home | news l

"Sorry", the first step

By John MacFarlane, Special to the Gazette

15 February 2008 - The Gazette Canada - Where does hope begin? Can it emerge from language alone? How about from a single word?

In Australia, one word - "sorry" - has found deep resonance with the nation. That single word, now spoken, has given rise to a sense of unity and a renewed hope where many thought they could never exist.

That word drew massive cheers from crowds around Australia when the country's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, said it for the first time during the first motion of his fledgling government on Wednesday. It was addressed to Australia's indigenous peoples, specifically those members of the "stolen generation"- victims of a century of government policies of assimilation, children who were taken by force from their families.

In Sydney, at Martin Place, a pedestrian street that cuts through the downtown core, office workers in business suits watched Rudd's speech telecast on a big screen from under umbrellas as rain showered down from a low, dark canopy of cloud. In the rough Sydney neighbourhood of Redfern, the birthplace of the aboriginal reconciliation movement, thousands more gathered. The scene was repeated across Australia, in public settings and school auditoriums. Huge crowds in Canberra assembled in Parliament's Great Hall and on the lawns outside.

The word arrived about a minute into the speech: "For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry." A cheer went up across Martin Place as it did around the country, and the image on the screen cut to aboriginal guests in Australia's Parliament in Canberra, where Rudd gave the speech, many of whom were weeping after hearing a word they thought they would never hear.

The apology occurred in a week where the Canadian government's promised apology for residential schools has been in the news for less hopeful reasons, with First Nations leaders complaining they have been shut out of the process.

Canada's and Australia's policies on indigenous peoples, and their stories of reluctance in coming to terms with the shame of the past are in many ways mirror images on opposite sides of the world. The differences, said Ronald Niezen, an anthropology professor and Canada Research Chair at McGill University who specializes in indigenous rights, are "trivial, minor."

Canada's residential schools program was established in the 1890s as part of a national policy of assimilation of "savage" peoples. More than 150,000 children attended the schools until the 1970s, when they were largely disbanded. In Australia, similar policies of assimilation saw aboriginal Australian children taken from their families starting in the mid-1800s. In both countries, churches were prominently involved in "civilizing" the indigenous children. Between 1910 and 1970, as many as 30 per cent of aboriginal children in Australia - about 50,000 in all - were removed.

Rudd quoted from the official policy of assimilation of the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, who - only in the last century - wrote: "Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white."

In both countries in the 1990s, rumblings of lawsuits and a series of inquiries and commissions set up to investigate the effects of these programs opened up painful wounds from which horrific stories of abuse, racism and mistreatment emerged. In both countries, large segments of the indigenous populations have been marginalized, decimated, ruined. In 1997, Australia's Bringing Them Home report detailed the stories told during a national inquiry as well as the enduring consequences of the policies that separated children from their families. This came a year after Canada's own Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which offered similarly stark observations.

Australia's Bringing Them Home Report recommended an official apology, which the Howard government chose not to follow, although it did issue a motion of reconciliation in 1999. That motion, like Canada's Statement of Reconciliation in 1998, was criticized for being cynical and avoiding real responsibility.

In fact, a secret 1996 Canadian government document that was leaked to the media in 1998 advised against using the word "apology," and suggested instead "an acknowledgment or expression of regret. It could be worded in such a fashion so as to not lay blame on anyone."

"Legally, when you say you regret something, it isn't taking responsibility for it," said Niezen of the Canadian statement. "It's saying, 'Well, too bad that happened.' But you're not liable. It placed the emphasis on the abuses that took place in the residential schools but didn't completely disavow the policies behind them."

Even Canada's 2005 Agreement on Reconciliation and Compensation should not be interpreted as a genuine apology or gesture of goodwill, Niezen said, but rather as the outcome of the realization that, through lawsuits, the government would ultimately be blamed anyway.

"It was evident that the aboriginal plaintiffs who had experienced residential school abuse were going to win (in court). And it was going to wreak havoc on both government and churches if aboriginal plaintiffs were individually allowed to go ahead and sue.

"It wasn't a voluntary thing that the Canadian government did out of a feeling of responsibility and remorse, I'm quite sure. And the Canadian government has been reluctant - and I don't understand it, fully - to come out with a clear and explicit apology."

Concern about compensation was frequently cited in Australia in the days and weeks before the official "sorry."

But this is where Canada and Australia's similarities diverge: Canada has created an official fund that has satisfied the Assembly of First Nations, but it has not yet delivered a formal apology. And, with the exception of a small ($5 million Australian) fund set up in Tasmania, Australia has not yet addressed compensation. But it has now said sorry, in a very public, meaningful, genuine fashion. ...

Political speeches tend to be about identifying similarities or highlighting differences, and the powerful speeches are able to correspondingly unite or divide their audiences.

Rudd's speech, riveting and often overwhelming, sought a common ground upon which empathy could be achieved. He spoke of a woman he had met, Nanna Nungala Fejo, now in her 80s, whose family dug holes in the banks of the creek near their rural camp to hide their children when the "welfare men" came. They were found and taken anyway, when Fejo was just 4 years old, her mother "clinging to the sides of the truck" as they were driven away.

Rudd asked Fejo, who was separated from her siblings for years and never saw her mother alive again, what he should say about her story. Her reply, he said, was: "Families. Keeping them together is very important. It's a good thing that you are surrounded by love and that love is passed down the generations. That's what gives you happiness." Who could disagree?

Just as those few sentences highlighted a common humanity, Rudd's speech as a whole - capped by an invitation to the opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, to co-chair a "war cabinet" for indigenous policy - built unity out of the understanding that Australia's policies have been flawed at best and hideous at worst. In Sydney's Martin Place, there was a sense of both relief and optimism that the constant rain could not dilute.

Australia's media, if anything more ideologically varied than Canada's, were unanimous in their praise of Rudd's humble, controlled, statesmanlike performance. The Australian, a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, called Rudd's apology "A renaissance moment for Australia's soul." The Sydney Morning Herald, a more centrist title, rosily declared on its front page that "Together we'll build a truly great nation." They printed photos of people - indigenous and non-indigenous alike - weeping during Rudd's speech at various venues around the country, and letters containing various declarations of pride.

"It was an expression of relief, of personal grief, of closure, and of great hope. It was extraordinary," said Barbara Livesey, chief executive of Reconciliation Australia, a national organization at the forefront of reconciliation efforts. "We had talked about wanting to move from a sense of shame to a sense of shared pride. And I think that acknowledgement of our shared history and the mistakes that we made might actually allow us to develop that shared pride."...

Canada and Australia share more similarities: Both are vast, largely unpopulated and among the wealthiest countries on Earth, and both have a political climate in which right and left exchange power with some frequency.

In that context, Australia's apology is significant in the way it symbolizes the country distancing itself from the ideologies of Rudd's predecessor, John Howard. Politically, Rudd's first steps as Australia's prime minister can be understood as not-so-subtle rejections of some of Howard's most prominent policies. Rudd's first move, within days of his election in December of last year, was the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, and Wednesday's "sorry" his first motion in a new session of Parliament.

Australians like the term "bloke," which tends to mean a tough, masculine, presumably heterosexual man, and Howard was a bloke's prime minister, with an arrogance that endeared him to some and a stance on the indigenous peoples' plight that was something like tough love without any of the love - what the newspaper the Australian described understatedly as a "tense relationship" with the aboriginal population.

In his 13 years as prime minister, Howard refused to apologize. In 2000, Howard declined to take part in the massive "reconciliation march" of 200,000 people across Sydney's Harbour Bridge in spite of strong urgings from his cabinet, who were perhaps sensing an evolution in public opinion. On Wednesday, he was the only living former prime minister not in attendance in Canberra.

Even if Australia has moved forward, it is well understood that "sorry" on its own can only go so far. Rudd's speech laid out specific goals for the bipartisan commission, first among them addressing the housing problems of indigenous Australia and the appalling 17-year gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. If benchmarks are not met, Rudd's gesture, ultimately, will have failed.

But there is a consensus that success is surely more attainable with the country united, with common humanity and equality at its root.

"My experience leads me to believe that you do have to get people to connect with this at an emotional level first," said Reconciliation Australia's Livesey. "And when you do that then great things are possible because the motivation of people is so different. When you're actually connected at a human level and you see this is about basic decency and doing the right thing, I think it is much more powerful."

In Canada, many steps have been taken toward reconciliation, but the formal apology promised in 2005 is still to come. There are indications the Assembly of First Nations' negotiations with the Conservative government have become strained - a government that was conspicuous, along with only the United States, New Zealand, and Australia under Howard in not signing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples last year.

But Australia's recent evolution suggests that if the current government does not deliver a genuine apology, another Canadian government, sometime in the future, will. This week, the grand chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Phil Fontaine, called Rudd's apology "monumental for our indigenous brothers and sisters in Australia, and throughout the world on righting a great wrong."

Source: The Gazette Canada

Further information: 'sorry' and stolen generations issues page - includes news index and external links

|| click to go to the top of this page