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

Empathy

[ursuscal.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that someone can be sorry that something happened without accepting guilt for it. For example, I'm very sorry that the holocaust was ever allowed to happen. I certainly didn't participate, but as a member of a supposedly civilized society, how can I not feel horrible loss over what my species did to itself? As a Native American, I'm sorry that the U.S. Government did something similar to the Aussie Government, when they took Native American cubs and forced them into "Indian Schools," where they learned English, were punished for speaking their own language, and were often "adopted" by white couples, even though their parents were still alive. Only in the last few decades were laws passed all but ending such adoptions. And only in the late part of the 20th century were Native Americans even allowed to vote! Yep, African Americans has (in theory) the right to vote long before my brothers did.

I must admit that I'm disturbed by what I feel is the immature, knee-jerk reaction of some respondents to your post. You don't have to be guilty of something to be sorry that it happened. I think a little compassion, maturity and less defensiveness is in order here, folks.