The Sydney Morning Herald ~~Saturday February 9 2008
Even the hard men know, it must be saidBy  Marcia Langton Scroll down to also read "Only the ignorant oppose an apology" There are people who hate without knowing why they hate. Then there are people such as the former chief ministers of the Northern Territory, Ian Tuxworth and Shane Stone - both of whom have contributed more than their fair share of race hate to the community. The man who signed so many of the orders to remove children, the late Harry Giese, walked the streets of Darwin and attended official functions while they held the post of chief minister. I once stared at Giese from across a room wondering how he could have been so cruel and why he was a kind of demi-god to the Country Liberal Party hard men.
I am astonished to find myself saying this about Tuxworth and Stone: they both have thought deeply about their Aboriginal friends and finally, free of the shackles of electoral politics, recanted their petty hatred. They have expressed as genuine an understanding as I can imagine of the damage done to Aboriginal people by the policies of child removal.
In 1992, Paul Keating, in his Redfern speech, asked Australians to try to imagine the Aboriginal view. He said the test of Australia's nationhood would be whether we have "managed to extend opportunity and care, dignity and hope to the indigenous people of Australia".
Most Australians recognise these lines from that speech: "We took the children from their mothers … It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?"
There is a possibility that there can be healing when the hard men such as Tuxworth and Stone are able to answer these fundamental questions and to tell the truth. There is no shame in telling the truth, and the complaint that those not responsible should not be made to feel guilty is an absurd response to the acknowledgement of events that occurred historically and within our own lifetimes.
I did not believe that it was possible that the truth could be so powerful until I read their words in black and white; the momentous importance of the apology finally hit me and my cynicism evaporated as I was forced to think of my friends who have suffered so much and who want to hear an acknowledgement of events that were incomprehensible to them until someone found the words to describe the collective actions, the historical meaning and the philosophical arguments about those events.
What should be said? So much, but there is one word that is so important. I telephoned one of my dear friends who was removed from her Aboriginal mother into a life of abuse and suffering. She has raised two sons, both now adults, and still finds it impossible to explain her pain to them or why it happened. We spoke and cried and talked about where we would be next Wednesday. In Cairns, she said, a venue has been organised for people to bring their family photographs and flowers and to be together to listen to the apology. I told her that at my university, Trinity College has organised a service.
Then, I realised: there will be people around Australia gathering to listen to the apology; it will be very hard to listen without crying, without thinking about our friends and all of those souls who have left the world without an apology. To do justice to the historical facts and speak above the din of the spiteful people who want to cause more suffering to Aboriginal people, this is what I expect from the Prime Minister and the Parliament next Wednesday. Is it so hard to understand how much an apology means to the thousands of Aboriginal people who were removed from their families? What it would mean for me as an Aboriginal person who has consoled and encouraged friends is simply this: I want to be in a relationship with them without the heartbreaking pain of the past 10 years, knowing that there has been a just acknowledgement of the crimes against them.
If I were to find just a few words, then I think something like the following, at the very minimum, must be said:
There are no words that could heal the wounds of those people who were taken from their families by the Commonwealth and other Australian governments with no reason other than to deny them their Aboriginal legacy and hence the future of Aboriginal society. But those people who lived through such crimes against humanity demand an apology. They are right to demand an apology, because there can be no justification for those heinous policies. And so it is incumbent on the Commonwealth to apologise; to say, as the Prime Minister of Australia, on behalf of all Australians: I am sorry. I am sorry that you have suffered. I am sorry that your families have suffered. I am sorry because your suffering has diminished us as citizens of a nation that claims to be a Commonwealth, a government for the well being of all. Those who have departed this life in the several generations affected by these policies are remembered, and as Prime Minister of Australia, on behalf of Australians, say: I offer this apology to their descendants: I am sorry for what happened to your ancestors and that such a terrible burden has befallen you; the denial of your family and cultural legacy is a terrible loss.
The nation would be healed if we could consign this history to our past by admitting that it was wrong to take children from their families in order to prevent Aboriginal ways of life and traditions from continuing. I ask that all Australians understand this part of our history and recognise that such terrible wrongs must never be repeated.
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Marcia Langton is the Foundation Professor of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  Phillip Adams Blog | February 12, 2008
Only the ignorant oppose an apology
HOW many people in the community or in parliament opposed to saying sorry have bothered to read Bringing Them Home, the 1997 report of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families?
Had John Howard had his way, nobody would have read that report. The document was damned and denigrated before it was reluctantly and belatedly released, following a shameful campaign to ridicule the chairman of the inquiry, the thoroughly decent Ronald Wilson. Little wonder Howard won’t show his face in parliament.
I’ve met scores of indigenous people whose lives were mutilated by that brutal policy. I’ve heard the stories from weeping men and women, including accounts of mothers driven insane after children were torn from their arms. To hear fools and bigots still arguing about the appropriateness of the word sorry - or, worse, insisting the children were rescued or saved - sickens me and shames this country.
Wilson’s co-chairman Mick Dodson joined me to discuss the apology on Radio National’s Late Night Live along with Phil Fontaine, the national chief of Canada’s Assembly of First Nations. And the parallels between the treatment of indigenous families in our two countries are, to say the least, instructive.
The kidnapping of children from Aboriginal families and communities played a big role in the social wreckage we see today. Many of the children were mixed race and the policy was about eugenics: the breeding of aboriginality out of our population. Ditto in Canada. Fontaine, a member of Canada’s stolen generations, quoted a leading politician’s justification for the policy: “If we can’t kill the Indian, we can kill the Indian in the child.”
Between 1870 and 1996, vast numbers of children were removed from their families and placed in so-called Indian residential schools for the purpose of cultural genocide, euphemistically described as civilising. As in Australia, a great many of these rescued kids were appallingly treated.
Canada’s federal government committed to formally apologise to these victims of racism. In May 2007, members of parliament agreed unanimously to apologise to the former residents of these wretched schools for “the sad legacy of emotional, physical and sexual abuse”. But the process has been stalled by conservatives who parrot the same bigoted bilge we’re hearing here this week.
As well as characterising cruelty as compassion, Australian critics of an apology are fearful that it will open the gates to demands for compensation. In Canada, compensation is preceding the formal apology. On behalf of the tribes and the families the Assembly of First Nations represents, Fontaine negotiated a nearly $C2billion reparation scheme and since last September almost 80,000 survivors (that’s Fontaine’s word) have received their payouts. Canada is to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission along South African lines, which Fontaine says “will ensure that all Canadians understand the serious harm done to our people and send the message around the world that ‘never again’.”
I doubt we need a commission here. The work of indigenous leaders such as Dodson, who was also counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, ensures we already know the truth. If we want to know it. Now, after years of stalling by the Howard government, the reconciliation process can be resumed.
In Bringing Them Home, Wilson and Dodson sought more than an apology from MPs. They wanted our parliaments to “officially acknowledge the responsibility of their predecessors for the laws, policies and practices of forcible removal ... that state and territory police forces, having played a prominent role in implementation of the laws and policies of forcible removal, acknowledge that role” and apologise, along with churches and other non-governmental agencies.
That process began years ago in state parliaments, with the churches joining in. The Rudd Government has, at long last, ended the Howard veto.
Never again. That’s perhaps the most important part of the apology. To have that undertaking formalised. On the record. In Hansard.
This historic occasion recalls another great day in Canberra when the Mabo legislation passed through both houses. “Australia has achieved this without blood on the wattle,” I wrote at the time. That’s not to say it wasn’t bitterly fought, particularly on shock-jock radio. And never forget the abhorrent role played by mining companies that ran repulsive television commercials designed to panic the public, particularly in Western Australia. The miners have long since learned their lesson. These days they negotiate with more cultural sensitivity and decency. It’s fair to say some of the biggest companies are now leaders in the reconciliation process.
Long overdue and still bitterly opposed, mainly by those ignorant of its purpose, the apology should be equally helpful. Sorry and reconciliation aren’t dirty words. Let’s sign up and move on.
Over to you...
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