It's no surprise that W.A. has the highest percentage against saying sorry. I guess that NT would be next. Why is that do you think? Simple! It's the two states that have the most to do with Aboriginals and high aboriginal populations in towns and cities. You can forgive the bleeding heart liberals in the cities for feeling all warm and fuzzy over the SORRY, and the "Plight" of the "Noble Race". Noble my arse! I see nothing noble outside the hotels in towns across W.A. with drunken aboriginals laid in their own faeces and vomit, or the fights and shouts of curse words up and down the street that are enough to make your hair curl. And what about the crime that is so rife, the number of Aboriginals outside the Courthouse on Court Day would make you think they were giving away free beer.
This isn't racism! This is fact!
I would be the first to admit that the indigenous race has had a tough time, and I wonder if it is some 'institutionalised' thing that happens with indigenous races, like the Inuit and American Indians. Perhaps it dragging them kicking and screaming forward by a few thousand years into a civilisation that had centuries to reach its own levels and suddenly thrust upon a society of people that had been isolated by distance and oceans. There was a response to someone's comment about aboriginals living different lives and not coping with the society as we know it. This person said that there wasn't a whole lot of people that were educated and ready to come into the society when they were finally recognised in the 1960's as having rights. This is all well and good, but many have been able to. Why not more? Why are we getting generation after generation (a new one every 15 years?) of people following in the same footsteps? The welfare is there, the school system is there, what's missing? drive? determination? self discipline?
It was estimated that there are 1600 aboriginals in our local region and yet in a discussion today, we could only account for 5 that were making any sort of attempt at a life other than welfare, booze, and mooching off mining companies for handouts for the sudden appearance of sacred sites that nobody had heard of before until a mineral was found in a certain spot. Cynical I know, but true.
Yet despite all this I AM SORRY.
There is no doubt that there were some aboriginal people forcibly removed from their families. I don't know how I would have coped if I had been torn from my family at a young age. I have to temper that with the myriad of stories from Andrew Bolt of the Sun Herald of "stolen" children that turned out to have been dumped, neglected, saved from rape and violence etc, that have survived because of the intervention of a State Govt service. I imagine even those suffered being torn from their families, in a race that obviously holds "family" high on its list of priorities... but would they have survived to be complaining now? I don't know.
I do know that there are many that were much worse off after removal, and it is those that were adversely affected that we should be saying sorry to.
I find the term Stolen Generation offensive and emotive. Whoever came up with it really stumbled onto something to give the 'proud' aborigine something to become depressed about. If they weren't feeling victimised enough before this term was used, they certainly were after it! It has certainly turned the tide of sympathy in many quarters, but has fostered animosity in others. A whole GENERATION was not removed. Of those removed, not all were forced.
What the "Stolen" tag has done for the remote aboriginal is work against them. This so called systematic separation of generations of Aboriginal children, this hue and cry from the bleachers about "stealing" children, has now had a negative affect in remote Outback communities. Didn't a great cry and wail go up recently when a remote aboriginal community came under scrutiny with its children in jeopardy? Wasn't there a great knee-jerk reaction to the stories of neglected children that were in danger in these outback communities?
The State Governments were held to account for the situation; a situation that, had it been a white settlement or community, children would have been whisked away from the dangers long before now! The fear of the "stolen generation" is having the reverse effect of helping, Government agencies are too frightened to step in because of it. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I have contacts within some of these agencies, and they are having family members of kids in peril, coming to them, asking them, pleading with them to take the kids away from the terrible environments that they are in; sexual abuse, drug, alcohol, and parental abuse. BUT THEY WONT! Why? "Stolen Generation" and the uproar about stepping in. Cant have it happen again can we? In the mean time, children are suffering.
Then there is the compensation debate. Common sense would tell anyone that there is no compensation that can make up for the wrong doings to those that have been truly wronged in all of this. Compensation would cheapen the whole thing and just add to the stereotyping of money grubbing aboriginals with their hand out for what they could get. I think for the purity of the cause that it should be avoided from both sides.
Having said that perhaps compensation should be decided but in a court of law. From my understanding it would seem that of the court cases so far, none has had any evidence proved and quite a few have turned up surprising information to the contrary; not stolen, but given away.
Perhaps that's what we should be calling it ... the "Given Away Generation" and the elders should be apologising to their own children.
If compensation for the "stolen" goes ahead, we are going to seek some as well. Being white surely shouldn't exclude me from the laws of the land should it? A family member was one of 12 children removed (read: stolen) from her family when their house burnt down. They were put into religious welfare care and were beaten with hair brushes and "tortured" both physically and mentally in the name of the Govt and the church. They are all f@#ked in the head now!!!
As a descendant, I will expect compensation from the Government and an unreserved apology in Parliament from the church.
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