Sorry

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Use this thread however you like. I really only started it because this excellent cartoon from the weekend australian deserves its own thread.

Anyone not living in Terra Australis probably won't get it but we'll explain it to you if you're actually interested.

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/9923/apologiesch6.jpg

[Kacky]

Well, you're right about the not getting it part! :p

[Jawn]

I don't get why its taking so long for Kevin to say sorry to the aboriginal people. Why do we need daily updates on the news about how Kevin is struggling with the wording. Just get up and say "sorry!" and move on.

[Kacky]

Wait...there was something about that on the news here the other day.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

I don't get why its taking so long for Kevin to say sorry to the aboriginal people. Why do we need daily updates on the news about how Kevin is struggling with the wording. Just get up and say "sorry!" and move on.

I think they want it to be super poignant and make people weep, hold hands and nice things like that.

This guy I know is publishing a book soon about his stolen generation experience. Hope it will be a good read, he's had an interesting life.

[Grumma]

I don't understand why he has to say sorry.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Because it was part of his platform to get elected and he has to keep to at least one of his policies.

(or do you just not understand the concept of the whole thing in general?)

[Jawn]

because taking kids away from their families isn't a cool thing to do. Even if the current government didn't do it, Kevin is the head honcho now so its sorta fallen on his lap to settle the whole thing.

[Grumma]

Because it was part of his platform to get elected and he has to keep to at least one of his policies.

(or do you just not understand the concept of the whole thing in general?)

bit of both.
first explanation answers what i was asking best though

and Jawn - should Germany apologise to us because we had to conscript for a war that they startde?

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Grumma...that is the stupidest comparison i've ever heard.

[Grumma]

why?
their (the Germans) actions directly caused "taking kids away from their families" as Jawn put it

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Arrgh.

1. Stolen generation doesnt have much to do with war.
2. Completely differnet situation for so many reasons! Germany's government didn't forcibly remove Australian children from their families. Plus, people who survived got to go home to their families. Even if they didnt, they actually knew who their families were.
3. Germany is a completely different country to Australia and its on a completely different continent and everything!@(!*@()*!(). This stuff happened internally.

If its comparable to anything, its that single women in Australia were often forced to give up their children in 1950s-60s.

[Grumma]

I'm still not overly sure what the whole fuss is about.
A couple of aboriginal groups have already said they're not going to accept Rudd's apology if they don't get compensation money

[Jawn]

Dear Grumma,

1. I'm almost 100% certain that conscription didn't happen in WW2. All the people who went to war then did so under their own volition.

2. The stolen generation is a completley different situation to the war.

3. As kylie said, that is the most stupidest comparison I've ever read.

[Jawn]

woah, me and kylie pretty much thought the same just then. TELEPATHIC POWAS YO!

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

awesome minds think awesomely alike.

[Grumma]

you can think what you like but I'm convinced these so-called rights groups care more about getting more money.
That and no one I'm directly related to was in Australia til the turn of the last century (as far as I'm aware of anyway)

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

I'm still not overly sure what the whole fuss is about.
A couple of aboriginal groups have already said they're not going to accept Rudd's apology if they don't get compensation money

I'm pretty sure they havn't said that EXACTLY. Some have said that words aren't as powerful as actions, but that doesn't necessarily mean compensation. On the other hand some are really super happy. There was a woman on the news the other night who was just ridiculously overcome with glee that it was happening.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

you can think what you like but I'm convinced these so-called rights groups care more about getting more money.
That and no one I'm directly related to was in Australia til the turn of the last century (as far as I'm aware of anyway)

the 1990s ?

That doesnt matter anyway. He's saying sorry on the behalf of the government, not you or the people you were related to.

[Jawn]

you can think what you like but I'm convinced these so-called rights groups care more about getting more money.
That and no one I'm directly related to was in Australia til the turn of the last century (as far as I'm aware of anyway)

I used to think that about money too, but do you think Rudd is stupid enough to admit fault and responsibility? No-one will be able to exploit the apology and get money from it.

And what does your second point got to do with the price of fish. I don't have any aboriginal descendents, but I think there still should be an apology.

It is the decent thing to do.

[Grumma]

and then there was a group that have specifically said they are going to seek compensation regardless.
have you actually ever seen or been to a problem Aboriginal area?

[Jawn]

have you actually ever seen or been to a problem Aboriginal area?

have you? where? when? Your experiences?

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Define "problem"?

once again, what the crap is your point with the second line.

[Grumma]

I've been to Bairnsdale every year since I was 2 except last.
Of the dozen or so I saw, 3 were passed on in the middle of the Princess Highway and another 2 were arguing with police (obviously that could have been about anything).
The locals said that, while about half of them were good people and were just struggling to fit in a bit, a lot of them spent their days drinking in the town centre.

I'm sure Caity, living in Cairns, could tell you about it there. Apparently it's like ghetto New York with their gangs and areas that you should just avoid completely.

There was the case in WA where the father was killed because a group of abbo's wanted his beer.

There are always problems within each population, but it has been well documented that in terms of percentage a lot of Aborginals are getting into the trouble with the law as well as alcohol and gambling related problems.
For some of them this could simply be a result of them growing up in a culture that doesn't look after itself, but a lot just don't want help and refuse to accept that things like gang raping a 10 y/old aren't ok

[Caity]

I'm not really going to bother getting into this ... if only because I've been awake two hours and am still suffering the effects of alcohol ...

But I've spent probably a full year (all up) in Aboriginal communities ... I live in Cairns where the M suburbs are generally referred to as the 'black' suburbs ... There is a street where only 'black' people live in it and it's a rule that if a 'white' person walks down it, they'll get beaten up ... At least once a week, a group of drunken Aboriginals are found passed out on the steps of my mum's work and need to be hosed off by the security guard ... We have Aboriginal Relations Police who deal with the Aboriginals in Cairns, because the Aboriginal population refuse to listen to the 'white' police, and spit on them, and cause fights ... I've been through Cape York where you're too scared to stop in a community because it's too dangerous - no matter how badly you need the toilet, how hungry you are, or how low on fuel you are.

So forgive me for using my experiences as a basis to say that yep, I think it's more about the compensation than the actual 'sorry' bit. I recognise that there are Aboriginals and communities made up of well-grounded people who are honestly having a go at improving their lives and taking away the stigma of being an Aboriginal - a very close family friend of ours is like this - and if anything, they're the ones who should be apologised to and perhaps receive an amount of compensation.

But it annoys me that people who don't make an effort, who are drunk pretty much 24/7, who grab you and make rude comments when you walk past them in the streets, who walk in front of cars on the main highway and play chicken with you, whose kids do the same thing because they know no better, who deliberately lay in the middle of the road to play chicken, who have no respect in return for the white people in the same area - it annoys me that they are so adamant they get an apology and compensation.

How can we say sorry to them, and respect them, when they in turn have no respect for us? Perhaps people will disagree with me for saying that, but it's not fair to expect us to agree with saying sorry for something that we as individuals had no part in, and 'feel sorry' for them and the hardships they've suffered. I've gotta say, in the experiences I've had, a lot of the time, the hardships have been brought on by themselves.

The only sensible thing I've heard Rudd say lately is that individuals don't need to agree with the apology. I don't.

[Caity]

.. apparently I know how to end a thread.

[kempos2112]

Im sitting on the fence on this issue. On one hand i think its not entirely their (aboriginal people) fault the way their lives are and they are stuck in a rut. Because of their colour of their skin im guessing allot of people would choose not give them a job or rent a house to them, and without a place of residence you cant exactly get a job, so they are kind of screwed from the start unless they make a huge effort got get out of the rut at the start.

On the other hand, its a different government a different bunch of people from those who originally instigated the stolen generation. It would be about as pointless as England apologizing to America for their invasion hundreds of years ago.

I think they should get an apology but not for the stolen generation, but for the general racist way white australians have behaved, and instead of compensation (which will probably be blown on boose) they should have some help with life skills, getting a job, etc.

Thats my thoughts.

[Grumma]

As far as jobs go I don't think race is too much of an issue.
The problems such as any language/cultural boundaries would be more of a concern to an employer.

As far as renting homes go I would have to say most people would be shying away from aborigines because the tales they've heard about homes getting trashed etc.
It's not like those tales came from thin air though. There has to have been some un-isolated incidents for them to have come about

[Caity]

Drive down Murray Street, Cairns, and you'll see these incidents.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Well I'm glad someone with a bit more sense that Grumma answered this so I can at least get into a decent discussion.

I am not going to try and dispute your experience, Caity, after all you're the one who has lived and experienced this. It is horribly sad that this situation apparently exists in Cairns, and if it is accurate, people in the rest of Queensland and the rest of Australia really need to know more about it.

To me, the overall tone of your argument carries the same sentiment that the government policies prior to 1967 did. That is, that the Indigenous people of this nation are not human beings equal to white people, but they are animals, or little children.

You make it sound like they should have to earn this apology. I definitely do not agree with this. The government did it and should take ownership of it and apologise for it.

Okay, so some of my views after this might sound ultra-extreme. So pack my suitcase and send me to Cuba if you want.

The stolen generation and the invasion of Australia aren't the only things that have happened to Indigenous people. Across the years, the government of Australia has imposed so many different policies and theories on Indigenous people that as a race they have become damaged. You can't expect 200 years of oppression to be slowly lifted and for everything to be fine and dandy. There is going to be some deep scars that need healing for peace to be made in the future. It probably won't happen in our lifetime but this is a tiny baby step towards making things better.

I think Aboriginal spiritalists have a similar take on this. Whilst mine is more sociological/anthropological, they believe that their ancestors demons and pain haunt the current generation, so that is why many Indigenous people today are so troubled.


So, in summary: In my opinion: the white man has caused great damage to the black man in Australia, and its not the job of the black man to act the way the white man thinks he should. It's the white man's job to make attempts to repair the damage.

Caity: Don't take any of this personally, I don't actually think that you think that Indigenous people are inhuman, its just that your disourse makes it appear this way.

[Grumma]

Caity pretty much said what I said, but in a more proper manner.

It's all well and good to treat them like equals but if they're going to take taxpayer dollars and spent it on grog they can get fucked for all I care

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

So, bogan whities do that too.

[Grumma]

And I don't agreement with them getting doll payments either

[Caity]

Kylie: I agree with you on a few points, in that what the Government did was wrong - taking children away from families shouldn't happen, regardless of race, regardless of skin colour.
I agree with you in saying that yes, what happened was wrong.

My main point (garbled though it may have come across) was that I find it frustrating (for lack of a better word) that so much fuss is happening over this apology in terms of compensation. They've wanted an apology for decades, and it's finally happening, and one of the first things that arose from it was how much compensation would be given. There was no "Oh thank you for realising the error of your ways and apologising" - instead there were demands for compensation up to $1bn which I think is crazy.

The Government today is doing a helluva lot more for the Aboriginals than ever before. Some might think the situation in NT with the military helping out is extreme but again, reflecting on my experiences with some Aboriginal communities, I think it's the only way anything good will happen there.

I understand that in some cases, people in those communities have no way of getting a better job, or getting a better lifestyle on their own and I empathise with them because everybody should have the chance to create a better life for themselves. But when you hear and see people like that who are given money for food and clothing and then go and spend it on alcohol, I honestly can't feel sympathy for them.

I'm not necessarily saying that Aboriginals should be changing their way of life - I understand that, like any culture, they have traditions and they have beliefs and they have a cultural hertiage, and no way am I going to try and say that having those things are wrong.

By the same token, I do disagree with some of their traditions and native title claims (this is going way off the Sorry topic, so ... uh ... sorry!).

We have dugongs up around here. They're endangered, I believe. I've seen one in my entire life. Not many people see even that much. Yet, the Aboriginals are allowed to hunt them, and eat them. It's tradition. There's so much uproar at the moment about the Japanese hunting whales for "research" yet something worse is happening MUCH closer to home.

Anyway.
I'm sort of forgetting what I'm trying to say. So .... I'll shut up for now :)

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Dole* itself is such a supid word with horrible connotations.

Anyway, we live in a democracy and " we can't stop people drinking. We can't stop people gambling. We can't stop people having substance problems. We can't stop people from making mistakes that cause them to be less well off than they might otherwise be" (Tony Abbott, not me. I hate him so much)

[Caity]

Building on one of the things I said but clarifying it:

My brother used to work in the little IGA down the street.
He was telling me last night the amount of people, mainly Aboriginals, who would come in, bring up a thing of nappies, bottle of milk, and then ask for
a pack of <insert brand> cigarettes. They'd EFTPOS the transaction and the Error 51 would come up saying there's insufficient funds. So then the person would look at the pile of things, and put back the nappies and milk but keep the cigarettes.
That's a prime example of where they simply aren't trying to help themselves. The amount of community groups around Cairns who try and work with Aboriginal communities to try and combat nicotine addiction and alcohol related problems is crazy - but the communities don't want to be helped.

[Grumma]

It's because of the democracy we can't stop all those if you wanted to go into it more.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Well Kevin 08 aint doing the compensation thing, and as I said before, some agree and some disagree with that.

Dugong hunting was around before whities different to Japanese whaling. Its not commercial, its purely based around tradition. So I don't have a problem with that at all.

I don't really have much more to say on that without getting personal and mentioning caitys boat, so I won't.

*edit* But I do think you're straying from the point by mentioning bad stories. It really doesn't help and makes me sad.

[Grumma]

it won't be a tradition anymore if there is none left

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

They've been doing it for thousands of years - they know how to make it sustainable.

[Grumma]

the world has changed a fair bit over the last thousand years in case you hadn't realised Kyles

[Caity]

Kylie, they don't know how to make it sustainable because they're still doing it and there's less and less of them around.

What's my dad's boat got to do with it? It's not like we're killing off something endangered every time we're out in it - we never catch anything! *sigh*

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

back to the original postLOLZ. I honestly just started this thread with the intent to showcase the cartoon. I think its a really accurate portrayal of this current time in Australia. Like, cartoonz are good like that.

[Caity]

I know you did Kylie :) But I think we're all actually having a decent discussion :) and that's good, because it's making us think and be nice!

[Grumma]

who said anything about being nice?

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

nothing to do with the actual boat caity.

If its not sustainable, how come the dugong/turtle arnt extinct yet?

[Grumma]

Because the rate at which their numbers are declining isn't substantial enough to have caused that as yet

[Jawn]

got any facts or figures to back that up Grumma, or are ya talking out your arse and hoping we don't notice?

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

who said anything about being nice?

Its better to have proper discussions rather than just being a jerk and saying whatever crap pops into your cranium.

[Grumma]

got any facts or figures to back that up Grumma, or are ya talking out your arse and hoping we don't notice?

Kylie didn't have any figures to show their numbers WEREN'T declining.
Why don't you have a crack at her?

[Caity]

I'm enjoying this, to be honest. It's making me think about things, rather than just talk crap all the time :)

[Jawn]

Kylie didn't have any figures to show their numbers WEREN'T declining.
Why don't you have a crack at her?

Kylie never claimed the number of dugongs weren't declining. She merely pointed out that considering they have been dugong hunting for thousands of years and they aren't extinct yet, they have a pretty good understanding on how to keep the dugong population from being extinct.

You were the one that made the claim that the population was declining. I just wanted the source from where you got this.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Kylie didn't have any figures to show their numbers WEREN'T declining.
Why don't you have a crack at her?


Here's an interesting thing about dugong hunting. http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/corp_site/key_issues/conservation/natural_values/indigenous

I didnt say dugong levels weren't declining, but I don't think It is the fault of traditional hunting that they are. Its probably for the same reason that loads of other species are endangered - development, pollution and other associated things.

Its in their interest for the hunting to be sustainable.

An important objective for Traditional Owner groups reef-wide, and for the GBRMPA, is to ensure that hunting of green turtles and dugongs occurs at sustainable levels ....



Heh, I just realised that my username is amusing in this particular discussion. DUGONG EATIN' IS RAD.

[Caity]

For what it's worth, I think I was the one mentioning dugong levels declining. Which they are. No, I don't have statistics but it's a common fact that they're declining.

.

[Grumma]

You were the one that made the claim that the population was declining. I just wanted the source from where you got this.

It's pretty general knowledge that their numbers are declining.
or if you want a "source" I'll just say Caity, cos she mentioned it first

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Jawn and I keep saying the same things but I swear it isn't on purpose.

[Caity]

Apparently Grumma and I are doing the same thing ... again but not on purpose but a helluva lot more frightening.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

U R Luverz!

[Grumma]

Why do you think she's coming to Melbourne?

[Caity]

Question: does anyone really think I"m stupid enough to get involved in another longdistance relationship that began on here?

[Grumma]

who said anything about relationship :p

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

No, Caity.

Plus, If you ever did anything with Grumma I would e-slap you so hard.

[Caity]

Hahaha it's okay, I wasn't planning on it :)
I've got a lil more self-respect than that :)

[Julian]

Convicted Geelong drink driver Glen Atkinson would also seek the return of his licence, arguing the apology would confirm white law had no juristiction over him, Ms Apma said.

Ms Apma had been working around the clock to prepare the claims.

She said the government should compensate members of the stolen generation because 'it was the right thing to do'.

All other Aborigines deserved compensation as well, ms Apma said.

Mr Atkinson said he would also use his no-juristiction claim when he appealed his drink driving conviction in Geelong Magistrates Court next Friday.

Mr Atkinson believed he was above white law because the Givernment broke its own law when it removed him from his family as an 18 month old.

Mr Atkinson was confident his defence would hold up in court.

Police charged Mr Atkinson with driving while disqualified, driving an unregistered car, and drink driving after pulling him over at Belmont on October 25, 2006.

There's no way I would want to be included in the apology

[Grumma]

haha worth a try I spose :p

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Well youd better send them the memo to leave your name out of the "On behalf of the government, and julian from the tle forum..." then :p

[Julian]

because taking kids away from their families isn't a cool thing to do. Even if the current government didn't do it, Kevin is the head honcho now so its sorta fallen on his lap to settle the whole thing.
But kids are still being taken away from their parents for various reasons.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

For various VALID reasons to do with child safety.* These kids were taken away from their parents purely because their parents were Aboriginal.

*and in Australia these days, the aim is to return children to their parents eventually

[Grumma]

which may, coincidently on occasions, have been a valid reason

[Julian]

I suggest everyone read this article
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22870809-25717,00.htmlAndrew Bolt: Betrayed by a black myth
TOO many Aboriginal children have been sacrificed to the myth of the ''stolen generation'' and the truth must be told before more die.

If Prime Minister Kevin Rudd can't find real members of the "stolen generations" to say sorry to, no problem.

The media will just invent some for him. Or, in the case of Prof Lowitja O'Donoghue, reinvent.

Twice in the past week the ABC has reported O'Donoghue's angry demand that the new Rudd Government say that "sorry", and pay compensation.

And both times it called her "a prominent member of the stolen generations".

In fact, O'Donoghue, former head of ATSIC and now working with Rudd on his apology, is a prominent member of a generation of activists who claimed to have been stolen.

Indeed, she best symbolises how little truth there is behind the "stolen generations" myth -- a myth so toxic that it's implicated this month in the ghastly deaths of yet two more Aboriginal children. And the ABC best symbolises how determined much of the media is not to notice.

O'Donoghue was for years our most famous member of the "stolen generations", becoming co-patron of the National Sorry Day Committee.

It was Prof Peter Read, the historian who invented the "stolen generations" phrase, who in a 1996 speech singled out both O'Donoghue and the late Charlie Perkins as the two great examples of the 100,000 Aborigines he suggested were stolen from their parents for racist reasons.

Perkins, who rose to head the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, actually denied he'd been stolen. His mother had instead pleaded with missionaries to send her talented son to a boarding school to get him the education he used so brilliantly.

On the other hand, O'Donoghue said she was indeed stolen as a child from her family.

Only when I confronted her six years ago did she at last admit she had not been stolen, but abandoned.

Her white father had dumped first his eldest two children, Eileen and Geoff, at a missionary-run home for abandoned and sick Aboriginal children in Quorn, and come back years later with three more, including Lowitja, who never saw him again.

"He wanted to move on," O'Donoghue conceded. "He didn't want to be straddled (sic) with five kids . . . I haven't forgiven him."

Only the youngest of the six children stayed with their Aboriginal mother, who'd agreed to send the others away, and it's her we should pity most, given what I know of her fate.

All this the ABC should know. And when O'Donoghue publicly confirmed these facts, she also said she no longer wanted to be called "stolen": "I now prefer to use the term 'removed'."

Attention ABC: Why do you refuse to listen to even her?

Of course, "removed" still isn't accurate. The correct word is in fact "abandoned", or even "saved".

You may think I make too much of this. But O'Donoghue's case is symbolic because it is astonishingly common, and on these pages I've outlined perhaps 30 others like it.

In case you missed them, here are a few -- all of people once claimed by Prof Robert Manne, the leading "stolen generations" propagandist, to have been stolen under a racist policy to "help keep White Australia pure".

There's Peter Gunner, whose mother in fact signed a form asking he be sent to boarding school; Lorna Cubillo, rescued when she was an eight-year-old orphan in a bush camp without a guardian; activist Rob Riley, whose mother refused to take back her child or even visit him at Sister Kate's home; and "Topsy", who was just 12, abandoned by her white father and riddled with syphilis.

Some such false claims, as the "stolen" Daniel Forrester admitted in a court case, were made for the compensation, and others to push an ideological point. But for many Aborigines -- such as O'Donoghue, I think -- it must simply have been less painful to say they were stolen than to admit their parents didn't want them.

Friends of Colin Johnson, our "first Aboriginal novelist", say that's exactly why he, too, said he was of the "stolen generations", despite being neither stolen nor, it turned out, Aboriginal.

So perhaps you understand why Manne, despite years of taxpayer-funded research, cannot name even 10 of the 100,000 children we're told were stolen for racist reasons, not welfare.

I suspect many people at last realise they've been sold a myth, which is why the new Liberal leader, Brendan Nelson, not only refuses to say sorry, but this week referred more accurately to the "separated generations".

Some of you will accuse me of being heartless and unhelpful in writing all this. Surely a "sorry" can't hurt?

But I write this not out of heartlessness, but out of fury. What enrages me is not simply that Australian children are robbed of a pride in their past. Although they are.

It's not that Aboriginal children are taught to see this country as so racist they should give up. Although they are.

And it's not just that the humanitarians, who saved children such as O'Donoghue, are now vilified as racists. Although they are.

No, it's that the "stolen generations" myth is killing black children right now. And those who keep alive this myth have blood on their hands.

I won't repeat all the examples I've given here before of children left in grave, even fatal, danger by officials who were too spooked by the "stolen generations" to save them.

It was only last week that I recorded two more such cases, and I know each time I write of this I bore many and offend the rest. But the past few days brought reports of two more deaths so terrible I cannot let this deadly myth be revived by reporters eager to seem nice by repeating untruths.

How terrible? Read for yourself:

A 12-year-old girl who died from blood poisoning after allegedly being left in the dirt outside her Darwin home would still be alive if she had been taken to a doctor, the Darwin Magistrates' Court heard today.

The girl's foster carers, Toni Melville, 43, and Denise Reynolds, 42, are charged with manslaughter . . .

A niece of the accused women told the court she saw the girl on the morning she died, lying outside in the dirt. She said she asked why the 12-year-old was outside on the ground and one of the women replied she had "peed herself and soiled herself so we put her outside . . ." Yesterday the court heard that on the day the girl died, she was outside covered in ants and said she could see "fairies in the trees".

The court also heard evidence two Family and Children's Services officers came to the home the day before the girl died and saw her lying on the floor crying.

When they knelt down beside her and asked what was wrong, the accused women allegedly said she was just scared she would be taken away.

An Aboriginal girl taken away? Horror! Instead, the dying girl was left where she was, for reasons untold.

And there's this, from Sydney:

The day before five-month-old Mundine Orcher died, officers from the Department of Community Services went to the home of his carers and delivered a fridge and a washing machine, but did not look at the boy.

The Aboriginal boy died the next day, after enduring attacks over the previous four weeks . . .

Explained another report:

DoCS said the "indigenous community needs to be treated, in child protection terms, with constant sensitivity to the historical impact of . . . the stolen generations".

However, the Ombudsman warned that the needs of children were easily overshadowed when such concerns are considered. In the case of Mundine and another member of his family, the Ombudsman found "evidence that the focus of intervention was other than their needs".

Here is the ghastly irony. I can name more dead children, betrayed by the "stolen generations" myth, than Manne can name children truly stolen.

Surely too many children have been sacrificed to these lies. Let's try truth instead, and hope we can save the rest.

[Grumma]

although we, in some part share the same view.
Andrew Bolt is an idiot

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

No.
There weren't any measures other than 'Aboriginality' to determine whether or not children were taken away and that's the reason why it was wrong.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

arrgh,

I hate andrew bolt and he is not credible and i refuse to read anything he says.

[Julian]

No.
There weren't any measures other than 'Aboriginality' to determine whether or not children were taken away and that's the reason why it was wrong.

Prove it. 10 characters

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

btw julian mr bolt once compared homosexuality to paedophilia :)

[Julian]

I don't care who wrote the article. Read it, and say what is wrong about it.

The person who came up with the stolen generation name called two people, Lowitja O'Donoghue and Charlie Perkins as two of the examples of the 100,000 aboriginals taken away from their homes. Perkins denied ever being stolen, his mother pleaded with missionaries for him to be taken to boarding school. O'Donohuge claimed she was part of the stolen generation for years but later admitted she had been abandoned.

The fact is, you can't prove they were just taken away for being aboriginal.

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

I'd hate to think that everything in the 'Bringing them home" report is a lie. Apart from these quotes, there are heartbreaking stories there as well.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen/

. By 1911 the Northern Territory and every State except Tasmania had `protectionist legislation' giving the Chief Protector or Protection Board extensive power to control Indigenous people

in some States and in the Northern Territory the Chief Protector was made the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children, displacing the rights of parents
I admit that this just say 'in some states' but I think think the following sentence implies that all states did that in effect anyway.

In the name of protection Indigenous people were subject to near-total control.

Other relevant laws by state and territory

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreocstolen/stolen68.html

This isnt from some two-bit website. It was a national enquiry.

[Grumma]

I don't care who wrote the article. Read it, and say what is wrong about it.

The person who came up with the stolen generation name called two people, Lowitja O'Donoghue and Charlie Perkins as two of the examples of the 100,000 aboriginals taken away from their homes. Perkins denied ever being stolen, his mother pleaded with missionaries for him to be taken to boarding school. O'Donohuge claimed she was part of the stolen generation for years but later admitted she had been abandoned.

The fact is, you can't prove they were just taken away for being aboriginal.

2 out of 100,000 still leaves 99,998 children

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

He does go onto list a few more, but it would be extremely hard to be believe that each of the 100 000 children had a valid reason for removal.

Apparently they liked to remove the lightest skinned people because they could 'assimilate' more effectively in white society.

[Julian]

Can anybody get me the names of those 998,000 children?

[Kylie eats dugong for tea]

Well there's Joe Blogs and Blogsy Joe and...
of course not!

I don't think that information is available to the general public and they probably didnt even keep proper records.

Oh wait, while we're at it, here's the list of 6 million people who were held in concentration camps as part of the holocaust.

Danny Bob
Johnny Ji...

[Matt]

I've been to Bairnsdale every year since I was 2 except last.
Of the dozen or so I saw, 3 were passed on in the middle of the Princess Highway and another 2 were arguing with police (obviously that could have been about anything).
The locals said that, while about half of them were good people and were just struggling to fit in a bit, a lot of them spent their days drinking in the town centre.

I'm sorry, who was it that brought the booze to the aboriginals in the first place... :rolleyes:


There are always problems within each population, but it has been well documented that in terms of percentage a lot of Aborginals are getting into the trouble with the law as well as alcohol and gambling related problems.
Compare this with the amount of aboriginals that are living below the povery line, or the 19% unemployment rate (ABS). Then you can go make some assumptions about alcoholism in different ethnic groups.
Go make a comparison of criminal activities, alcoholism via socio-economic class and not via ethnicity and you might just get a clue
For some of them this could simply be a result of them growing up in a culture that doesn't look after itself, but a lot just don't want help and refuse to accept that things like gang raping a 10 y/old aren't ok
You seriously think that absolutely no white people in australia have ever been convicted of rape?... nah it's just all the aboriginals :rolleyes:


Grumma, the first thing I need to tell you is to grow the fuck up. I could go and de-construct all of your posts to show just how wrong you are, but I really don't feel like doing that much writing...

[Grumma]

Have fun with that.

and just because someone gives you alcohol doesn't mean you, and the however many generations after you has to drink it. i didn't discount their lack of education (which often is a childs parents fault) in those statistics and i never said a white fella had never raped someone.

[Craigels]

i dont think we should say sorry mainly cos we (that is people who stood up for them or were born after all that stuff happened) didnt do anything wrong.

its kinda like if 2 kids are fighting in the playground and some other kid who had nothing to do with it comes in and says sorry for fighting, it just doesnt make sense.

[Matt]

i dont think we should say sorry mainly cos we (that is people who stood up for them or were born after all that stuff happened) didnt do anything wrong.

its kinda like if 2 kids are fighting in the playground and some other kid who had nothing to do with it comes in and says sorry for fighting, it just doesnt make sense.

Come back when you've got a clue, liek seriusly! lul!!11

[Steph Format]

didn't the Living End write a song about the injustice of the stolen generation? :rolleyes:

yeah, okay... I'm not Australian, I fail.
Kylie, if you could point out who all everyone is in the little comic, I'd be much obliged. I recognize Howard and Kevin 07 but not the other guys.

quick question: do the Aboriginal peoples have any sovereignty? like, do they actually own 'reservations' or small territories or anything? because if they do I can kinda understand 'my culture, my laws.'
here, the Native American tribes have their own administrative system on the reservations, but the American government supersedes all that and shhh it's best if you don't ask too many questions. like, for example, the time my idiot friends drove out to the middle of nowhere desert and got busted for smoking pot, but did NOT get arrested because they were on tribal land and it was a tribal cop, not an Arizona cop, that caught them.

mm yeah.

I guess my uninformed viewpoint is:
official state apology, as a symbolic gesture and to finally make peace: good. (put it this way; not apologizing is really just a big fuck you.)
butt-ton of cash distributed in reparations: bad, for the most part.
sorry, I don't know how recently all that went down.

[Grumma]

i think they may own the land (as you would a house block), but it's still the Australian governments land par se.
though I'm not 100% on that

And Matt, pretty sure Craigels is about 14 - how much of a clue would you expect him/her to have?

[Julian]

Haha this reminds me of this John Safran vs. God episode http://youtube.com/watch?v=UuZx4Gda9xs

[Craigels]

quick question: do the Aboriginal peoples have any sovereignty? like, do they actually own 'reservations' or small territories or anything? because if they do I can kinda understand 'my culture, my laws.'


im pretty sure they have rights to their sacred areas which they own with the government and they look after the land and stuff.

grumma im 15, but only just

[Julian]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23182149-28737,00.html
The parliament cannot take those bits of Bringing Them Home it finds congenial and ignore the rest. The report's logic is impeccable. If children really were systematically removed to end the existence of Aborigines asa distinct people, then the crime was definitely genocide. As Raymond Gaita has argued, quite accurately, if Bringing Them Home is a true account, the crime of genocide is "over-determined".

There is no doubt that the majority of Aboriginal people today believe the Stolen Generations story is true. If parliament agrees with them, but fails to offer compensation, it will reduce next week's apology to a politically expedient piece of insincerity that yet again humiliates Aborigines by showing we do not take their most deeply-felt grievances seriously. It is also worth observing that by apologising, the Rudd Government will go a long way towards demolishing one of the Labor Party's strongest calls on loyalty: its sense that it alone offers a historical progression towards "the light on the hill". One thing the university historians who first established this story kept largely to themselves was that the major pieces of relevant legislation were all passed by Labor governments.

In NSW, the 1915 Aborigines Protection Amending Act, which allowed the Aborigines Protection Board to remove children without recourse to a hearing before a magistrate, was the work of the first Labor government in the state headed by James McGowen and W.A.Holman. The Act's 1943 amendment, which allowed Aboriginal children to be fostered out to non-indigenous families, was introduced by the Labor government of William McKell, one of his party's favourite sons who later served as governor-general.

In Western Australia, the 1936 Act that historians claim allowed A.O.Neville to implement his policy of "breeding out the colour" was the product of the Labor governments of Phillip Collier and John C.Willcock. By apologising, Kevin Rudd and his colleagues will be effectively trashing the reputations of their party's predecessors.

The problem with the Bringing Them Home report is not its logic, but its facts. As regards NSW, the story of the Stolen Generations was largely formed in 1981 by the historian Peter Read, then of the Australian National University (now at the University of Sydney). Read's work had an enormous influence on Aboriginal communities by saying institutionalised children had not been failed by alcoholic parents who neglected to provide them with food and shelter.

It was all the work of the white man, of faceless white bureaucrats who wanted to eliminate the Aborigines.

Bringing Them Home did no original research of its own in NSW. Instead, it relied upon Read's writings. It quoted verbatim his claim that the files on individual children removed by the Aborigines Protection Board confirmed his case: "Some managers cut a long story short when they came to that part of the committal notice 'Reason for board taking control of the child'. They simply wrote 'for being Aboriginal'."

If it's pretended this was commonplace, however, it is a serious misrepresentation. In a debate with Read last year at the History Teachers Association's annual conference, I asked him how many files bore those words. He confessed to the audience there were only two. When I investigated the same batch of 800 files in the NSW archives, I found there was only one. Its words were "Being an Aboriginal". There were two others with the single word "Aboriginal".
I also found that, although popular songs and the Bringing Them Home report gave the distinct impression that most children were removed when they were babies or toddlers, there were hardly any in this category. The archive files on which Read relied show that between 1907 and 1932, the NSW authorities removed only seven babies aged less than 12 months, and another 18 aged less than two years. Fewer than one-third of the children removed in this period were aged less than 12 years. Almost all were welfare cases, orphans, neglected children (some severely malnourished), and children who were abandoned, deserted and homeless.

The other two-thirds were teenagers, 13 to 17 years old. The reason they were removed was to send them off to be employed as apprentices. In reality, the NSW Labor governments were not stealing children but offering youths the opportunity to get on-the-job training, just like their white peers in the same age groups.

Read knew these Aboriginal youths were being apprenticed, though he never admitted they constituted the great majority of those removed. He claimed the authorities regarded them as stupid and consigned them to degrading jobs: the boys to agricultural work and the girls to domestic service. But at the time, this is where most white Australians were also employed. These were the two biggest single employment categories for men and women. The government was not asking Aborigines to take occupations any more onerous or demeaning than those of hundreds of thousands of their white countrymen.

Moreover, these teenagers were not removed permanently, as the charge of genocide infers. The majority of them returned home to their families when they turned 18 and their apprenticeship was complete. The archival records show this clearly, and Read found the same when in the '80s he recorded a little-publicised oral history of the Wiradjuri people.

Yet in 2002 he could still claim publicly: "Welfare officers, removing children solely because they were Aboriginal, intended and arranged that they should lose their Aboriginality and that they never return home."

There is another very good reason why it was not the policy of the government to remove Aboriginal children from their parents: it wanted them to go to school. It pursued this objective with both action and money.

The NSW Department of Public Instruction constructed schoolhouses and employed schoolteachers on all the 21 Aboriginal stations set up between 1893 and 1917. It also provided schools and teachers on any of the 115 Aboriginal reserves that had enough children of school-going age to justify it.

On those reserves where there were not enough children to warrant a dedicated school, the Aborigines Protection Board insisted they must go to the local public school. In the early years, it tried to coerce Aboriginal parents into sending their children to school by withholding rations if they failed to do this. In its later years, it organised for all Aboriginal children to have a hot midday meal at school.

In contrast, in the '20s and '30s, there were only three welfare institutions in NSW designated for Aboriginal children. One at Bomaderry housed 25 infants to 10-year-olds, the second at Cootamundra accommodated 50 girls aged up to 13 years, and the third at Kinchela housed 50 boys aged up to 13 years.

At about the same time, about 2800 Aboriginal children in NSW lived at home with their parents and attended public schools.

The 125 places at the welfare institutions represented a mere 4.5 per cent of all the places provided for Aborigines at public schools. On these grounds alone, no one can argue that the government was conducting a systematic program to destroy Aboriginality by stealing children from their families. A similar ratio of schools to welfare institutions operated in most other states, where the same conclusion deserves to be drawn.

In Western Australia and the Northern Territory, the two greatest villains in this story were A.O.Neville and Cecil 'Mick' Cook. Both publicly endorsed a program to "breed out the colour" with the ultimate aim of biologically absorbing the Aboriginal people into the white population.

This was an obnoxious policy that well deserved Kenneth Branagh's portrayal of Neville as a fastidious, obsessive bureaucrat in the film Rabbit-Proof Fence.

However, it was also a policy that had only a minor focus on children. It was primarily concerned with controlling Aboriginal marriage and cohabitation patterns in order to foster the rapid assimilation of part-Aborigines. To define the policy as part of the Stolen Generations thesis is a mistake. In any case, it was almost a complete failure.

In the '30s, marriages arranged by these administrators totalled less than 10 a year. Neville proved as inept at rounding up children as he did at match-making. The Moseley royal commission recorded in 1935 that over three years, the one government settlement in the state's south at Moore River took in only 64 unattended children. This was out of a total Aboriginal population in the state of 19,000. It was less than 1 per cent of all Aboriginal children in the state. Neville dealt with handfuls of children, not generations.

The only successful program from this era was the NSW Aboriginal apprenticeship system, which operated from the 1880s to the 1940s. It provided real jobs and skills and gave young Aborigines a way out of the alcohol-soaked, handout-dominated camps and reserves of their parents. Indeed, it is a policy that could well be revived today to rescue children from the sexual assault and substance abuse prevalent in the remote communities. If Rudd led a real Labor Government, he would be more concerned about emulating the down-to-earth policies devised by his party's predecessors among the old cream of the working class than pandering to the misinterpretations of the recent academic historians who created this issue.

[Julian]

Well there's Joe Blogs and Blogsy Joe and...
of course not!

I don't think that information is available to the general public and they probably didnt even keep proper records.

Oh wait, while we're at it, here's the list of 6 million people who were held in concentration camps as part of the holocaust.

Danny Bob
Johnny Ji...

Of course there were records taken. One of the claims used in the Bringing Them Home report said the reason for aboriginals taken away was written as 'for being aboriginal'. As this article shows, once they asked the person that found that out(The creator of the stolen generation term), he admitted there were only two children taken where that was the reason given.

[Grumma]

Are people still talking in this thread?