I would like to urge everyone who has a few minutes to write a letter to
the editor of your favourite (or all your favourites) paper.
Keep it short and it will have a better chance of being published.
My letter was published in the Canberra Times today.
Trudy
************************************
The Sydney Morning Herald
Letters: Australia can afford a national apology
Date: 06/04/00
The Prime Minister's refusal to intervene in the mandatory sentencing
legislation of the Northern Territory, which disproportionately
affects Aboriginal families, has attracted criticism from the UN.
Naturally, Senator Herron's claim that the concept of the "stolen
generations" is a misnomer - backing it up with a quibble about the
numbers of children involved - can only have a cumulative effect.
Mr Howard has said on a number of occasions that "practical"
reconciliation with Aboriginal people is his priority. If so, why does
he
allow his minister to trivialise the pain, so well-documented in the
Bringing Them Home report, by arguing about statistics?
Any family can testify that the pain of losing a child is such that it
spreads far beyond the child, and his or her immediate family, into the
community and even across generations. Most Aboriginal people alive
today can recall the personal impact of that pain in some way.
Some official policy intentions to allow the Aboriginal people to
disappear from the face of Australia have been identified by reputable
historians. Our approach has not been as "benign in intent", as Herron
has argued in his submission to the Senate inquiry.
The Aboriginal people who have threatened to spotlight their plight at
our Olympic Games have been asked to "think again". We join
other Aboriginal leaders in advising against allowing any violent
expression of anger, but we also call on our national leaders to "think
again", this time about a national apology to Aboriginal people.
Surely we have a Prime Minister who is big enough to admit he has made a
mistake. Australia may not be able to afford to compensate
every person who has suffered pain as a result of past policies, but we
can afford an unqualified national apology on which to base our
shared future.
Rev Tim Costello,
President, Baptist Union of Australia.
Colin Wendell-Smith,
Presiding Clerk,
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia.
The Most Rev Dr Peter Carnley,
Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia.
Barry Ryall,
National President of Churches of Christ in Australia,
Melbourne.
As one of the 90 per cent of the not-really-stolen, more willingly
offered-up-to-be-raised-as-white generation, I can sympathise with
(Prime Minister) Howard, (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Senator)
Herron et al in their denial of the stolen generations.
For about 35 years I denied my history. I denied the institution with
other fair-skinned Aboriginal children where I was raised.
I denied the sexual, emotional, physical and spiritual abuses. Instead,
I glossed over everything - the huge house, the sprawling acres of
gardens and orchards, the cows with fresh milk, the chickens, the
summers at the beach and the neighbourhood full of kids.
At one stage I use to tell people I had an English elocution teacher to
explain my English accent!
Why did I deny my past? Because like Howard, Herron and others I was
embarrassed and ashamed of the truth and wanted things to be
different, more pleasant.
Adversity builds strength of character. If a nation can face its dark
past and admit its wrongs, what strength would there then be in this
nation's character.
E. Hodgson,
Wollongong.
The Prime Minister meets the NT Chief Minister, Denis Burke - the
irresistible force of intransigent unrepentance meets the immovable
force of truculent resistance. I will not hold my breath for some
blinding light of humanitarianism to illuminate the landscape.
Jim George,
Woolgoolga.
When I skimmed the headlines today I saw something like "Prime Minister
is brain dead". Wow, I thought, some journo's in for a
caning.
But then I noticed the article was not about the stolen generation, but
Japan.
Peter Vogel,
Faulconbridge.
It was reported on the weekend that the inner-Sydney toddler stabbed
last week was of Aboriginal descent and known to 13 government
agencies as being at acute personal risk.
Later it was reported the agency charged with supervising the child's
welfare was afraid to do what seemed the best thing - get the
toddler out of harm's way - as it was afraid of starting a whole new
"stolen generation".
How many other governmental and government-outsourced agencies think
it's better for a 22-month-old Australian to be stabbed than
"stolen" because of her racial heritage and a current violent political
debate?
Can Australian children of this ethnic origin rely on less government
protection than all others?
Paul Lynch,
Kings Cross.
What's 10 per cent? It's a great return on investment. It's a national
tragedy in unemployment. It's a sop to the Howard/Herron
conscience. It's now a symbol for racism.
John Warren,
Annandale.
I'm not so sure that it is inappropriate to compare the Government's
repudiation of the stolen generation with denials of the Holocaust.
Surely the "wedge politics" that Margo Kingston describes (Herald, April
5) - the politics of hate, and the scapegoating of vulnerable
social groups for broader socio-economic problems - was part of the
political armoury of the Nazi Party in the 1930s and 1940s?
If this is so, then responsible citizens - and our elected
representatives - must act now to stop hate from seeping further into
the hearts of
Australians.
Peggy James,
St Ives.
For goodness sake, let us have some balance in the matter of the stolen
generation.
Any similarity with the Holocaust is both outrageous and irrational.
Right or wrong, the former was meant to give a life. The latter was
intended, planned and carried out as the most inhuman, sickening
mass murder ever perpetrated against 6 million citizens whose only crime
was to belong to a different race.
If only those European Jews and their children were "relocated" instead
of exterminated.
It is sad to realise that even today there are those among us who cannot
or will not begin to comprehend the magnitude of the greatest
crime in the history of "civilised" man.
Saul Moss,
Malabar Heights.
The Howard-Herron version of terra nullius: a desolate political
landscape, utterly devoid of human values.
Greg Bowyer,
Warradale (SA).
Clive Kessler (Letters, April 4) denies himself and the nation the
opportunity to be constructive.
Since "decimate" describes the most conservative estimates of forced
removals with clinical accuracy, let's incorporate the word in public
debate.
Wouldn't it do wonders for reconciliation and for Australia's image as a
bastion of justice if politicians and commentators of all stripes
could refer, and unapologetically, to our "decimated generation"?
Carl Harrison-Ford,
Blackheath.
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