CHE Cockatoo-Collins' heart was racing as he sat in front of the TV watching Kevin Rudd say sorry this week. His grandma was at Parliament House because she wanted to hear it personally.

Half his life, Che heard people denying the stolen generation. Yet the truth of it hung over his family like a cloud. His gran, Doreen Cockatoo, had been taken from her family when she was eight, and made a domestic slave at the Mornington Island Dormitory. It was a very real memory for what people told him was a "myth".

"Oh, it was an emotional day, mate," Cockatoo-Collins said from Adelaide this week. "Leading up to it I had a lot of, not quite sleepless nights, but nights just lying there, thinking about what would be going through my grandmother's head. Her pain was real to me and my family and it should be real for this country."

It was the second significant "sorry" in Cockatoo-Collins' life. In 1995, when Damian Monkhorst dived on the ball on centre-wing in the Anzac Day match between Essendon and Collingwood, both Michael Long and Cockatoo-Collins dived on top of him, and that was when the Magpie ruckman told Long to "get off me, you little black c--t". Both Long and Cockatoo-Collins turned immediately and appealed to the umpire, who ignored them.

It became Long's fight, and while Cockatoo-Collins claims no part in Monkhorst's eventual apology, or the establishment of the ground-breaking racial vilification code that followed, he doesn't underestimate the role the incident played in changing attitudes towards Aborigines.

"Yeah, it took a different direction, didn't it," he laughs. "Sport's got a social conscience, it seems. Look, sport has been a wonderful contributor to change. It's hard to see the progression we've made without it. But truthfully, education's the key."

Cockatoo-Collins is currently head of the Indigenous Sports Academy at Adelaide's Rostrevor College, dedicated to the development of 33 talented young Aborigines. Their education, he says, is going beautifully. But what he wants is for all Australians to be educated about indigenous history. Until we are, he says, you can't call Australians racist, just ignorant.

"It's an education issue, really. If you have the knowledge and the facts in front of you and you still after that aren't able to make a balanced opinion, then there's a problem. I'd say people are more … ignorant.

"Someone like Kevin (Sheedy) has done a lot for Aborigines in the AFL. But I'm pretty sure that Kevin would be the first to admit that he's still got a lot to learn. We all do. I mean, we never stop learning good things about different people. We need to truly learn about it. And it will be a never-ending journey."

Cockatoo-Collins always takes a long pause before he speaks. He speaks slowly. Just like the space he could buy on a football field, it seems he's got time in his blood. But each of his words mean something.

This week, a story he wrote about his grandmother ran on the front page of the Adelaide Advertiser. It didn't pull any punches.

"In the early 1920s, when she was about six, she was forcibly removed from her home and family in northern Queensland by Police Protectors," he wrote. "At the age of 10 she became a domestic slave in the Mornington Island Dormitory, chopping wood, washing sheets and blankets, being flogged with a strap, sleeping on the hard floor, always under the eye of the Government Protector. When she was locked up at night, she took the time to think about her family and if they were worrying for her. In her later life, she said she would never forget those times and she still could not believe that people could be so cruel.

"Growing up, religion was forced on her, she was never allowed to mix with 'full-bloods', speak her own language, or be involved in any cultural activity. She completely lost her culture, language and identity.

"To me, our Prime Minister's apology is saying to my granny and the thousands like her, their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, that we understand your pain and we acknowledge this long-ignored chapter in our history." Cockatoo-Collins believes white Australians need not only to understand why they're saying sorry, but how they're saying sorry.

"I didn't see the apology as you saying to me, 'Che, I'm sorry', as if you've got personal guilt or you were personally responsible for those actions. I see it as, you're my mate, and if I've lost someone that I love, you'll tap me on the shoulder or give me a hug and just say, 'Che, I'm sorry mate. I'm sorry for your loss.' It's that type of sorry.

"It's hard for a lot of people, for some reason or other, to put themselves in the shoes of Aboriginal people, so they get paranoid, they say, 'Why do I have to say sorry? I wasn't there, I didn't do anything.' But as Phillip Adams wrote a while back, he said you can't be selective with your history, you can't bask in the glory of our honour and our courage in Gallipolli, and march through the streets on Anzac Day, and then all of a sudden turn your back on the stolen generation history. We have to own our history. All of it."

Cockatoo-Collins is proud of his place in history. He won the Rising Star in his first year, kicked 216 goals in 159 games at his two favourite clubs. "I mean, I love Essendon. And I love Port Adelaide as well."

But he's equally excited about the future. As he says to his students: "Just never stop moving forward."

"Going back to sport, any football club worth its salt understands that the more good people you bring through, from more diverse cultures, the more you all learn," he says. "And it's the same here at the school. Sport teaches you to interact with different people. Just the nature of a footy team, with everybody working hard together, helps breaks down a lot of myths."

A bit like a heart-felt apology.