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The U.S. Congress passes a law apologizing to Japanese-Americans for their internment during World War II and offering $20,000 payments to survivors. Pays a total of $1.2 billion in reparations.
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The Soviet Union apologizes for the murder of thousands of imprisoned Polish officers shot during World War II and buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest.
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The national General Synod of the United Church of Christ (UCC), issued a formal apology to the people of Hawaii for the church’s “complicity” during the U.S. military’s 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarch, Queen Lil’uokalani, and later annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory.
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South African President F.W. de Klerk apologizes for apartheid, marking the first time a white leader in the country expressed regret for the system of legalized segregation that allowed five million whites to dominate thirty million blacks.
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Congress apologized to Native Hawaiians for helping overthrow the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893.
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Popular wellness author Marianne Williamson apologized to both Native Americans and African Americans in a book entitled, Illuminata: Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage. The apologies were made in the form of prayers in two separate sections of the book called Amends to the African American and Amends to the Native American. These apologies were coming from Ms. Williamson as an individual, but they also carried the larger dimension as coming from white people, the perpetrator group when refer
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The General Council of The United Methodist Church in the United States extended apologies to the Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples and asked for forgiveness for the death of over 200 persons, mostly women and children, who died in the state of Colorado in the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1863. Read more... (Photo courtesy of Leo Cumings sxc.hu)
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U.S. President Bill Clinton apologizes to survivors of the Tuskegee Experiment, a government backed study from 1932-1972 in which 399 poor African American men were injected with syphilis and monitored for its effects.
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The Catholic Pope included the indigenous people of the area known as Oceania (south Pacific, including Australia) in a series of apologies issued from 1998 through 2001. In the 1998 Synod of Oceania he said...Read More
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Canada apologizes to its Native peoples for past acts of oppression, including decades of abuse at federally funded residential schools whose goal was to sever Indian and Inuit youths from their culture and assimilate them in white society. This 1998 apology is the precursor to the definitive 2008 apology. Read More... (Photo by Brad Harrison sxc.hu)
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In 1998, the General Synod of the Church of Norway received a report of a long-term dialogue between representatives of the Roma (Gypsy) people and the church Council on Ecumenical Relations. The Roma are a European indigenous people. In the light of that report, the General Read More
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The United Methodist Church apologized to black churches that left the Methodist church because of pervasive racial discrimination. In addition, they apologized to black United Methodists who still face racial prejudice. Delegates and visitors to the United Methodist General Conference in May 2000 participated in an Act of Repentance for Reconciliation. Apologies were made for acts of racism that prompted the creation of separate black denominations and also for segregated units in the predom
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Kevin Gover (Pawnee Nation) voiced an apology for the 175 years of misdeeds of the Bureau of Indian Affairs at a ceremony acknowledging the 175th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC on September 8, 2000. He was clear to say... Read More
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Spain, and the Netherlands, separately, at a ceremony in Fredicksburg, Virginia, apologized to the Powhattan Indian Nation and to the Iroquois Nation, respectively, injured by their actions in historical, colonial times. An official of the embassy of Spain in Washington is quoted as saying Spain was sorry for... Read more
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The new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, on behalf of the Australian government, apologizes to Australian indigenous people for the stolen generations as well as for the legacy of harmful behavior of the government towards Australian Native peoples. For the opening words of the apology he said,Read more
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Pope Benedict XVI, in his first papal mass in the United States, acknowledged the injustices faced by Native Americans since the founding of this country when talking about the promise of hope the U.S. has to offer. "To be sure, this promise was not experienced by all the inhabitants of this land; one thinks of the injustices endured by the Native American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves," he said.
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This definitive apology to First Nations people was issued by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on behalf of the government of Canada. It says, in part,Read More
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At its General Convention in Anaheim, California, the Episcopal Church in America formally renounced the infamous Doctrine of Discovery that claimed superiority and dominance over the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere in the colonization period beginning in 1492. This is an act of reconciliation that can proceed a full apology and a healing of the church-indigenous relationship. The resolution states, in part:<a href='http://www.lrdigitaldesigns.com/wellbrietycom/docs/July172009.pdf'
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A Resolution of Apology to the Native Peoples of the United States was attached to H.R. 3326, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010. The President of the United States signed it, but he never presented it publicly to the American people. It says, in part,Read More
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On October 1, 2010, the world learned that during an experimental study between 1946 and 1948 the United States infected more than 1,600 Guatemalan people with sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) : syphilis, gonorrhea and chancres. Within days of this news coming to light, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a joint apology stating, "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were
