Bringing them home

In 2005 former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made a speech on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II lamenting that German people had not tried harder to oppose the racial extremes of the Hitler administration. He was saying Sorry.

Neville and other Australian State administrators differed as to the best age for forced removal of a child from the family, at birth or two years. This was in stark contrast to the work of Sigmund Freud since the late 19th century, then more specifically John Bowlby in 1950s London, who emphasised the importance for a person’s lifetime development of close and reliable relationship with parents and family from their earliest years throughout childhood and beyond. Not that this came as a surprise. If the Australian “Chief Protectors” saw this detailed research they chose to ignore it.

Peggy was six-months-old when her extended family could no longer stay together and were moved to Cherbourg Settlement at Murgon, Queensland, in the 1930s. For four years Peggy slept in the same bed as her mother in a dormitory while the males went to the boys’ home and were not seen again. When Peggy was four, matron decided she should start school, so she was permanently separated from her mother and told she would never return to her. At age four. “Absolutely no interaction”, Peggy recalled. “We had removed from grandparents, family, then I was removed from her … I didn’t get to know her. You got into trouble for crying.”

It was all about control, reform. “The bald head was part of the dormitory system for punishment. If you had lice you had your head shaved ... Your hair was also cut off for being naughty, speaking back, not doing your chores. You also got the strap and you got put in jail … you could even be left without any food.

“The kids who slept on the verandah were the ‘pee-the-beds’. They were called nothing else. Maybe you’d pee the bed one night because you had an upset tummy or were scared. I could see them on a winter’s morning - ‘All you pee-the-beds gotta get up’ - and they would get up in their wet clothing and you’d see steam coming off them. It was absolutely dreadful. We were cruelly treated.”

Australia has been recalling the high-spots of the1967 Referendum and the community Sorry marches, meetings, festivals and local reconciliation study groups following the 1997 Reconciliation Conference.

The Australian Rugby League held its Inaugural Reconciliation Cup on May 25 with North Queensland Cowboys playing Canterbury Bulldogs at Lang Park stadium in Brisbane. Leah Purcell sang the national anthem, two Aboriginal Aunties acknowledged the traditional owners of the land and made a reconciliation speech, Kev Carmody sang, there were Indigenous musicians and traditional dancers, and there was a large mob of children from Hopevale, north Queensland, cheering their team to victory.

Although only 2.5 per cent of Australia’s population is Indigenous their proportion in the Australian Rugby League is 11 per cent, similarly in the Australian Football League. Indigenous folk have also been very successful in academia, the professions, the media, arts, sport, politics.

But we have had to acknowledge there has been little actual change on the ground for many Indigenous communities, and government cannot make even the symbolic gesture of saying Sorry, for personal disasters like those described above, or to “disappear” the race. Prime ministerial hopeful Kevin Rudd says he will say Sorry if elected. Why not say it now?

The continuing poor living conditions of many Indigenous people as reflected in the health statistics reflects the ambivalence in political circles.

Then there’s The Stolen Wages.

Perhaps we should all send a message to the PM with the one word: 'SORRY'.