Australia will issue its first formal apology to the country's Black indigenous people, better known as Aborigines, next month, in 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 literal translation of the word Aborigine is: the people who were here from the beginning. Aborigines lived in areas that were being settled by the Europeans, and were forced off their land as towns and farms were developed. Thousands were massacred to make way for farms and settlements.
The Feb. 13 apology will be the first item of business for the new Parliament. 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 government hopes the apology will signal the beginning of a new relationship between Australia and its original people.
The apology will be made on behalf of the Australian government and does not attribute guilt to the current generation of Australian people. The government has previously ruled out financial compensation for the impoverished Aborigines. "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," said one cabinet official.
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. Ya think! 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. Sound all too familiar? That’s the same lame line of reasoning followed when the subject of reparations to Blacks (for slavery) in the U.S is broached. We were taught that actions speak louder than words, but it appears that doesn’t apply when money is involved.
From 1910 until the 1970s, around 100,000 mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their parents and placed into institutions under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and saving the children was a humane alternative. Sounds like massa was doing the same thing to Black women in the outback that he was doing in the slave quarters.
From the late 1830s the remnants of the tribes in the settled areas were moved onto Reserves and Missions where they were 'managed' by White men and were forbidden from teaching their children their language and customs. Separation was an official government policy which lasted for many decades and today, many Aboriginal people do not know their origins. They have no idea which tribe they are descended or the names of their parents and/or grandparents. 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.
Recent scientific studies have concluded that the Australian Aborigines were the original Americans! In other words, the theory is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were adventurers who arrived in the North American continent before the Vikings or Columbus. This theory states that the ancestors of the American Indians are Australians Aborigines. Separate studies by both Brazilian and US scholars are revealing that the first humans to enter the New World more than 14,000 years ago were not Mongoloid peoples as has always been thought - but were instead people of the same race as Australian Aborigines.
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