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The Forum > Article Comments > Still not sorry!? > Comments

Still not sorry!? : Comments

By Barbara Hocking, published 22/11/2007

The federal government's recent policies on native title are a return to colonial practices.

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“Two hundred years after the "change of sovereignty" of 1788, the "law of the land" in the whole area of reconciliation between the new dominant "settled" society and the old immemorial system of communal land ownership of the indigenous was legally laid down by the High Court in the Mabo case (1992).”

I’m no lawyer, but I have read other “learned” opinion that the Mabo judgement does nothing of the kind, and it has been used wrongly to deal with other cases since. Mabo was for Mabo.

I don’t think that we should necessarily take Ms. Hocking’s word on that one.

The government is probably “still not sorry”, but there is no logical or humane reason why they should be sorry. I wish descendants of the original (as far as we know) inhabitants all the best – certainly no worse conditions than the rest of us have. But, please, they have the same opportunities as everyone else, and only some of them need help with education so that they can lift themselves up. Most have already done it for themselves.

And, it is the few who have necessitated the return to “colonial practices” the author waffles on about. Anyone objecting to what the Government has belatedly done cannot expect to be taken seriously when they claim to have aboriginal welfare at heart.
Posted by Leigh, Thursday, 22 November 2007 9:56:29 AM
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I really despair for Aboriginal welfare if a Rudd government is again captured by idealogues like this.

Barbara, forget returning to colonial times. Your ilk are determined to keep Aborigines in the Stone Age.
Posted by grn, Thursday, 22 November 2007 11:21:17 AM
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According to the "West"in some dysfunctional communities, aboriginal children are so malnourished, they are suckling dogs.And little ones as young as eighteen months are displaying severe sexual diseases.
No one should be permitted to treat children this way and if the only way to stop it is with intervention ,the sooner the better.
Those of the so called "stolen generation" were far more fortunate than today's poor little kids.
Tomorrow's Australians could well be saying "sorry" for allowing this disgusting abuse to go on.And let us not forget the abuse is by aboriginals on other aboriginals.
Posted by mickijo, Thursday, 22 November 2007 2:47:00 PM
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While Barbara Hocking's article is not without faults, I agree with her general drift. In particular, since the announcement of Brough's military solution to Aboriginal child abuse, I've wondered why on earth that the confiscation of Aboriginal land is apparently a necessary part of it.
Posted by CJ Morgan, Thursday, 22 November 2007 2:55:12 PM
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Leigh and mickijo, I agree with what you said.

Lets just get on with where we are. There's no future in the past. What earlier generations in Australia did, they largely did for good reasons - there was no malevolance. We have nothing to be sorry for. Were the Normans still wringing their hands in 1266 about the poor displaced Saxons?

Let's stop this divisiveness - we are one country, and should be one people! After all, every Homo sapiens in this country is the descendant of someone who came here from somewhere else - the only difference is the arrival time. Those of us who trace our lineage back six or seven generations in Australia are expected to share (and are mostly willing to share) equally with someone who only arrived yesterday. So why should time since arrival be relevant to anything?
Posted by Reynard, Thursday, 22 November 2007 3:12:17 PM
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Thank you, Barbara Hocking - a well expressed and rather scary analysis.
But - the encouraging thing is - that while our greedy resource companies, and politicians, and bigwigs with the ear of Howard (- Hugh Morgan, Michael Angwin, Ron Walker, John White etc) while they spruik and plot on - indigenous people are awake-up.

In Australia, and in other countries world-wide - it is the indigenous people who have copped and are copping the degradation of their land through uranium mining, and in many cases, the dumping of toxic wastes, including nuclear.

White Australians, who voted overwhelmingly in the past, to give aborigines citizenship, are becoming aware of this nuclear con - especially the waste dump idea.

The growing wave of people's opposition to the dirty dangerous nuclear industry is joining with the growing consciousness of indigenous people and others, world-wide, of indigenous land rights and of respect for indigenous cultures.
The mining companies and their friends in government are not going to find it so easy.
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com
Posted by ChristinaMac, Thursday, 22 November 2007 3:59:28 PM
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myyyyy goodness.....

talk about bone pointing and self righteous hypocrisy.

CHRISTINA MAC said:

>>"Thank you, Barbara Hocking - a well expressed and rather scary analysis. But - the encouraging thing is - that while our greedy resource companies, and politicians, and bigwigs with the ear of Howard (- Hugh Morgan, Michael Angwin, Ron Walker, John White etc) while they spruik and plot on - indigenous people are awake-up.<<

and unless you are indigenous Christina, they are awake up to YOU also.
Do you own land ? Do you rent a home ? one who's land ?

Yet.. in spite of the obvious blindness to the fact that WE ALL are living on the proceeds of 'stolen land'...taken by brutal dispossession, by our ancestors or those who represented them......
-Christina can point the bone at the specks in the eyes of the huge bogey men... the easy targets.. the high profile companies.. sure.. its eassssssy to rant at them.. they are soooo sinful.. so wicket..so evil..... and she tells them this from our small slice of the same stolen land they are seeking to exploit.

Good on you Christina, well done!.... do you belong to a political party ? :)

Are you waxing eloquent about the 'sins of others' by any chance to simply further damage the government, so that one more of your liking might gain power ? Will that party by any chance return ALL the land we stole ? will you be on the first ship back to UK or whereever your ancestors came from?

So, please..until you ARE prepared to abandon ship Australia....and join the seething masses of Birmingham.. please credit your readers with at least an ounce of intelligence.

"GREEEDY" Resource Companies ? what about the Greedy Christina Mac who would fight tooth and nail for the roof over her head if some adventurous Ingigenous person took her seriously and came-a-knocking to kick her out.
Posted by BOAZ_David, Thursday, 22 November 2007 5:10:04 PM
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As regards saying sorry to our Aborigines, reckon any such thoughts have disappeared once again with the re-rise of the imperialist or colonial-style corporate culture we now live under.

The story is clearly told with the opposing views of Tim Costello and his brother Peter.

Peter being thus the essence of modern feelings about the subject - what is past is past.

The same perspectives go along with the decline of our native species, especially when one is called a left-wing loonie nowadays if one even mentions it?

What does this imply for the future of our great great grandkids - who going by the disappearance of natural nature, will be spending an ersatz existence, finally only able to view or feel electronic pictures and impulses, having become partly ersatz themselves?

Furthermore, with the rising corporate culture losing consciousness of any feelings of guilt for the past, will this be the end not only of compassion for virgin nature, but might also be the end of compassion for human nature itself?
Posted by bushbred, Thursday, 22 November 2007 5:33:21 PM
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It's probably expecting too much from Boazy, but I wonder if he read the actual article? The Mabo decisions, upon which it is based, established that Native Title is presumed to exist in common law unless it has been extinguished - as, for example, in the case of freehold land.

In which case, his entire spray at ChristinaMac has absolutely no foundation.

In the case of Brough's military invasion of Aboriginal communities in the NT under the guise of child welfare, the Aboriginal land that has been annexed by the Feds was originally returned under the 1976 NT Land Rights Act. Neither land that is subject to Native Title nor the NT Land Rights Act has any bearing on the freehold title that most of us have on our homes.
Posted by CJ Morgan, Thursday, 22 November 2007 5:35:10 PM
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it is impossible to refute a 2000 word propaganda peice with a 350 word reply, so I will focus upon one bit of nonsence as a way of pointing out how idiotic the entire mindset is.

Here is a barrister claiming that aboriginal laws and customs should be equal to common law.

Yeah, right.

OK, so we as an advanced nation now must accept that aboriginal virgins must be handed over to the Old Men to have fertility objects shoved up their vaginas (hope they washed the damned things first) and then be given to the Old Men as their concubines. And if an Old Man dies, these girls and women can be inherited by the deceased's totemic brothers along with his other goods and chattels.

The young boys must be taken (stolen?) from their mothers at aged 10 or 11, initiated into the tribe by ahving the Old Men screw them up the backside, have their foreskins removed with a sharp rock (ouch, hope they washed that first also)and then told that they must never speak to females (including their mothers and sisters) again until they are old men.

Whenever an Old Man dies, the Australian legal systems must recognise that he did not die naturally, that somebody "sang" him to death, and therefore somebody is responsible. Our legal system must then grant the right of the tribal witch doctor to figure out who the guilty party is so that they can be ritualisticaly murdered.

Lesson? Be nice to the witch doctor.

We must also recognise the right of the Old Men to treat aboriginal women and girls any damned way they please, and they may even kill them if they wish. Since this is the main reason why aboriginal men have six times the murder rate of other races, this could have great economic benefits for other Australians. And making the murder of spouses legal would also lift a serious social stigma from the aboriginal race, and win applause from the UN Human Rights mob.

What's it like to dance with the fairies, Barbara?
Posted by redneck, Friday, 23 November 2007 4:17:42 AM
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Firstly, Reynard those resource you are sharing with other people are rightly ours and you have no right to share them becaues they were illegally obtained without compensation from the end of a gun. Secondly, the Saxon's stole the land from the Picts and other tribes and were an extreamly cruel people who deserved what they got.

One country what a load of rubbish, lets start with your constitution that allows any federal gubberment to make decisions on behalf of Indigenous people including the removal of rights including property and association that you enjoy as a European.

Also lets look at the blatant racism on a daily basis that is taught in schools and is evident in this countries attitude towards Indigenous people. You people want to celebrate your varuious wars institutions and other events in history but shy away fronm accepting any blame for your treatment of Aboriginal peope's.

As for Sorry, Howard can't ask the Japanese Goverment to say sorry to prisioners of war that included my Dad, for war so called crimes against humanity and not do the same thing to those Indigenous people who were removed for no ther reason other than being Aboriginal.
Posted by Yindin, Friday, 23 November 2007 9:10:03 AM
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Leigh, mickijo and Reynard share the typical settler mentality of the professional whites and their enablers in media and government circles. Accept no blame, minimise or trivialise the crimes against the conquered, and blame the victim. You three could get new careers writing forged pamphlets for the Libs in a certain Sydney electorate!

At least read the "Little Children Are Sacred" report before coming out with rubbish like "And let us not forget the abuse is by aboriginals on other aboriginals." This is sanctimonious, self-righteous and wrong. Obviously some is, but for good reason the Report cautions that "...at times, Aboriginal men have been targeted as if they were the only perpetrators of child sexual abuse in communities. This is inaccurate and has resulted in unfair shaming, and consequent further disempowerment, of Aboriginal men as a whole" (p. 57).

Unfortunately this wise and constructive Report was hijacked by the Government to bring about the dismantling of Land Rights in the NT as foreshadowed in a little-publicised Discussion Paper distributed by Brough's Department in October 2006. It's all there for those with eyes to see.
Posted by mike-servethepeople, Friday, 23 November 2007 12:35:06 PM
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The entire aboriginal discussion is just so much baloney.
Posted by citizen, Friday, 23 November 2007 3:30:13 PM
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Yes, the history of the Australian government and Australia's indigenous peoples is not a pretty one. However, there are also some positive steps. For example, in a recent post ( http://indigenousissuestoday.blogspot.com/2007/11/native-title-claims-and-australian.html ) on the Indigenous Issues Today blog, there is an article on how the Native title process is having some positive effects.
Posted by flashgordon, Saturday, 24 November 2007 9:00:40 AM
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“human rights of indigenous peoples” should be the same as the human rights of every other person living under the banner of the nation.

Anything else is “racism” by another name.

Either way, anything which divides and applies differentials of rights to people by way of race, class, gender, sexual persuasion or any other private choice, is corrupt and morally reprehensible.

“Captain Cook had disobeyed his Royal Instructions”

It was over 200 years ago, it has nothing to do with how people are treated today. Get over it!

As has been previously pointed out, endemic child neglect and abuse is the sort of behaviour which a "responsible" government cannot ignore.
When such endemic abuse and neglect is discovered, we and the children should thank our selves we have a (federal coalition) government with the moral fortitude to do something, unlike the (socialist state) government in Darwin.
Posted by Col Rouge, Saturday, 24 November 2007 11:06:07 AM
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Col ,

Are you saying that it was quite ok for Howard and the Nationals to exclude Aboriginal People in the NT from the application of the Racial Discrimination Act in the implimentation of the Intervention by suspending it's provisions ?

Downer thought it would net a few votes - but admitted it didn't work .

For me I'm glad they went out on their ear .

It took him 11 years too long to say "symbols are important " for Aboriginal People.

My guess is he had his views well and truly set by the Nationals and the National Farmers Federation from Mabo on.

And just as they are always trying to limit farm workers wage increases they continue to white - ant Native Title Rights .

Their indifference and ignorance was appalling and another black- armband chapter in the book of Aboriginal Australia .

We look forward with hope however for the future .
Posted by kartiya jim, Tuesday, 27 November 2007 11:12:23 PM
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I often read the posts on this site, but have never actually posted before. But I would like to share a story with you.

My mother was born to an Aboriginal woman and a white-Australian man. As such she is black but is not as dark as her family. For the government, this meant that she met all the criteria for assimiliation under the 'White Australia' policy.

Mum lived on a farm, in a timber house with both her parents and her two younger sisters. She was loved, cared for, and had a very happy life.

In early 1966, at the young age of six, two white men pulled up in ute and took my mum. All she can remember of this day was being completely terrified of the two strange men and her mother screaming and crying. Her father was not home at the time. She was only allowed to take her doll, nothing else.

Mum was taken to live with a foster family that lived in a rural town where she was the only Aboriginal person. She was treated like a slave, and was sexually abused on pretty much a daily basis by her foster father until she was finally able to escape at the age of 16. She was also forced to leave school after primary school, because her family wanted her to work in their corner store and told her that an education was wasted on a black girl.

She was not allowed to talk about her life before and was forbidden from trying to find her mother. But she never forgot who she was and remembered her mothers name. Thankfully, years later she was able to find her mum and they were reunited when she was 17.

Post cont. below.
Posted by CoogeeGal, Friday, 30 November 2007 2:10:31 PM
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Post cont. from above.

Mum is now 47, and is still haunted by those years. She has built a wonderful life for herself and has a beautiful family, and every day she amazes me with the strong women that she has become.

It frustrates me when people talk about these things happened in the past. This happened to people who are alive now. How can we pretend that this isn't an issue?

And don't try to tell me that the government thought that what they were doing was right. That is a load of rubbish. This happened because Aboriginal people where considered second class citizens (which is reflected by the fact that they weren't included under the consitution until 1967 and where once classified under the flora and fauna act)and white Australia wanted nothing to do with them.

No one will ever convince me that what happened to my mum was the right thing.

This story can be told by hundreds of Aboriginal people across this country. Some have been stong enough to be able to move on with their lives, but can we really be blame those that aren't as strong and struggle in life today?

An apology by the government and the Australian people is not about accepting resposibility, its about admitting that what happened in the past was wrong. When I talk about this issue to my non-Aboriginal friends, I always say to them 'If I told you my grandmother died, or that I had found out my fiance was cheating on me.....what would you say?'. Without a doubt, they always respond with 'I'm so sorry' or 'Im sorry to hear that'. They aren't taking responsibility for what happened but are expressing their understanding of an awful situation.

I'm very greatful that I knew both by mother and my grandmother growing up, a lot of Aboriginal people today didn't have the same opportunity.
Posted by CoogeeGal, Friday, 30 November 2007 2:11:03 PM
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CoogeeGal

I'm sorry for what happened to your mother and to the many, many other Aboriginal children and families. I hope this new Government will have the guts to ignore the rednecks (of the kind found on OLO and in the former Government) and issue an apology sometime in the first year of office. National Sorry Day would be a great occasion.

I hope the wording of an apology and the way it is issued are negotiated with Aboriginal people and that it's more than just a garden party for the rich and famous.

Like you, I am sick of the tired excuse that today's leaders were not personally responsible for the sins of the past. That rationalisation completely misses the point about reconciliation and symbolic actions.

I grew up in an institution with 200 children on average. Many of these (about 10% I reckon) were Aboriginal and I know that many of them - like many of us non-Aboriginal kids - did not have the opportunity to keep contact with their parents. In over ten years, I think not one of the 20 or so Aboriginal children ever had a visitor - probably because their parents weren't told where their children were.

It's a shameful period of Australian history and the sooner we acknowledge it the better for all of our sakes.
Posted by FrankGol, Friday, 30 November 2007 2:53:40 PM
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Good posts, CoogeeGal. I've noticed how people who oppose Aboriginal reconciliation, including an apology from the Federal government, almost invariably try to justify their antipathy to this symbolic gesture on the basis that injustice against Aboriginal people happened centuries ago.

As a young man in the early 1970s, I worked alongside a bunch of Aboriginal guys carting hay in WA. When I discovered they were getting paid exactly half what I was, despite being twice as fit and strong as me, the boss replied that it was because they were 'coons'. In later years I met Aboriginal people in North Queensland who had their wages stolen by the government in the 1970s and 1980s. Also in North Queensland, I had old-timers tell me nostalgic tales of how they used to hunt and shoot 'blacks' in the Burdekin in the 1930s.

As you say, all this is within the living memory of people who experienced these events as both victims and perpetrators. Of course it's in the interests of privileged non-Aboriginal people to try and sweep these events under the carpet, but I don't really understand the vehemence with which they oppose a symbolic apology.

After all, every non-Aboriginal person in Australia has benefited, directly or indirectly - from the dispossession and exploitation of Aboriginal people. How hard is it to say sorry?
Posted by CJ Morgan, Friday, 30 November 2007 2:58:20 PM
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CoogeeGal - thankyou for your post. I hope you don't mind, but I've cut and pasted onto my blog under the heading: "Liberals remain committed to reactionary values" at http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com

Maybe some more people will read it here and overseas. Best wishes- Mike
Posted by mike-servethepeople, Monday, 3 December 2007 9:41:49 AM
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