Tony Wright; 14/2/08
Never, perhaps, has a deeper silence descended upon a prime ministerial speech in the House of Representatives. In the crowded galleries above the gathered representatives, a handkerchief fluttered here, a hand moved to brush away a tear there. An old woman laid a comforting arm around the shoulders of — who knows, her daughter? Eyes were drawn to each of these small stirrings because all else was still, as if the whole place was holding its breath. “For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
‘I never thought I’d see this day’
Misha Schubert; 14/2/08
She has nursed the pain for more than seven decades, memories of being snatched from kin and country, the trauma of finding that her mother had died before they could be reunited. But when the woman who inspired Kevin Rudd’s moving speech heard her story recounted in Parliament, there was joy amid the hurt. “I was happy. We waited a long time for this,” she said. “I never thought I’d live to see this day but I’m here, I’m a survivor.” Nanna Nungala Fejo delivered her verdict on the speech personally when Mr Rudd sought her out in the throng afterwards.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/i-never-thought-id-see-this-day/2008/02/13/1202760398792.html
Sorry was tough, now it gets harder
Jo Chandler;14/2/08
The time warp between Canberra and Hermannsburg means the speeches are still echoing in Parliament when the kids begin to gather under the white gums shading the schoolyard. A couple of boys are teetering on the stilts they’ve made out of buckets, staggering too tall across the dust, a cloud of it blown up by the girls playing skippy. Principal Michael Harries, a veteran of 30 years in such remote schoolyards, wrangles them from their games and into lines for morning assembly. “Today is Wednesday, and it is a bit of a special day, not just here at Ntaria school but all over Australia. This is Sorry Day,” he tells them. “It comes from the Prime Minister — not the one who came here,” he says, reminding them of the visit by John Howard last year. “Who knows who the prime minister is now? Put up your hands.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/sorry-was-tough-now-it-gets-harder/2008/02/13/1202760398804.html
Around the nation; 14/2/08; http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/around-the-nation/2008/02/13/1202760398807.html
Text of Brendan Nelson’s ’sorry’ response; 13/2/08; http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/bfull-textb-brendan-nelsons-speech/2008/02/13/1202760363287.html
Strong voices, separate songlines
Stuart Rintoul & Michael McKenna; 13/2/08
For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal people have not only lived in Australia. They have sung it. Their songlines are woven in the rich red earth, an ancient tapestry. For almost a century, those who removed “half-caste” Aboriginal children from their parents were determined that those children would never hear the songlines, but turn instead to hymns ofpraise. As Australia prepares to apologise to the Stolen Generations today, it has left an agonising conflict between two of Australia’s most prominent indigenous singers - Archie Roach, whose anthem Took The Children Away pierced many hearts, and Maroochy Barambah, opera singer, songwoman of the Turrbal-Gubbi Gubbi people, and self-described beneficiary of the policy of removal. Barambah swings between suspicion, indifference and hope over the apology. A wilful, educated woman who has led native title claims over Brisbane, she says she fears it will encourage a “poor bugger me” mentality. She says her journey of separation from her family at Queensland’s Cherbourg Aboriginal reserve in 1968 to a white foster family in Melbourne’s suburbia also contradicts the idea that all indigenous children taken from their homes were victims.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23205435-5013172,00.html
Closing the gap
14/2/07
For Aboriginal academic Jacki Huggins who recently retired as the co-chair of Reconciliation Australia, yesterday was a starting point. Huggins applauded Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations as one of the most significant days of her life. But she was more impressed by Rudd’s proposal to establish a bipartisan policy unit to handle indigenous issues to close the gap that exists in life expectancy, health, education and employment between black and white Australians. “I have not the slightest doubt about the sincerity of Mr Rudd’s apology, and it was so heartening,” Huggins says. “What is needed now is for the Prime Minister, state premiers and the bureaucracy together with indigenous people to devise a national strategy to overcome our people’s disadvantage. “The bipartisan commission he announced is the venue at which to start. We have to decide what is achievable and then strive for it. It just should not be difficult to ensure that young Aboriginal babies have health, proper education and a safe upbringing. I stepped down from Reconciliation Australia last year after 11 years: perhaps it was a year too early.”
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23209098-28737,00.html
Recent sins more worthy of apology
David Moore;13/2/08
Today the federal Government says sorry to the Stolen Generations. But others who share responsibility for the problems in indigenous communities should also apologise. And it should be a sincere sorry, with a real outcome. The sorry debate has been hijacked by a misunderstanding of the sources of present dysfunction in Aboriginal Australia. It’s been hijacked by those who want to salve their consciences but who can’t stomach the hard decisions that have to be taken. Most remote Aboriginal dysfunction has absolutely nothing to do with the Stolen Generations and Ronald Wilson’s Bringing Them Home report. Although some of those people have been wounded, it’s not the basis of wider dysfunction.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23203981-5013172,00.html
The courage to apologise and to forgive
Patrick Dodson; 14/2/08
A simple word has opened the door to a better future for all. IT WAS raining in Darwin when I left a couple of days ago and the wet is settled on the land. The wet season will remain for several more weeks yet before the season gives way to the dry around Easter. The cycle continues. Here in the south the persistent drought seems to be ending, as even those most concerned at the reality of climate change knew it must. The political cycle, however, is less regular. Today in our Parliament, a crippling long dry spell may have just ended. Today the nation, through our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has apologised to the thousands of indigenous people over many generations who were stolen or forcibly removed from their families, countries, languages and culture. It takes courage to apologise. It takes courage to forgive.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-courage-to-apologise-and-to-forgive/2008/02/13/1202760396438.html
The last of the white blindfolds
Tony Stephens; 14/2/08
Austra;ians cannot rewrite their history altogether. What they can do is reshape their future. There were signs yesterday that they would do it. The words spoken in Canberra that went around the nation and will be noted around the world were the words of people shamed by parts of Australia’s past but not afraid of tomorrow. A nation tired of cringing from its history looked ready to rip away the last of the white blindfolds, in Kevin Rudd’s words, “to remove a great stain from the nation’s soul”. The last of the dinosaurs were falling over.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-last-of-the-white-blindfolds/2008/02/13/1202760398945.html
One notable absentee - John Howard
Stephanie Peatling; 14/2/08; http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/one-notable-absentee/2008/02/13/1202760398995.html
The former prime minister John Howard was the only living holder of the office not to attend yesterday’s apology. Mr Howard, who earned the ire of indigenous people for his refusal to apologise, said last week he would not attend. After the apology, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, praised the former prime ministers who did attend - Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating - as “great friends of indigenous Australians”. This Parliament is the first one in 34 years of which Mr Howard has not been a member. The indigenous leader Pat Dodson was gracious about Mr Howard’s absence. “It would have been good if he had been there. It would have been an important part of the forgiveness … [But] I understand that practically it may not have been a very appealing thing to many people there,” Mr Dodson said. “At some stage people like him have to be reconciled.”
Ouch, said the man who wasn’t there
Annabel Crabb; 14/2/08
There was a definite, tracksuit-shaped absence in the national capital yesterday. As tearful and jubilant crowds flooded into Parliament’s public galleries and its Great Hall, and the tectonic plates of government shifted as though they had been secretly greased, it’s worth posing the question: could it possibly have been a worse day for the nation’s immediate past prime minister? John Howard has put up with all sorts of public indignities in his time, but it cannot have been easy yesterday, watching the barbarians finally swarm the gates.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/ouch-said-the-man-who-wasnt-there/2008/02/13/1202760396146.html
Caught up in a scientific racism designed to breed out the black
Debra Jopson; 14/2/08;
She was removed as a toddler and raped as a ward of the state. Valerie Linow knows only too well the tragedy of assimilation policy, writes. The stolen child Valerie Linow is certain she knows why she and thousands of fellow Aborigines were taken from their families and placed in institutions or with white foster families. “It was because of the colour of their skin, to make the country whiter and whiter. The way to do it was to get the half-castes out of the way,” she says.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/caught-up-in-a-scientific-racism-designed-to-breed-out-the-black/2008/02/13/1202760399034.html
A question of identity from a tender age
Yuko Narushima; 14/2/08
Pat Cohen’s fight for her identity began at age four when she was taken from her Aboriginal mother in La Perouse while her white father was fighting in World War II. The grandmother of the South Sydney Rabbitoh Dean Widders, 28, says the tearing apart of her family in 1941 had lasting repercussions. “I didn’t know I was Aboriginal,” said Ms Cohen, whose brother and sister were also taken and separated from her. “I was an emotional misfit and I didn’t respond well to the authorities trying to make me a good little Catholic girl.”
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-question-of-identity-from-a-tender-age/2008/02/13/1202760399046.html
Radio callers outraged: I’m disgusted, says one
Paul Bibby; 14/2/08
Whether you call them the ignored majority or the ignorant few, it took only a mouse click and a quick flick of the radio dial to discover that many Australians did not welcome Kevin Rudd’s apology yesterday. The words “We are sorry” from the Prime Minister sent talkback switchboards and internet servers into meltdown, as thousands rang or clicked in to register their disagreement and in some cases disgust at the new direction their leaders had taken. Calls and commentary on the Sydney radio stations 2GB and 2UE led the charge, with callers describing the morning’s events as “political correctness gone mad” and asking why it was an apology for “them and not us”. “I’m disgusted … he [Rudd] makes out that we’ve done nothing but destroy this country,” one caller to Alan Jones said.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/radio-callers-outraged-im-disgusted-says-one/2008/02/13/1202760398974.html
Out of fine words, a national opportunity
Editorial; 14/1/08
When the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, finished speaking yesterday, the applause from the floor of the House of Representatives and from the galleries packed with members of the stolen generations was spontaneous and prolonged. It was the same outside the House, too, where others had watched a telecast, and in cities where crowds had gathered to watch the speech on giant screens. It was a nationwide emotional release - a collective sigh of relief that this long-awaited moment had finally come. For members of the stolen generations it will have a particular personal significance, but for other onlookers the apology may have a broader meaning: it appears to be a gesture of atonement for the full disastrous history of indigenous relations since 1788.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2008/02/13/1202760393070.html
Rudd now a statesman and Australia a better place
14/2/08; Letters
January 26 came and went this year, but today, I am proud to be an Australian. Raen Fraser Concord; We can now all stand a little taller. Warren Johnson Marrickville; What a day of joy and tears, seeking the gold threads as Paul Keating said. Deb McPherson Ourimbah; Today Kevin Rudd ceased to be a politician and became a statesman. John Doherty Emerald Beach; Australia is a better place today than it was yesterday. Peter Spencer Darlington
See: http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
