[On the Australian government apologising to Aborigines]
How quickly you guys turn the attention off the natives and onto your hostility to christianity.
17 comments
Let me analyse the situation. As you have no clue of the history of a country which is barely 100 years old, let me illustrate you. The government in Australia, although didn't commit a genocide comparable to that of the American to the Native American, nonetheless did something similar deplacing Aborigens, guess why?, to take their land. So, if you call it gratitude, and civilisation, I am the Empress of China. But, what the hell, what can you expect from ex-convicts and their guardians?
"The natives owe graditude and everything to the true australians for bringing them up into civilization. its up to them however to be intelligent and true men and be successful."
Hm. Reminds me of a little poem I once read called "The White Man's Burden" Perhaps Mr Byers should be warned that Mr Kipling was being SARCASTIC.
Oh, yes, they should be grateful for whites stealing their land, insulting their culture, and forcing them to live as second-class citizens. Nobody has a right to complain when they're oppressed as long as it's for "their own good." Not blacks, women, Hispanics, Native Americans, American colonists....
While I do appreciate your honesty in admitting you don't know anything about this issue, I fail to see why you nevertheless believe your argument has some sort of validity. In fact, your ignorance of Aboriginal history is rivalled only by some of the more insidious right-wing commentators we have here in Australia. You clearly know nothing of the practices of past Australian governments, the motives for these practices, and their legacy which persists to this day - mind you, neither do a good many Australians - yet you still presume to blithely rationalise them from your vantage point in Toronto. If you had a modicum of knowledge of the situation, you would be aware that tensions have resulted not from left-wingers attempting to revise history, but rather from right-wingers attempting to deny it. The Apology is the first step in rectifying this.
YOU have no idea what this apology is about. This apology was about the Stolen generation when many of the Native Australians were taken away from their parents normally forced by the police. The children were put into institutions where they are forced to fit in the, what was then, "white culture" then the children were adopted out to while families ether as part of the family or as servants . A lot of those kids never saw their mothers and fathers again... they were treated like second class citizens at its best... treated sub human at its worst... this is more about race and power (however religion played a small role in this but not big enough to talk about)
The people of Australia know their history because our history is so recent... and still influence the way we are. The apology makes Australia honest of what has happened and able to make unified country which Australia wasnt before.
So you, Robert Byers, who lives in Toronto should shut ur mouth and leave it alone... learn what really happened instead of making up ur own facts.
@Don'tLookBehindYou: this guy is from Toronto, however there are a minor group of people who are like this guy. generally we are immune but there are still people that are like superbugs... they just wont die what matter what we do... (like our Last Prime minster John Howard... but we (as a country) at last manage to get him off his seat...lol )
I was actually proud to be an Australian last week when Kevin Rudd made the apology, for the first time in... well a long time. After so many years under John Howard, and all the crap that we had to put up with, it was nice to have someone who stood up and said 'we screwed up, our bad'.
And, this dudes post should have finished with 'I don't know anything about this apology.' Indeed. So STFU.
I, too, felt proud to be an Australian for the first time in a while.
Even though I'm adopted myself and have always felt a sense of dislocation, I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like for those children to have been forcibly removed from their families - in many cases, screaming children dragged away by police and social workers with their weeping mothers chasing the cars down the road. The stolen generations lost their families, land, language, culture, dignity, and sense of belonging. Many of the children were horribly abused in the places they were put 'for their own safety', because of white arrogance. And this went on right up until the 1960s. Is it any wonder the effects of this are still being felt today?
Saying sorry doesn't even come close to making up for that, but it is a beginning of healing and hopefully true reconcilliation between black and white Australia. You only had to watch the old people at Parliament House with tears running down their faces, to see how important it was to them. Symbolic gestures can be very powerful.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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