>Dear Friends, > >Last night the National Sorry Day Committee issued the following media >release. Please distribute it as you wish. > >Best wishes, > >John Bond > > >Statement from the National Sorry Day Committee > >The Government and John Herron are wrong in their statements about the >stolen generations, as reported in the Daily Telegraph, 1 April. > >They are wrong factually. In 1981 Dr Peter Read of the Australian National >University (home tel 02 6247 5979) published a pamphlet entitled 'The >stolen generations'. That was the origin of the phrase, and was chosen to >emphasise that the practice has gone on for five or more generations. He >has researched the issue since the 1970s, and estimates that 50,000 >children have been removed from their families under Government policy in >'an attempt', as he expresses it, 'to terminate and prevent the >reappearance of the nation's Indigenous people'. No-one has suggested that >every Aboriginal child was removed. However, Dr Read estimates that in the >peak periods of removal, 1916-28 and again in the late 1950s, one in three >part-Aboriginal children were removed. > >They are wrong morally. Whatever the intention, the effect was horrific >trauma for the children who were removed. The policy is probably the >greatest single cause of alienation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal >people in the nation. Its effects are a continuing disaster. > >They are wrong politically. Their actions are tearing us apart on racial >grounds. The Government mouths a commitment to reconciliation while >further alienating us. > >They are wrong economically. An apology would have saved the nation the >tens of millions of dollars now going to lawyers. Most Aboriginal people >wanted, above all, an acknowledgement of the suffering. When they did not >receive it from the Government, the courts offered the only avenue to seek >this acknowledgement. > >The Government is engaged in historical revisionism of the kind used by the >Japanese Government in the 1930s, when they claimed that their imperial >conquests were for the good of Asia. > >If the Prime Minister can acknowledge to the National Textile workers that >they were unintentional victims of the policy of free trade, apologise to >them and compensate them, why can't he say the same to the Aboriginal >people who were removed? > >(Rev Dr) John Brown, AM (Ms) Audrey Kinnear >Co-chair Co-chair >National Sorry Day Committee National Sorry Day Committee >Tel (02) 6259 7435 Tel (02) 6282 3455 > >2nd April 2000 > ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
