on the board of the Koorie Heritage Trust.
He's also involved in numerous initiatives aimed at empowering Aboriginal people.
"That has been my personal way of rationalising, dealing with my personal issues that still are not resolved," he said. "When I say heal, for me, I don't think you get over it, you get used to it.
"I still only have one photo of my mother who gave birth to me. It's enormously frustrating when people say to me I'm like my mother. I don't know what that means."
Mark Bin Bakar is an Indigenous musician, comedian, writer, director and rights campaigner.
He told the Canberra forum his mother was a member of the Stolen Generations and that reparations should be an essential part of reconciliation efforts.
"So all genuine Stolen Generation people have a right to be compensated. The amount of wealth that's ripped out of this land at the expense since colonisation of Aboriginal people is a crying shame. A lot of the wealth doesn't even permeate into mainstream Australia. It goes overseas," Mr Bakar told the forum.
He says the national apology to the Stolen Generations by Kevin Rudd was long overdue, but that the current Prime Minister Tony Abbott hasn't capitalised on the resulting goodwill. He specifically referenced Mr Abbott's second annual Closing the Gap address to Parliament this week.
"Our prime minister made a statement: 'Until Indigenous people fully participate in the growth of our country, all of us are diminished.'"
"Well, why can't it be the other way around? Why do Aboriginal people have to come to what he called 'our country'? And then he demoralised Aboriginal people in the same sentence."
