The National Sorry Day Committee launched yesterday a Journey of Healing Tour, which will navigate the country for the next two years.

The tour aims to raise awareness of the needs of the Stolen Generations, including reparations and a more thorough Government response to the recommendations of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report.

Committee co-chairwoman Helen Moran said while there was ''widespread agreement that symbolism is important ... more needs to be done''.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said the efforts of the Rudd Government were ''auguring very well'', but questioned its reluctance to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act, set aside in 2007 when the Howard government's Northern Territory intervention was rolled out.

''There's no reason for it not to be reinstated,'' Mr Calma said.

''At this stage what it means is that those sections of society, those Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, don't have the same rights as everyone else, and that's not acceptable.''

The Government has indicated it would address the issue of the Act in its spring session, but Mr Calma said it was ''a bit of a puzzle'' that it would not immediately reinstate it.

The issue is being played out in the United Nations, after a group of indigenous Australians from remote communities launched a formal complaint during the first sitting of Parliament earlier this month.

Any UN resolution would be non-binding, but Australian National University Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research director Professor Jon Altman said the ''politics of international embarrassment might'' force the Government's hand.

''I think the Rudd Government is sensitive to the way it's viewed internationally,'' Professor Altman said. He also believed indigenous Australians had been largely glossed over in both the Government's economic stimulus packages.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin used the anniversary to announce the creation of a ''healing foundation''.

Professor Altman, however, said the foundation was a ''compensatory'' measure.

Proposed changes to the Community Development Employment Program, which employs about 25,000 people, would shed jobs and needed to be re-thought given the economic climate.

The ACTU said the unemployment rate among indigenous Australians was three times the national rate.