It occurs to me now that I haven’t mentioned the biggest story in this country this week, the major piece of Australian history that I witnessed. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised on behalf of the Australian government for previous policies that resulted in the large-scale removal, forcibly, of thousands of Aboriginal children—the “Stolen Generation”.
The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.
And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
If you’re not familiar with the Stolen Generation, follow the link above and read. In short, back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Australian government would forcibly remove (read: steal) Aboriginal children from their families and place them in white homes, essentially making them wards of the state. Under the guise of protecting the children from abuse and other ills, the government essentially wanted to “assimilate” these children (read: civilise the savages) into white society.
It was an abhorrent, paternalistic, racist policy that has been a stain on Australia’s history. (And I say that as an American, as one who comes from a culture with a longer and perhaps more brutal history of racism and oppression of its indigenous and minority populations.) The policy officially ended in 1969.
So it is about time that the Australian government at least make the first steps toward mending the fences. (Speaking of fences, the famous Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence deals with the Stolen Generation.) The previous PM, the pig-headed John Howard, refused to bring the issue up—and indeed, his stubbornness still showed this week, as he was the only living former prime minister not to attend the “Sorry Day” events at Parliament House.
PM Kevin Rudd’s speech was brilliant, and will go down in the history books. It was inspiring and sensitive, and just what the country needed to hear. He looked every part the statesman and leader.
I wish I could say the same for Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson. The Liberal Party (again, for American readers, the “Liberal” Party is actually the conservative party here) has been against the notion of an apology for years, and they have been fighting internally over Rudd’s motion ever since he took power. (At one stage, they tried to remove all mentions of anyone being “stolen”, arguing that, well, we did civilise some of them!) Sadly, that mentality reflected in Nelson’s speech, which was a terrible, fingers-crossed-behind-the-back abomination that he should be embarrassed about.
Drew and I talked about this on Wednesday, but at that point, Nelson’s job was to get the hell out of the way. When all is said and done, nobody will care what the Opposition Leader had to say. His speech should have been no longer than five minutes long, and it essentially should have been Nelson metaphorically pointing to Rudd and saying, “What he said.”
But no. Nelson had to yammer on for more than 20 minutes and stick in his party’s cynical talking points, falling back on the old canard that “this is a complex issue”, that no one should claim “moral superiority” and that “good was being sought to be done”. Trying to make that very point, he pissed off a member of the Stolen Generation for using her quotes without asking.
Then, he proceeded to talk about gang raping a 10-year-old (PDF). I’m not making this up.
I’m going to claim some moral superiority here, Brendan: Fuck off.
Anyway, we must hope that history will forget Nelson’s terrible speech and remember the day as a happy one, as a good one, as the day that Australia turned a page on a dark part of its history.
As an American, I felt honoured to be here on that day, and I’ve heard plenty of Australians talk about how proud they were to be Australian. It was nice to see our entire office stop and watch the proceedings on television. It was nice to see people gathered in Martin Place in the rain to watch, or hear Drew tell me about the tens of thousands who gathered in downtown Melbourne to do the same. (They had better weather, for once.) It was nice to see the crowd gathered outside Parliament House, some in tears.
Australians should be proud. It’s only a start—there is plenty of work to be done to truly reconcile these two communities—but it’s a good start.
Bravo, mates. Some day, my country might make a similar step*.
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*NB: In 1993, President Clinton signed a resolution apologising to native Hawaiians for the 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the Kingdom of Hawaii. But no apology resolution has been adopted for mainland indigenous tribes.
