Sorry Day

[den]

May 26th was "Sorry Day." It used to be the policy of the Australian Government to remove Aboriginal children from their families and give them a limited education, teach them how to do menial tasks and then "assign" them to a white household to help in the running of that property. Quite often the parents never saw their children again. It was, effectively, the death of the child as far as the family was concerned.

"Sorry Day" is an attempt to get the general population to think about this, and to not necessarily apologise personally, but to feel sorry that it happened, and to acknowledge that it was a terrible thing to do.

Of course, there are bogans who think they have have nothing to say sorry about because they didn't do it. If you were to say to them "Jeez mate, I know you crashed your car but I'm not sorry because I didn't do it, and none of my family did it" they would think you're a bastard.

I'm sorry the government of the day took children away from their families. It should never have happened. I'm sorry Aborigines weren't even counted as citizens until 1960. But most of all, I'm sorry there are bogans who are not sorry.

Comments

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

Not just revisionists, but revisionists enthusiastically supported by the Feds. The last decade has not been a good time for Aboriginal Australia.

And, technically speaking, they're kinda counter-revisionists; they're trying to bury the recently (as in, the past 20 years) acknowledged history and re-establish the old status quo.

When I was in school, the extent of my education in regards to Aboriginal Australia was "Captain Cook discovered Australia and then the First Fleet established a colony. There were some Aboriginal people here already; they used spears, and made up Dreamtime stories. Some of them attacked the settlers and had to be shot. The end."

[dewhitton.livejournal.com]

When mum went to school in the late 40s she was taught the aborigines didn't have a culture.

and I consider the party in power now to be bogans, for all their suits and ties.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

My schooldays (1978-1991) didn't really recognise Aboriginal culture either, despite the token acknowledgement of "Dreamtime stories".

Our homework for the only class I had that covered anything Aboriginal (which was in early primary school) was "make up your own Dreamtime story"; yes, that's right kiddies, they're just silly made-up stories, not a 50,000 year old oral tradition that was vital to the survival of Aboriginal people (amongst other things, the songlines are the maps; listen to the legends and the one thing you notice is that a lot of the time they mention where to go to find the water...).

Can you imagine them assigning homework of "make up your own Bible story"?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Not just revisionists, but revisionists enthusiastically supported by the Feds. The last decade has not been a good time for Aboriginal Australia.

Shameful.

(I am, however, grateful that you posted in your journal about this, Den. I'm saving all those recommendations for movies.)