Survivors, advocates and the broader community gathered in Naarm on Thursday commemorating a "momentous occasion" which "still affects us deeply" on the 17th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations.
Stories of lived-experience, memories of the day in 2008, performance and ceremony were shared among attendees on a day also reserved for reflection.
Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency chief executive Muriel Bamblett was there in Canberra almost two decades ago.
"We all wanted to hear the apology," she said on Thursday, "we needed to see that the Government was sincere…and that it was going to be done with respect and understanding," she said on Thursday.
"We wanted to feel that it was a sorry that finally told the truth about what happened to us as First Peoples. We needed to know that the government of Australia knew the truth, honoured the truth, acknowledged the truth… about the terrible injustices that were perpetrated against our children - over 100,000 children".
On February 13, 2008, then-prime minister Kevin Rudd issued the apology "for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss of our fellow Australians".
"We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their Country," he said.
"For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry."
Stolen Generations services Link-Up Victoria - who led organising alongside VACCA, and Connecting Home, delivered the event at Town Hall in Preston with support from Darebin City Council.
Bunurong Land Council board member and reserved seat holder on Victoria's First Peoples' Assembly and Connecting Home deputy co-chair Zoe Upton said "I was speaking to my mum earlier on today and and talking about where we were when this momentous occasion happened, and how really, even today, it (the apology) still affects us deeply,"
While Mr Rudd's address remains powerful, she said, "we've still got so much further to go".
Darebin Mayor Kristine Olaris told attendees "today is a day that calls for reflection" and "we recognise that the apology was not an end point".
The followed an initial 'Statement of Commitment to Aboriginal Australians' made in 1998 with an update in 2019.
"This statement acknowledges that present disadvantage stems from past injustice, dispossession, oppression, colonisation, forced removal and crimes of genocide," Mayor Olaris said.
12 months earlier, Connecting Home's Vanessa Scales said sharing her lived experience was "liberating".
On Wednesday, Stolen Generations survivors and families support organisation Healing Foundation released their Are you waiting for us to die? report.
It found only five of 83 (six per cent) recommendations made in the Bringing Them Home report tabled to Parliament in 1997 have been successfully implemented.
The Healing Foundation called for urgent action from all levels of government, police, churches and responsible bodies for better support to the Stolen Generations.
Reconciliation Australia backed the Healing Foundation's calls for a National Healing Package "to enable survivors to live out their remaining days with dignity".
"The lack of comprehensive implementation of recommendations from the ground-breaking Bringing Them Home report illustrates a vital component of truth-telling – that it must achieve change," Reconciliation Australia chief executive Karen Mundine said.
Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation chief executive Dr Jill Gallagher was "appalled" to see the slim percentage of implementation out of the Bringing Them Home report.
"It's been close to 30 years…This is simply not good enough; we need urgent action, and we need it now," Dr Gallagher said.
"My own mother who turns 99 this year, had six of her children taken from her. There are so many survivors who are going without the necessary care to age with the dignity they so rightfully deserve."
VACCHO Centre of Excellence for Aboriginal Families Wellbeing executive director Sheree Lowe said: "Successive Governments have ignored the Bringing Them Home Report and we must take a stand".
"We need governments to implement these recommendations now and support Community to build strong families so we can keep our Boorai (babies and young children) safe."
A shared point referenced was continued, even increased, rates of Indigenous children being removed from their homes in 2025.
The Coalition of Peaks (representative body of over 80 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled peak bodies) issued a similar sentiment; urging for ongoing commitment under the National Agreement to Close the Gap.
"The Stolen Generations are a gap within the gap. Survivors live with the devastating effects of forced removal and continue to experience poorer health, social, and economic outcomes than other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of the same age," Coalition of Peaks lead convenor Pat Turner said.
It comes in the same week as the 2025 Closing the Gap report and latest Implementation Plan.
The Apology anniversary event in Preston on Thursday coincided with similar commemoration and reflections across the country.
In Canberra, more than 60 survivors attended a breakfast at Parliament House.
"17 years ago, this Parliament, through the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, made the Apology and the country and the world listened. It is important that we never forget that day," Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy said.
Minister McCarthy forecast, with success at this year's federal election, the Government would "keep working through these very, very fundamental issues for our people, the high rates of removal, the high rates of incarceration, we need to keep doing that collectively" during a second term in office.
At Preston, Mutti Mutti songman and Stolen Generations survivor Kutcha Edwards shared his lived experience in song,
The event closed with a wreath and flowers placing ceremony at the Stolen Generations marker at Town Hall before lunch.
