AUSTRALIA: Gov. Apology To Aborigines

Aboriginal leaders welcome apology

Story Highlights

• Aboriginal leaders welcome apology and hail new era in indigenous relations
  
• Canberra will issues apology to "stolen generation" of Aborigines
  
• Australia had now-defunct policies that assumed Aborigines were doomed race
  
• Inquiry in 1997 found psychological effects of separating kids from families

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Aboriginal leaders on Thursday welcomed a new era of indigenous relations in Australia with a new government that will acknowledge traditional owners and apologize for past injustices when Parliament resumes this month.

The first time in the Parliament's 107-year history, the traditional owners of the national capital Canberra have been asked to welcome lawmakers to their country when Parliament resumes on February 12 for the first time since the center-left Labor Party won elections in November.

"It's a great privilege and honor," said Matilda House, a Canberra Aboriginal elder who will give a speech welcoming lawmakers to Parliament House on behalf of her Ngunnawal tribe.

Australia will issue its first formal apology to the country's indigenous people next month, a senior minister said Wednesday, a milestone that could ease tensions with a minority once subjected to policies including the removal of mixed-blood children from families on the premise that their race was doomed.

The February 13 apology to the so-called "stolen generation" of Aborigines will be the first item of business for the new Parliament, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, whose Labor Party won November elections, had promised to push for an apology, which has been debated in Australia for years.

"The apology will be made on behalf of the Australian government and does not attribute guilt to the current generation of Australian people," Macklin said in a statement.

Macklin and Rudd have previously ruled out financial compensation for the impoverished minority, and Macklin did not mention that subject Wednesday. But she said she sought broad input on the wording of the apology, which she hoped would signal the beginning of a new relationship between Australia and the impoverished minority.

"Once we establish this respect, the government can work with indigenous communities to improve services aimed at closing the 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians," she said.

Australia's original inhabitants, Aborigines number about 450,000 among a population of 21 million. Aborigines are the poorest ethnic group in Australia and are most likely to be jailed, unemployed and illiterate.

Australia has had a decade-long debate about how best to acknowledge Aborigines who were affected by a string of 20th century policies that separated mixed-blood Aboriginal children from their families -- the cohort frequently referred to as Australia's stolen generation.

From 1910 until the 1970s, around 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and saving the children was a humane alternative.

A national inquiry in 1997 found that many children taken from their families suffered long-term psychological effects stemming from the loss of family and culture.

The inquiry recommended that state and federal authorities apologize and compensate those removed from their families. But then-Prime Minister John Howard steadfastly refused to do either, saying his government should not be held responsible for the policies of former officials.

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Source: CNN-World


SteveD.

This is another way of saying we are NOT paying you a dime..kama UK with their sorry for slavery BS...Lakini they wer soo quick to pay the jews..even got them their own country...leading to the mess we have in the middle east...yani..kaaaz kweli kweli

kapinga said:

This is another way of saying we are NOT paying you a dime..kama UK with their sorry for slavery BS...Lakini they wer soo quick to pay the jews..even got them their own country...leading to the mess we have in the middle east...yani..kaaaz kweli kweli

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Halafu sasa jinsi hao Waingereza walivyokuwa mstari wa mbele kuazimisha kila aina ya vita waliyopigana kisha kushinda au kushindwa.... maadhimisho karibu kila mwaka huko kwao, prisoners of war bado wanadai haki zao na kuhitaji kutambuliwa kwa hali ya juu.... yaani, wanafiki kweli hawa saa nyingine, hebu fikiria, hadi 'battle of trafalga' zaidi ya miaka miambili iliyopita bado wanasherehekea... lakini kitu chochote walicho kifanya wao zaidi ya miaka 20 tu watasema hiyo ni history.... ulimwengu wa double standards, si unajua tena.


SteveD.

Amen to that...

Just saying 'sorry' isnt good enough. Is that going to change the lives of Aborigines people? Is that going to erase the memories of the emotional and psychological torture they have had to deal with?

In Prime Minister's Speech there is no explanation on why the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments of white Australians had inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on their fellow Australians the Aborigines.

The Australian capitalist-settler society was established in 1788and was based on the private ownership of land. This is what brought it into head-on collision with the Aboriginal people who had inhabited the continent for the previous 40,000 years. They had to be cleared from the land by any means possible—shooting, poisoning and the introduction of diseases.

Wa-Astralia walitegemea kwamba kwa kuondoa wale Aborigines machotara kungeondoa kabisa rangi ya mtu mweusi na kuitokomeza kabisa na kupata rangi ifananayo na ya kwao wazungu!

Lakini kwa kudra za mwenyezi Mungu, mtu mweusi ni imara popote pale alipo na wa-Aborigino wanaishi hadi kesho.

Wazungu ni watu wa ajabu sana!

Kana-Ka-Nsungu said:

Just saying 'sorry' isnt good enough. Is that going to change the lives of Aborigines people? Is that going to erase the memories of the emotional and psychological torture they have had to deal with?

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Yeah, as you are saying, Sorry is not good enough, though inaonyesha kujali na kukubali kwamba ni kweli walikosea/wanajutia (doesn't matter kama mioyoni hawamaanishi).

Forgive and forget (Japo kusahau ni ngumu).