TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER COMMUNITIES Gracelyn Smallwood, MSc, Colin White, BA (Hons) "We took the children from their mothers."1 With these words, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, while launching the Year of Indigenous Peoples at Redfern Park in Sydney in December 1992, officially acknowledged that in the process of colonization, white Australia had denied generations of Aboriginal children their most precious and fundamental right-that of a mother's love and family's care.

EXTRAORDINARY though it seems, it was not until 1967 that Australian Aborigines were recognised as citizens of their own country. Before that they were classified as native wildlife, along with kangaroos and koalas. This weekend Aborigines are converging on Canberra, the national capital, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a referendum that led to the constitution being amended.