editorial
13 Feb 2008
We Cannot Imagine That We will Fail
It's sobering to think it was 15 years ago that Paul Keating stood in a park in Redfern and acknowledged that it was "we who did the dispossessing", writes Marni Cordell
"Each generation lives in ignorance of the consequences of its actions," Brendan Nelson said in his speech to Parliament this morning.In this one sentence, the Opposition Leader summed up the denialism that has characterised the last decade of politics. A sentence that would not have raised an eyebrow if it had been uttered by our former PM a year ago, suddenly seemed like a great party killer.
According to newmatilda.com's Sorry Day correspondent, Jennifer Mills, it was this comment that prompted the 5000-strong crowd gathered outside Parliament House in Canberra to begin turning their backs on the screen where the speeches were being simulcast and calling out "shame!" and "go home!"
The comment stuck in my mind too - it made me proud to be part of a generation of Australians who today formally acknowledged the consequences of their actions on future generations.
With today's apology to the Stolen Generations, Kevin Rudd's Government has put an end to the denial. There will be no more skirting the issue. No more "black armband" view of history. Just acknowledgement of the truth, and a deeply symbolic gesture to unite the country towards a better future.
In a moving speech to Parliament this morning, Rudd called on the major parties to move beyond infantile bickering and to raise at least this one issue above the partisan divide.
He proposed a kind of 'war cabinet' on Indigenous affairs - a joint policy commission headed by the PM and the leader of the Opposition. First priorities would be housing and a constitutional acknowledgement of Indigenous Australians.
"Symbolism is important, but unless the symbolism is accompanied by action," said Rudd, employing a typically odd metaphor, "it is nothing but a gong clanging".
Yes, today's apology was symbolic, and is just the very tip of what needs to be done to "close the gap" between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. But symbolism is an important uniting force. And today is a proud day in the history of this country.
I'll confess I'm normally one of those cynical types who groans when anyone from the Lord Mayor to the local school principal opens a speech with "First I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this country..."
I don't know why the practice gets to me. It's certainly not because I don't think the traditional owners of this country should be acknowledged. In fact it's probably the opposite; and a token, throwaway line at the beginning of a speech doesn't go anywhere near cutting it in my mind.
But yesterday's acknowledgement and welcome to country at the opening of the Australian Parliament had me close to tears. There seemed to be a sense of cautious trust in the air as the PM thanked Ngambri elder Matilda House-Williams for the ceremony.
The emotion could have been because I had just interviewed Kutcha Edwards, an Aboriginal singer and songwriter who was taken from his parents at 18 months and grew up in a children's home with his five older siblings. Kutcha had told me about the experience of meeting his mother at the age of six, and later going to live with her as a teenager: "It was strange. I understood who she was, she understood who I was, but there was not a familiarity like she had with my younger brothers and sisters, who'd lived with her all their lives," he said. "She knew what time they start nodding off to bed, and what they liked to eat and what didn't like to eat. It wasn't like that for me."
No matter how much love you have for each other, you never make up for those stolen years, he told me.
Kutcha has this way of making you see the full emotional complexity of things you thought you already understood. Yet he uses very few words, and in fact they don't translate well to the page.
"You must be pretty pissed off," I asked rhetorically, as the full ramifications of that lost time hit me.
"Let me rip you out of your mother and father's arms - or your children out of yours. Are you a mother yourself?" he asked.
No.
"Do you have any nieces or nephews?"
Yes.
"You do. Well you would understand that they're very close to you. I have a son and I'd turn the world upside down if he was ripped off me - and he's 19."
Last night a friend forwarded me a copy of another Prime Minister's pledge to change the lives of Indigenous Australians.
It's sobering to think that it was 15 years ago that Paul Keating stood in a park in Redfern and acknowledged that: "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases and the alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion."
"The past lives on in inequality, racism and injustice in the prejudice and ignorance of non-Aboriginal Australians, and in the demoralisation and desperation, the fractured identity, of so many Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders," Keating said in 1992, as he pledged to turn the goals of reconciliation into reality.
Here we are again, a decade and a half later, recognising that we it was "we who did the dispossessing". There were plenty of people who shed a tear that day in Redfern, too. Let's hope this time we mean it.
We cannot imagine that we will fail again.
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Its the powerlessness that people must have felt which I find so shattering. Yes we cannot imagine that we will fail again. But until the intervention in the NT is wound back I fear paternalistic wrongs will be repeated.
keating said diseases not disasters.
yes it is sobering. but hopefully 2nd time round there is more impetus. i watched the film ‘amazing grace’ last night, they tried for many years to end the slave trade & the movement went backwards after it went forwards but eventually it got there.
i was a bit disappointed to hear on the 7.30 report the only strategy mentioned to get teachers & health workers to Aboriginal areas is halving the hecs & doubling the places for early education at uni. They need to go to great lengths, whatever it takes, to get as many Aboriginal ppl as possible training as teachers & health workers because of the mistrust of white professionals.
Ha. stand corrected. sorry. MC
I’m with you, JennyC. I feel pulled in two directions about the apology - in one way, seeing the justice of it, in the other, wondering why they won’t stop the NT intervention, as the deployment of more white welfare troops, again. Perhaps they will, now? Surely they have to?
Heidi-Pe,
Yes, getting the education and health tasks done is going to take a supreme effort. But why do you assume that it should be done by Aboriginal teachers and nurses ? They didn’t cause the problems, why should they cop the load to fix them ? There are currently around four and a half thousand Indigenous teachers, and perhaps a couple of thousand nurses, but not one of them should have to go out to remote communities if they don’t want to. And why should they want to ? Usually they are not from the remote areas, and have not contributed to the current situation.
Oh, I get it: all whites have to do is say sorry, but it will be Blacks from the cities who have to do all the grind work ?
Let’s get something straight: southern, urban Blacks have copped far more than their share of shit from whites for much longer. They will not get anywhere as much of their land back as the northern people. They do not receive mining royalties. They cannot get onto CDEP as easily as those people in remote areas. One of their only options is to get a good education, and then of course they are damned because they have (in the critical eyes of whites) lost their culture. But their rightful place is not in the cities, is it, it’s out there in the sticks, out there with ‘their’ people, who they are supposed to bow and scrape to because they have kept their culture. Cities are for whites, aren’t they ? Sorry, I’m a slow learner.
We’ve come such a long way since the fifties !
No, we cannot imagine that we will fail, so long as we keep in mind what tony Koch wrote this morning, that lifelong welfare dependency is a sure way to a meaningless death. What are you, dear reader, going to do to change that ?
Joe
HI,
Just want to add to all the worthy commentary so far, that Dr. Brendan Nelson was seeming to have been a bit mislead by Mr. Kevin Rudd having perfected the ancient Chinese Art of Facelessness.
Since Dr Nelson really went and put his foot in the story of the state of this nation’s governance in his comments about the seperation of function between federal and state governments making it necessary for his party to be bound and gagged in respect of child protection.
I guess that what Mr Rudd excels at is being an excellent politician. We all had to hand that to him. His platform could not have had better politics, for all that politics are worth.
Dr Nelson’s exemplary opening up of the real gap between the conservative coalition political parties, and the ALP, ought to stand Labor in good stead to stay in power for as long as real Reconciliation takes at least.
And every Aboriginal person whom is accepting the responsibility for the immense weight responsibility and obligation of the ‘welcome to country’ which is made, need be thanked for their work by every other Australian.
Word Sword Sworn
At Hath
That Hat
Inshallah no poetry farce
By Solomon’s Seal will my past
No word not true can last
Yeah, you’ve probably got a point there, Curaeziripid.
While I’m sure he was sincere, let’s not forget that Paul Keating’s eloquence in Redfern was entirely the work of his speechwriter, Don Watson.
I can’t help wondering who was responsible for Brendan Nelson’s ill considered response.
1. Rudd’s speech was dull. It was 15 minutes too long. It lacked poetry. Powerful speaking and charisma aren’t all that important but this moment was ENTIRELY about synbolism and a major opportunity to enagage hearts and minds was lost. Keating knew the importance of powerful words and had the good sense to hire Don Watson (and the charisma to deliver those words with conviction).
2. The "clanging gong" reference was the most interesting part of the speech - perhaps an insight into our new leader’s roots - 1 Corinthians 13:1 "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."
3. This was only a moment because Howard made it a moment. Every State Premier and the previous leader of the opposition had already said sorry. It was only Howard’s relentless dog-whistling, lowest-common-denominator style of politics that built this thing into the event that it has become. If Howard had said "sorry" 10 years ago even in the most compromised, choking-on-dust fashion, it would have blown over with very little in the way of "clanging gongs".
4. For all of the worst reasons Howard trotted out the "Northern Territory Emergency Response". It continues to result in (and remember the enabling legislation received bi-partisan support) the abrogation of innumerable long-protected rights. For all that, it has meant that cops and doctors have gone to places that have been crying out for them for decades. That means some lives will be saved. That is far more than was achieved by anything done in Parliament yesterday.
5. Just when I’d thought it was a complete non-event, we have been given the joint policy commission. This may actually be something. There is some hope.
PS - I agree with you Marni about the "acknowledge the traditional owners" nonsense that seems now to be dragged out at the opening of so much as an envelope. It’s as bad in its own way as drunk idiots draped in "Aussie" flags on Australia day or having to endure the National anthem being played before club football games. It’s trite and empty-headed. Save it for when it means something and do it properly.
Phillip Knightley
Paul Keating’s eloquence in Redfern may have been the work of speechwriter Don Watson. But Keating’s views were already formed. After a meeting with Aboriginal leader Charles Perkins, Keating said to his aides, out of the blue, "We”ll never be any good until we set things right with them."
I want to take issue wit hthe title of this aerticle that we are all commenting on. Yes, we have to imagine that we could fail, we have to get it through our thick heads how easy it would be, given the enormous damage that has already been done over the last thirty five years. Respect for human rights is almost non-existent in many Indigenous communities, e nvir0onments are not just toxic (as Wesley Aird remarks today in the *******Australian but pathological. For those who think that words and ritual are all that is needed, try this:
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes one rapist to destroy a community.
No, folks, we need more than words and ritual, even if these are seen to be the be-all and end-all in traditional cosmology, how the world works - and now, hey presto ! the elders were right ! say a few words and the money starts flowing again ! All we have to do is know the right words and rituals in order to act upon the world and increase our resources !
No, ultimately, I don’t think so. It will take effort and imagination and dedication - and from Aboriginal people too, not just do-gooder outsiders. After all, it’s their communities, why shouldn’t they put their shoulders to the wheel ?
Oh, I forgot, they are just poor victims, passive lumps on the river of history, very spiritual but not of this materialistic world, which is exclusively the property of Westeners. So not only they shouldn’t lift a finger in their own interests, but they really can’t, it’s not in their culture. Bullshit.
There’s my gripe for the day. Jesus, not baked beans on toast again.
Hi Joe,
the title is a quote from the keating speech
cheers
marni
And how far did that get the people in remote communities between 1992 and 2007 ? In order not to fail - in the real world, as oppose dto the rhetorical world - we must imagine all of the possible consequences of failure, prepare every possible scenario to avoid it. Have we even begun this process ? Or have we let rhetoric do the talking.
My God, I really am becoming a grumpy old bastard when I criticise Keating.
Dave here just to point out the statements we must not fail & it must never happen again well for 11years now I have fought to have my son returned from care the allegations that that removed my son were made by my in-laws who have had my son since removal & refuse to allow me contact or access.All levels of Government have been notified but to no avail. To just mention one lie the Grandfather who is illiterate & the trainee District Officer a New Zealander both signed an affidavit statement stating I was in Narrabri the 18/09/97 when I was at the Attorney Generals Library all that day over 500klms away from that town
Child Abuse Must Stop
Dave Grayson
graysond49@yahoo.com
Yes, you are right Dave, child abuse must stop, a line must be drawn in the sand, as it were: no more. No more child abuse, no more bashing of women, no more bludging and humbugging, no more frauds dominating Indigenous Affairs.
Seriously: these things are destroying the Indigenous population in northern settlements. Physically destroying them - at the last Census, in some areas, the population actually declined, while it went up a healthy 10-12 % across the Indigenous population as a whole, and 17-20 % in urban populations.
Yeh I suppose your right no more bashing of women no more bludging no more frauds. 11years Itold my wife not to put dole forms in for an ex-con think of our son but she did,I am on a DSPension when I tried to catch 1.2tonne of steel from 3.84 metres I have alittle casual work she sleeps with my boss,Icome to QLD in2001to give her a chance to start a new life I pump myself with anti-inflammatories both capsule & injection we by a house to bring to bring our son home she tries to give it to her boyfriend bugger our son who is locked down with her parents I keep telling her to stop the abuse of our son she hits me I respond my wife fraud child abuse blugging
I SAY NO CHILD ABUSE & IF YOU DO YOU ARE NO WOMAN MAN OR ANY CLAIMANT OF PROTECTION Child Abuse must stop
David Grayson
Actually, in respect of rmg-and-a-few-readable-numbers-username’s posts, I have a point to make.
There is no random probability about my comment.
First of all: one rapist in my community never destroyed it, and neither any other community, but especially not the Aboriginal community.
And as for imagining anything: well, I believe that the whole function of imagination is extraordinarily dangerous in fact. What if we imagine being dead? Surely that is what upsets the whole psychology and enables suicide. That is why every contemplation of death needs to be guided by well intentioned and life supporting social rituals. Which is why initiations are ritualised.
All sorts of social rituals are very useful and necessary. The fact that abuse has been done against individuals though abuse of rituals, is not cause to avoid ritual, since we all need some ritualisation in our life so as to sustain healthy social harmony and cultural ease.
Many social rituals in both mainstream Australian cutlure, and in Traditionally Oriented Aboriginal culture, are in fact designed to prohibit us from being too imaginative, so as to prevent us imaging our lives into nightmares.
When the mind function of imagination is used in theraputic contexts, it is within the definition of affirmations. That is, it is only normally socially acceptable to imagine a positive consequence. Even then, we potentially get ourselves into trouble if we manifest behavioural belief in the imaginary, since even if one imagined moment might come true, how can we know what lies between this moment and that. Imagination there fore assumes too much to be viable usually even as a positive function, but to use it as a negative function spells disaster.
However, we can take precautionary measures at all times. We can notice how other persons respond to us, and we can adjust our own behaviour so as to prevent a negative consequence.
Often the precautionary measures necessary incorporate using words, and even if it is too many words, that is better than retaining silence in respect of safeguarding ourselves against negative consequences.
I expect the number 1660 might suit the conditions of sorry better than 1859, but then, you don’t necessarily know the cultural basis from which I am saying that, so how could it make any sense to you. Therefore, just for those indigenous folk who read this, and comprehend the paradigm. We best not be too fearful about hermetics when unpronounced.
Word Sword Sworn
At Hath
That Hat
Inshallah no poetry farce
By Solomon’s Seal will my past
No word not true can last
You could be right there.
Tar.
The most obvious fact in the whole ball game, is that if the black-biased Aboriginal community (which I am part of as a white person, within my own beleif that white skin is like having a congential skin disease: like the ring worm got so big that its edges are just the dandruff) has any weakness to police, it has been of police giving false evidence about who the racists really are. That has lead to the Aboriginal community refusing to acknowledge some of the more possible options for realising indigenous favoured politics; including for obtaining compensation.
I mean, wouldn’t you if you were police and racist, try to force blacks to imagine that the decent non-racist whites are the bad guys?
Word Sword Sworn
At Hath
That Hat
Inshallah no poetry farce
By Solomon’s Seal will my past
No word not true can last
Hi Curaepizirid,
How do you mean ?
I must say I get a thrill every time I see that flag ! Back in early 1972, there were a few efforts around the country to design an Aboriginal flag, some with boomerangs and spearpoints and lighning bolts and Christ knows what else - I think one had a wombat in it. All very difficult to make. Down here in Adelaide, which was in the forefront of Indigenous politics as usual, Harold Thomas had designed the simple, strikingly beautiful flag that you see at the top of the page, so after work we used to make them (I worked in a bakery, my wife in a paper-rolling factory) and send them out all over Australia, and all around the world. Every overseas visitor (Buffy Sainte-Marie, Roberta Flack, B.B. King, many African leaders) would get one: Buffy Sainte-Marie draped hers over her piano during her concerts. It got so popular that even Senator Bonner didn’t mind being seen near one.
Oh yes, this is why I got onto this thread:
Editor: why can’t we respond to Alison Broinowski’s article ?
Just in case we can’t: she says that half-caste kids were always the children of Aboriginal mothers and white fathers. Not really true: down here, even in the mid-nineteenth century, some white women married Aboriginal men and got their ten-acre block. And more importantly, from about 1860 (at least, down this way) half-castes were marrying half-castes and having half-caste children. [Sorry, I find that word offensive, but it’s a term, and a subject, that has to be understood.] By about 1870, half-caste women down this way were having quarter-caste children. By 1890, ….. you get the picture.
And of course, there were many, many other non-Aboriginal men around besides white fellas: in the lower Lakes in the 1860s, there was at least one African-American, and one guy from the Cape Colony pretending to be the returning spirit of a dead Aboriginal bloke from the area. There were quite a few Chinese men, at least one down in the South-East and one around Port Lincoln, who had children by Aboriginal women. A West Indian guy named Savage lived in Adelaide (records say, most intriguingly, that he was born in Adelaide in 1852) and he married a local Kaurna woman (i.e. from the Adelaide area) named Ivaritji. Legend has it that a Maori guy also lived in the lower Murray area and had kids by an Aboriginal woman. And of course, Afghans had very wide and friendly relations with many Aboriginal women up and down the country. Truth is much more varied than formula.
As well, Alison, are there any documented cases of half-caste children by missionaries ? As a Marxist who has developed a great respect for missionaries, I am shocked. There was a rumour about the son of one down this way, having relations with a white woman, but at a court hearing it was clear that he had been working hundreds of miles away while she was in the process of becoming pregnant.
Rumours abound, of course, of missionaries and Aboriginal woman - rumours are such wonderful things, they don’t need ‘proof’ (ptuh ! ptuh !) - so Western, so bourgeois - and when they are untrue the subject is usually totally unaware of their existence - a very useful way to destroy someone. And proof is often so difficult, it’s so much easier to believe what you want to believe.
And you can always drop this one on people: prove that he didn’t. Impossible, but very useful.
Hi Joe,
the comment function on the broinowski was disabled for some reason. now fixed.
cheers
marni
Thanks, Marni.