(I think this belongs here - please move mods if not)
(This is a bit long) To say sorry or not - that’s the question. Bit of a moot point as the Australian Federal Government will tomorrow at 9.00am in the Parliament make an official apology to the Aboriginal people of Australia for the ‘Stolen Generation’. And it’s divided the country - those who shrug and say ‘yeah, why not apologise’ and those who say ‘yeah, apologise but don’t given them compensation’ and those who say ‘no way, I didn’t steal any children, why should I apologise’. Of course, to cut the demographic into quarters now, there are those who believe that the apology is for ‘stealing their land’ etc. and are a bit clueless all around.
My take on it - most of the people to whom the apology is aimed are confused about what’s going on - I’ve had several local Koori residents ring or come into the office to ask when they can expect their cheque etc. I’m not saying that these people are solely chasing cash for whatever injustices they claim they suffered, but that there is another agenda being pushed here and the bush telegraph is running red hot with claims that they will all get compensation and they should be seeing their local free legal advice team.
I personally believe that I have nothing to apologise for, there are no snatched children hidden in my house, under my house, in the roof cavity or such like, but in the light of the “Little Children Are Sacred Report” (very hard to read without crying all over it), a Senate Commissioned Report by the former Howard Government, maybe more children should have been ‘stolen’ from the families that failed to feed, educate and adequately house them. The Report shows that children in ‘traditional Aboriginal settlements’ are being abused - and the states have failed to act in their best interests. If white children were being abused at such a level, there’d be a civil uprising - however, the states haven’t acted and even their own ‘child protection workers’ have returned children to, or failed to remove children from dangerous family situations in an effort not to repeat the ‘Stolen Generation’. If Australia has anything to apologise for, it’s been the preparedness to allow ‘outback settlements’ to continue in primitive and remote areas without intervention to allow these people access to the best health care, education, transport and housing that the rest of ‘us’ take for granted.
Before anybody jumps up on their soapbox about the priviliged life I have (job, car, house, money, health, education - basically white middle-class environment) I add that I am qualified to speak having lived in remote Western Australian ‘camp settlements’ and in the Northern Territory in similar environs and having had read transcripts and doctor’s report on indigenous health issues.
In the text of the apology, he keeps saying “For X, we say sorry.” Strikes my American ears funny, because to me, “sorry” by itself is quite a casual, even rude, way to “apologize.”
That’s not the case in Aboriginal culture. The use of the word “sorry” is keenly anticipated. The period of mourning for an elder - which can pretty much shut down some communities for weeks - is known as “sorry business”.
I think the apology is worthwhile and will allow things to move on a little. Perhaps the recommendations of the Little Children are Sacred report will get some play now. I’m happy enough with the wording and I think that tomorrow will be a good day.
I’m against. The apology is on behalf of me, yet I did nothing wrong.
What has happened in our history was appalling, but let’s acknowledge without apology. Most of those who need to apologise are dead. The thing will be divisive.
It annoys me that many will brand me as “racist” for my views on this, and I have to go scurrying to cover my arse from this strawman argument. Yet, those who believe in the apology will probably forget about the real issues at hand the next day as “they’ve done their bit”.
I’m more interested in fixing the third world conditions in Central Australia - the grog, the abuse, the infant mortality, the rest of it. I don’t give a stuff about what amounts to a feel-good wank for the urban middle classes.
And I see Bob Brown is already talking compo. Dear ol’ Bob.
It seems a perfectly reasonable speech. The government is apologizing. Seeing how the government is the entity which initiated and carried out the actions under question it makes sense that the government be the one to apologize.
Though I’ll admit with elected officials it can get murky where the public ends and the government begins.
I would say that the actions of those Australian peolple who did the wrong thing deserve an apology by those who did them. However, with most of those people dead, that might not be possible.
Anyway, I was born in the suburbs in 1970, and last I checked, I haven’t had so much as an overdue library book. I don’t seem to recall committing genocide, etc.
You’ve already told us that the Australian government is an extension of the Australian people. Does that not mean that you are part of the entity that planned, organized and implemented the actions under discussion? Do those actions warrant an apology from the entity responsible? If those actions do warrant an apology, and the entity in question is still around why shouldn’t that collective representation of the Australian people apologize?
You both benefit and suffer from the collective decisions of earlier governments. That’s the price of representative democracy.
Were such people “Duly elected by, and representative of… the Australian people”? I admit I don’t know, but if so, aren’t you wanting to have it both ways?
They were agents of the government carrying out government policy. Today’s government continues to honour contracts it signed then - even if their predecessors were foolish to sign them under policies that we now know were mistaken. Without a revolution and a new constitutional order, any government now is left holding the bag for yesterday’s governments. It can no more wash its hands of this than of it’s claim to be the government.
Who’s saying you did? Are you proud of anything done by Australia? Then you can be sorry in just the same sense.
Huh. So if I disagree with you I’m implicitly branding you a racist and unlike you have no real interest in “the real issues”? Well, I reject all of that. And I’m sorry to see you say it.
It can’t have escaped your notice that (a) a large proportion of aboriginal people do seem to think this is important - to some degree in itself and to some degree as a watershed; and (b) we’ve just had 11 years of so-called practical reconciliation and it doesn’t seem to have done much good.
I want to see practical problems addressed. But they can’t just be imposed on a group of people who’ve felt ignored, dishonoured and dispossessed. They have to be part of the process. And that means acknowledging what’s gone before and recognising that they have to be an active part of any practical solutions. An apology is a big part of that: that’s what they’ve been telling us for a fair while.
Everything done by the government of Australia was done on your behalf, by your elected representatives. The apology from you is indirect, just as the actions were indirectly connected to most ordinary Australians. It’s the government apologizing, not you; the apology and responsibility for it is precisely proportional to the act.
Now, that isn’t to say I necessarily disagree with your other points, pr TLD’s points, because a lot of them have merit. Even if ethically justifiable, “apologies” like this are largely meaningless gestures and are rarely given in a way that ameliorates anything. I have a neighbour who plays their stereo too loud at least three times a week; it wouldn’t do me any good if they apologized but kept the stereo loud. Based on the history of such things I am quite certain there will be calls for more apologies and lots and lots of money in the future. If there is money, the great majority of it will be wasted, and might as well be thrown onto a bonfire.
The plight of Aboriginal Australians is not dissimilar to that of the First Nations here in Canada, and 140 years of Canadian governments have succeeded in spending approximately eleventy grillion dollars while thousands of human beings continue to live in poverty and destitution, under laws different from the rest of the populace. There is not the slightest trace of evidence that the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs has generally helped the standard of living of our aboriginal people in any way after generations of spending, spending and more spending, and various ill-advised efforts in social engineering. As I have written before, we frankly would be a lot better off giving every employee of the Ministry an hour to clean our their desks and find real work, taking the entire budget without Ministry salaries, dividing it by the number of status Indians, and just cutting a check to every one of them every year. It cannot possibly be any worse an idea. Human potential beyond measure has been lost. I don’t know what the solution is, but I’ll tell you what: I know two things that AREN’T the solution:
Parliamentary apologies, and
What we’ve been doing so far.
If this doesn’t work in Canada I’ll bet twenty bucks in the dollar of your choice it won’t work in Australia, either.
Apologies without genuine remorse and great efforts to right the wrong are worthless. They are for the benefit of the person apologising…so they can feel better for themselves while still retaining/doing what the apologised for.