media and public attention to itself and to all issues related to the government treatment of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia, and most notably the Stolen Generations. In early 1995, Rob Riley, an activist with the Aboriginal Legal Service, published Telling Our Story. It described the large-scale negative effects of past government policies that resulted in the removal of thousands of mixed-race Aboriginal children from their families and their being reared in a variety of conditions in missions, orphanages, reserves, and white foster homes. The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families commenced in May 1995, presided over by the Commission's president Sir Ronald Wilson and its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Dodson. During the ensuing 17 months, the Inquiry visited every state and Territory in Australia, heard testimony from 535 Aboriginal Australians, and received submissions of evidence from more than 600 more. In April 1997, the Commission released its official Bringing Them Home report. Between the commissioning of the National Inquiry and the release of the final report in 1997, the government of John Howard had replaced the Paul Keating government. At the Australian Reconciliation Convention in May 1997, Howard was quoted as saying: "Australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies." Following publication of the report, the parliament of the Northern Territory and the state parliaments of Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales passed formal apologies to the Aboriginal people affected. On 26 May 1998, the first "National Sorry Day" was held; reconciliation events such as the Walk for Reconciliation across Sydney Harbour Bridge and in other cities were held nationally, and attended by a total of more than one million people. As public pressure continued to increase on the government, Howard drafted a Motion of Reconciliation with Senator Aden Ridgeway, expressing "deep and sincere regret over the removal of Aboriginal children from their parents", which was passed by the federal parliament in August 1999. Howard said that the Stolen Generation represented "the most blemished chapter in the history of this country". Activists took the issue of the Stolen Generations to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. At its hearing on this subject in July 2000, the Commission on Human Rights strongly criticised the