The following link gives a critique of John Pilger's
film - "Utopia" by an Indigenous person.
It makes for interesting reading:

http://theconversation.com/review-pilgers-utopia-shows-us-aboriginal-australia-in-2014-21905

Regarding the apology - I was not equating atrocities
committed in Poland to those committed in Australia.
And to suggest that is absurd. What I was doing was -
merely trying to show the importance and symbolic relevance
an apology had and what it meant to the victims.
The emphasis was on the
apology.

Peter Costello tells us in his Memoirs
when writing about when John Howard opened the Reconciliation
Convention in Melbourne on 26 May 1997:

"...the audience wanted an acknowledgement that they
had been wronged by Government policy. Since the leaders
who had instituted and administered the policy were all long
out of office or long dead they wanted the people who could
speak in the name of the Government to acknowledge this past
wrong and apologise for it."

"The whole issue was symbolic... but a lot of politics is
symbolic...Jeff Kennett in
Victoria, Dean Brown in South Australia and Tony Rundle
in Tasmania all apologised to Aboriginal people on behalf
of their Governments. They dealt with the issue and moved
on... the federal Government symbolically lost. It was unable
to either resolve the issue or move beyond it."

"An apology was eventually given. It was one of the first
acts of the new Labor-Government elected in 2007.
... By getting the symbolism
right the previous Government could have saved a lot of
energy for the policies that would have delivered better
education or better health to Aborigines or lift Aboriginal
children out of poverty."

cont'd ...

Ooops - (he,he,he) I made a typo in the link I cited
in my previous post regarding John Pilger's
film "Utopia."

Here is the correct link:

http://theconversation.com/review-pilgers-utopia-shows-us-aboriginal-australia-in-2014-21965

the aboriginal woman was right that she was not the problem. I doubt as a woman she would of had any voice if still in the traditonal setting. The real problem is with the leftist history revisionist who ignore every evil in aboriginal culture and highlight and distort every 'evil ' done by the settlers. Pilger and his co horts are pathetic.

Foxy, "I was not equating atrocities committed in Poland to those committed in Australia."

Yes you were.

Why else would you go top the lengths you did to draw that dreadful, disgusting parallel?

In so doing you also diminish the dreadful atrocities committed by the Nazis.

many Australians
felt that they had been poorly served by their
teachers and by the nation's historians.
Foxy,
Although I agree with this I simply can't believe Reynolds said that. Was that said at a time when the guilt industry stocks were at their highest ?

Paul1405,
You have your experiences in suburbia & I have mine in the Bush, obviously totally different.

Dear Individual,

I am so glad that you asked about the statement
made by the historian Henry Reynolds and that you
are interested in the circumstances under which
that statement (and others) were made.

It came from the book that Henry Reynolds wrote,
"Why Weren't We told?: A personal search for the
truth about our history." I bought the book
whilst on a trip to Canberra. And I highly
recommend that you try to get hold of a copy.
It makes for interesting reading.

Here's just a snippet taken from it:

"Historian Henry Reynolds has found himself being asked
these questions by many people, over many years, in
all parts of Australia. The acclaimed, "Why Weren't We told?"
is a frank account of his personal journey towards the
realisation that he, like generations of Australians,
grew up with a distorted and idealised version of the past.
From the author's unforgettable encounter in a North
Queensland jail with injustice towards Aboriginal children,
to his friendship with Eddie Mabo, to his shattering of
the myths about our "peaceful" history, this bestselling
book will shock, move and intrigue. "Why Weren't We Told?"
is crucial reading on the most important debate in
Australia as we enter the twenty-first century."