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.

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?

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