When Australia's Vietnam veterans came home, they expected to receive the respect normally given to returned servicemen. Instead, they found that the Australian community, sickened by TV coverage of napalmed civilians, had turned against the war, and was looking for a scapegoat. Though the veterans had gone in obedience to national policy, they bore the brunt of our guilty consciences.

This was a crushing psychological burden on top of their struggle to overcome the mental and physical effects of war, and return to civilian life. Frustrated and alienated, many responded with hostility. Others retreated into themselves.

It took 20 years for the community to recognise that, whether the policy was right or wrong, those veterans had suffered and sacrificed as a result of it, and to blame them was shameful. In 1993, when the Vietnam War Memorial in Canberra was opened, the nation honoured them. That did much to overcome their trauma.

Their trauma, however, pales in comparison to that of the Aboriginal men and women taken from their families as children under the forced removal policies. Wrenched from their parents' protection - some literally stolen by the police while the mother's back was turned - they suddenly had to learn alien ways, often in an alien language, and many were subjected to abuse of all kinds. As they grew up, they encountered the racism which shaped the policies, and found themselves rejected by the very society for which they were being prepared.

For decades the white community accepted the view that Aboriginal culture was worthless, that the children had lived in wretched conditions, and that the benefit of learning Western ways justified their removal. Consciences were quieted by the genuine care many children received from foster parents and missions. The eugenic aspects of the policy were not questioned. The abuses were covered up. The Aboriginal parents were ignored. If they, in their misery, turned to alcohol, this was seen as confirmation of the wisdom of removing their children.

Like the Vietnam veterans, some stolen children have reacted to the trauma with hostility. Others have retreated into themselves, into substance abuse, into suicide. Of the 99 deaths investigated by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, 43 were found to be of people removed from their families as children.

The report of the National Inquiry into the removal policies, Bringing Them Home, has sold far more copies than any comparable report, and has stirred many to think about their own experiences. Why were the Aboriginals in the back row of the classroom so silent, and kept to themselves? Why is a third of our jail population Aboriginal? Many began to understand aspects of our past which had passed them by, and wanted to express their pain. Hundreds of thousands of Australians signed Sorry Books, and the messages are deeply moving.

A Sorry Day was launched. People of all races came together in cities, towns and rural centres across the country. Like the Vietnam veterans, many Aboriginal people found this outpouring of community empathy profoundly healing. As one woman - who had been removed from her family, and later her children had been removed from her - said on ABC TV, 'At last, we are coming back into the family.'

We cannot stop there. A society is only healthy if it recognises its past wrongs, and takes steps to correct them. Last year the Australian community took the first step by saying 'Sorry'. The next step is to overcome the continuing consequences of the wrong.

To this end, the National Sorry Day Committee is inviting the whole Australian community to join in a Journey of Healing under the patronage of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Lowitja O'Donoghue, former Chair of ATSIC. The Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation has appointed a sub-committee headed by Sir Gustav Nossal to help.

Healing is needed on all sides. The stolen generations are coping with tough problems - lost identity, shattered physical and mental health, broken families, loss of parenting skills, loss of culture and connection to traditional land. And as Bringing Them Home states, 'Not one Indigenous family has escaped the effects.' In the wider community, many live with the pain of having been part of a practice now seen to have caused immense harm. Many local communities are divided by mistrust and guilt.

The Journey of Healing offers every local community the chance to come together across the racial divides, listen to each other's experiences, and plan for healing. The 54 recommendations of Bringing Them Home are a valuable guide. But every community is welcome to develop their own Journey, according to local needs. We believe this can help develop relationships of mutual respect and appreciation across the country.

The medical profession is well placed to understand the trauma and isolation which many people endure due to tragic events in their past, to bring their skills to the healing process, and to encourage the community initiatives which can help restore health. That is why we hope that doctors will be at the forefront of the Journey of Healing.