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

[oceansedge.livejournal.com]

No the pacing of it is a bit 'odd' to western tastes, some reviewers complained it was too long at 3 hrs. But it makes perfect sense if one understands anything about dealing with the Inuit culture.

They live on something akin to 'island time', we call it "Nunavut time", patience comes with the territory..... you simply can't HURRY an Inuit. They're used to waiting, they're used to wandering out to the airport, and maybe the plane will come and maybe it won't, and if the one they're waiting for doesn't come, they'll just take the next one that comes along. You get used to it, when the weather can shut down an entire territory for ... 5-12 days at a time.