Australia’s Parliament on Wednesday apologized to Aborigines for past mistreatment. Here is the full text of the motion passed by lawmakers:
“Today we honor the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. The most indigenous of the indigenous peoples of the world, the Australian Aborigines.
“We reflect on their past mistreatment.
“We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our national history.
“The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page, a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.
“We apologize for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.
“We apologize 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.
“We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.
“For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.
“We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.
“A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
“A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.”
“A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.
“A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.
“A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.
“But most of all we apologize for suggesting that Chelsea’s been ‘pimped out’ by the Clinton campaign. That was just wrong.”
Aren’t Aborigines pretty short too ? Thank Allah my therapist is on speed dial.
I think Kanye should record that. For the healing.
Aborigines got
No reason
Aborigines got
No reason
Aborigines got
No reason to liiiiive!
Randy Newman is so never going to Australia.
Why, McGehee?
“We’ll save Australia . . .
Don’t wanna hurt no kangaroos.
Build a big American amusement park there;
They got surfin’, too.”
I watched Kanye on the Grammys. I knew Kanye was a dick, yet I watched him, hoping he had changeyness. He didn’t. Why is change so important to people like him in some regards, but not when it comes to themselves? Heal thyself, I say.
I so love Randy Newman. Though, I suspect he is a wee-person too.
Aborigine 1: Can you believe these whiney bitches kicked our asses?
Aborigine 2: Man, that’s humiliating.
What’s the point of stealing all the native peoples’ land and forcing them into your culture if you’re just going to piss your own culture down your leg?
People just don’t get conquest these days.
Goddam sniveling whiny IMPERIALISTS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I lived in Australia for 4 years, and this was a hot topic for the entire time I was there. The Liberal (Howard) government categorically refused to say the word “sorry” about this topic, knowing full well the potential legal ramifications that could surface should they do so. Needless to say, the progressives in Australia were in full-fledged seethe mode for him not doing so. Long term moonbat Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, and current Labour minister of the environment, covered himself in the word during a performance in the 2000 Olympic closing ceremonies.
Now, I lived in Alice Springs, and routinely watched Aboriginals shuffling around town drunk or wasted out of their minds from huffing gasoline, living in the dry Todd River bed, beating each other up, and generally living a miserable existence. Most of these had been kicked out of their communities for various reasons or had otherwise just fallen on hard times. It was sad seeing this, and the situation of the Aboriginals was one I tried to educate myself about, but no matter where I turned, I never seemed to get a straight answer or opinion. Typically, most leftist Australians I talked to spoke with smug outrage about the situation, but needless to say didn’t appear to be doing anything than offer meaningless platitudes about saying “sorry” and giving the Aboriginals their “due” whatever the fuck that meant.
This isn’t to say I don’t think the Aboriginals in general haven’t had a raw deal. Essentially they were a Stone Age culture that was shoved into the modern era when European settlers and prisoners arrived, and found themselves outclassed and outgunned when the inevitable push for land came. Nothing new there. In general most of the Aboriginal activists I encountered or read about made some legitimate arguments and were trying to do good things for their community, and I think most of them found that the white progressives who were speaking on their behalf were doing more harm than good. It was strange as an outsider to witness this spectacle, but at the same time every time I encountered (thankfully, a rare occurrence) some smug Australian telling me how racist America was, I loved throwing their own situation in their face. Our past may not be perfect with respect to race relations or treatment of indigenous people, but at least we’re dealing with it, however imperfectly, and aren’t twisting ourselves in knots over saying one lousy fucking word.
There was one situation that I still remember. One time some friends and I took a tour of the Alice Springs Telegraph Station. The tour guide and curator was an Aboriginal named Charlie, who was one of the “Stolen Generation”. He had been raised by a white family, joined the Army, and later became a champion boxer. When one of us asked him about the fact that he was “stolen” and how he felt about it, he stated “I was glad they took me away. My parents were alcoholics and I probably would have ended up like them. I was able to live in a stable home, got an education, and made something of myself.” He didn’t say it defensively or in a tone of indignation, he seemed rather surprised to have been asked the question in the first place. I think in general the “Stolen Generation” was indefensible, but Charlie’s take on things threw me, and I felt that hey, at least he was happy.
Sorry about the wordiness of this, but Rudd’s speech today brought back a lot of those memories. Whatever Australia’s faults, I love that country only slightly less than this one.
That’s a very important telegraph station.
That’s fascinating. All that coastline…
“What’s the point of stealing all the native peoples’ land and forcing them into your culture if you’re just going to piss your own culture down your leg?”
Seems to be a growing situation nowadays. See Dan’s earlier post about the Archbishop of Wankerbury.
Feets,
It’s a beautiful part of the country, sparse as it is. Reminded me a lot of Arizona, only far more empty, and the snakes were more venomous. I loved it there. And believe me, if you get lost out there, you’re in real trouble. If I wasn’t worried about Jeff’s bandwidth I’d tell you about the time my buddies and I ran out of gas in between Alice and Tennant Creek.
Did you use more quotation marks than are necessary? Just wondering. Wondering if you learned Grammar! Heh.
For the record, one quotation mark to start the quote, and one to end it, Dan. If you want to pick and choose from the statement of another, you must use ellipses. It’s the literary law, Mr. Collins. There is no fighting it. Disparage me if you’re into that sort of thing, but above all, realize that you are making conservatives look like idiots when you post tripe like this. Jeff G. would smack you down if he read this post.
“But most of all we apologize for suggesting that Chelsea’s been ‘pimped out’ by the Clinton campaign. That was just wrong.â€Â
The Aussies weren’t the first to say that.
Just as a point of interest, the apologists routinely claim a genocide in Tasmania. As Keith Windschuttle has shown, the historical record does not support such a claim. In fact the numbers of whites killed by Aborigines is in the same order of magnitude as the number of Aborigines killed by whites. The vast majority died out from disease.
Moreover he has shown that the historians who claim a genocide have misquoted or falsified the contents of the historical documents they claim to rely on.
Is it wrong that I assume this is correct because of the general behavior of historians?
Relavant to this apology
I quote
One thing the university historians who first established this story kept largely to themselves was that the major pieces of relevant legislation were all passed by Labor governments.
In NSW, the 1915 Aborigines Protection Amending Act, which allowed the Aborigines Protection Board to remove children without recourse to a hearing before a magistrate, was the work of the first Labor government in the state headed by James McGowen and W.A.Holman. The Act’s 1943 amendment, which allowed Aboriginal children to be fostered out to non-indigenous families, was introduced by the Labor government of William McKell, one of his party’s favourite sons who later served as governor-general.
In Western Australia, the 1936 Act that historians claim allowed A.O.Neville to implement his policy of “breeding out the colour” was the product of the Labor governments of Phillip Collier and John C.Willcock. By apologising, Kevin Rudd and his colleagues will be effectively trashing the reputations of their party’s predecessors.
Again and again throughout history, we find that progressives were behind the policies that modern progressives loath today. Sweden operated a eugenically inspired compulsory sterilization program from the 1930s until 1976. Note again the law was revoked in 1976. If you guess nasty conservatives were in power during the bulk of that period, guess again.
Let me try that link again:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23182149-28737,00.html
here
If you look into The Stolen Generation, you’ll find some more things that the Australian Government could be genuinely contrite about. And, to be sure, that’s the Australian Government of several decades ago, but an apology and acknowledgement from the current government isn’t going to hurt.
And also, to be sure, the invaders might have slaughtered them to the last man, woman and child. That might actually have been more merciful, although given the choice to live or die in the here and now, I have little doubt that most would choose life.
No, when quoting multiple paragraphs, it is correct to place an opening quotation mark at the beginning of each paragraph, but not at the end of each, only the last one. Dan’s got it right.
Pablo: No! It isn’t! Use dot dot dots! It’s the law!
Sorry I had to use so many exclamation points on you, Pablo :(.
He just copied that from the AP you can see from the link so stop beating him up about it cause it’s only Wednesday and you should keep your powder dry really cause this week has issues.
Aboriginal people in Australia, just as here in the US, have gotten raw deals. People tried to “help” them in many ways: the Mexican government tried to wipe out the Yaquis, the US government tried to force many tribes here and there but not there where the gold/oil/water/good land turned out to be, and they all tried to modernize the populations.
The modernization has always failed on the large scale: people were told to buck up, lose their culture, and then when they had no jobs or connection to their community (if there was a community,) they were told to have some pride and make us trinkets. These policies haven’t worked, won’t work, and show that progressives have done a piss-poor job with Aboriginals since they really just wanted them to be good little civilized folks for our benefit, not theirs. But I wouldn’t put it all on the progressives: conservatives haven’t exactly been tripping over themselves to enforce the rule of law in relation to finding out where all that money went that was supposed to belong to our tribes in exchange for all those mining and oil rights. And I’m sure the holders of all that filthy, ill-gotten money aren’t all Hillary donors (though I’m not going to say some aren’t.)
In the end, less-indigenous people of all political stripes have been unable to say they’re sorry and actually mean it. There’s just no way to say “Sorry about all that land, ancestry, and all the rest. I had no personal part in the theft, but I sure am benefitting now. Want a share?” and actually come up with something solid. The interesting legal standing of US tribes places them as sort of equals to States, though in reality that’s not consistently enforced or enforcable. Governments can make amends, but lack the willpower. Screwing the Aboriginals has been a bipartisan effort of many years, that isn’t likely to change, and I have yet to see any conservative plans to change that. The “progressive” plans have been tried over the years, but where’s the conservative tax-incentive program, investment zoning, or whatever? It’s nice to complain about the progressives and their failures, but like criticizing conservatives’ Iraq mess, what’s the better way?
Sure, jon, but at least they can eat their peyote and play their traditional games–craps, poker, baccarat and roulette–without molestation.
“If quoting multiple paragraphs in a note, repeat the double quotation mark at the beginning of each quoted paragraph; use the final, closing double-quote mark only to mark the end of the entire quotation.”
Linky.
“The convention in English is to give the first and each subsequent paragraph opening quotation marks, using closing quotation marks only for the final paragraph of the quotation.”
Another linky.
Aboriginal peoples have very poor coping skills the world over. It’s no different culturally than lots of the Middle East not being able to keep up with the rest of the world. The truth is they bring very little game. The better way is to educate them so they can understand why they’re so fucked up. That’s really about all you can do in the long run.
You mean . . . because of Zionists?
I’m sorry you’re so fucked up. Here’s a book.
Life is like a box of chocolates:
Be the one eating the chocolates – don’t be the chocolates
Pablo, don’t make me press the caps-lock button, because I’m just crazy enough to do it! You should be able to tell this simply from my willingness to use an exclamation point at any juncture! Sometimes I use two!!
Use ellipses, or the caps get turned on. This is your last warning.
Oh. Not you the book Dan. It’s for our tribal friends.
EAT HOT LINKS, ZIONIST SCUM!!!
That is all.
Not these, btw. They’re haram.
I’m down with Maoris. They have those really cool tats.
I’m down with the Maoris. They have those really cool tats.
Darnit, you called my bluff. You must have seen through my facade and realized that I’d never escalate a conventional argument to a nuclear one with the caps-lock button. What gave me away?
Suddenly, I’m quite hungry for some Italian. What’s up with THAT?
You know how Barack has some of that JFK juice? I’ve got the rest of it.
Bay of Pigs, bitches! Google it!
The list will not be complete until Yahoo Serious undergoes a ritual subincision.
I don’t know what the hell they expected. It was settled by a bunch of criminals fer chrisakes.