Andy Rowell, 25 February 2008

Sometimes words do matter. Earlier this month the new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, opened the country’s Parliament by issuing an apology to the country’s indigenous peoples, the Aborigines for their suffering. For over sixty years, an estimated 100,000 Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their parents, becoming known as the “Stolen Generations.” 

After years of campaigning by Aborigines, Rudd issued a three hundred and sixty one word apology that included saying: “For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people, we say sorry.”

While Rudd has to be congratulated for making the apology, it carried few political risks for a new Prime Minster eager to show a break from his predecessor, John Howard. However, his statement is in danger of being seen as sweet words that should be swallowed with a bitter pill. For without compensation, and a radical rethink of some of Australia’s laws, Rudd will not heal the wounds of the Aboriginal people. For once, words will not be enough. Rudd now has to put his money where his mouth is and pay up.

Australia’s crime against the Aborigines was barbaric and horrific. From 1910 until 1970 predominantly mixed-race children - mostly of Aboriginal mothers and European fathers - were forcibly removed from their homes and taken to orphanages, or foster homes, away from the family, community and culture. Often these vulnerable children were abused or raped, or forced into slave labour. Many never saw their parents or brothers or sisters again. The ultimate purpose of this barbaric practice was to “breed out” their colour, which would eventually lead to the extinction of the Aboriginal race.

Despite these barbaric practices, “white” Australia turned a blind eye to the suffering and plight of the aborigines, which had been systematically abused since the coming of the first settlers some two-hundred years before.  One anthropologist called it “selective amnesia”. In 1971, an anonymous Aboriginal poet wrote in the local Aboriginal paper: 

“At the white man’s school, what are the children taught?

Are they told of the battles our people fought?

Are they told how our people died?

Are they told why our people cried?”

Australia’s true history is never read,

But the Blackman keeps it in his head..” 

It was only just over a decade ago that, in 1997 an Australian government report, entitled “Bringing Them Home”, finally admitted to the problem of the “Stolen Generations”, and recommended that the government should not only apologise, but also offer financial compensation. 

But the government at the time was headed by former conservative leader, John Howard, who only offered a statement of “regret”, saying that he could not say “sorry” as this somehow meant the present generation was to blame for past actions. More importantly, Howard believed that saying sorry would open the floodgates for compensation. It has taken Howard’s removal from office for an apology to be offered.

But an apology only goes so far to heal the wounds. As Rudd was making the historic speech a vocal rally of about 1000 people marched on Australia’s Parliament House, demanding an end to what they consider racist legislation, that still allows state intervention into Aboriginal communities. 

Others wanted compensation for their shattered lives and the ongoing injustice that is being perpetuated against them. Rudd may have addressed the Australian Parliament but in a country that prides itself on its democracy, Australia does not have any Aboriginal senators or MPs.

Aborigines may live in one of the most affluent countries on earth, but their life expectancy is 17 years shorter than other Australians. Crime, drug addiction, alcoholism and infant mortality rates are also significantly higher among Aborigines. Just days before Rudd’s announcement, campaigners in the country warned that Aboriginal languages are declining at record levels.

Of the 100,000 or so people forcibly removed from their parents, only one person has so far received any compensation.  Bruce Trevorrow was just 13 months old when in 1957, he was taken to hospital for treatment for stomach pains. When he arrived, it was recorded that he had no parents, and he was handed for adoption. He never saw his father again and was only reunited with his mother at the age of 10. Trevorrow won a court judgment that his alcoholism, depression and inability to hold down a job were attributable to his having been "stolen" as a child.

Others from the “Stolen Generations” have spent their lives trying to come to terms with their trauma. Rudd’s remarks provoked a mixed response from them. Leonie Pope  was forcibly fostered and then adopted by parents who moved to Britain. She was told her real parents were dead, and only recently returned to Australia. She responded: “I'm not sure [the apology] will bring me complete closure. It does create acceptance and healing, but I think the fight for the Stolen Generation still has a long way to go”

Seventy year old Frank Byrne was forcefully removed from his parents at the age of five. "The government came to Christmas Creek where we had a mud house and told me I was been taken away," he recalls. "My mum was completely ignored. She was not a human. That's what they thought in those days. The government fella said: 'I am your total guardian'. They broke my mother's heart and her spirit. She lost her mind. They put here in a madhouse in Perth. But she wasn't mad. She was pining for me."

Frank’s mother died when he was twelve. “I've been hurt”, he says. “I've been hurt very deeply. Since they took me away from my mother I have lived only in sorrow and anger. Sorry is a word. It's just a hollow word."

Leading Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson also thought Rudd’s remarks were not enough “Blackfellas will get the words, the whitefellas will keep the money,” he said. Within days, said Pearson, “the Stolen Generations and their apology will be over as a political issue.” He demanded that government’s proposed $31 billion in promised tax cuts should be spent on compensation for the “Stolen Generation.”

Others are arguing that Britain, as the former colonial power in Australia, should also apologise for its role in the atrocities committed against the Aborigines.  The leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, an Australian based in London, argues that Britain bore a “heavy historic responsibility” because they too had overseen the removal of mixed-race children.

“The point I make in calling on the British government to endorse the apology is not only were the British responsible, for example, in wiping out the Tasmanian Aborigines, which was the worst form of genocide, but [so were] English intellectuals who inspired the assimilation policies that led to the Stolen Generation,” argues Robertson.

Aboriginal leaders support the call for a British apology. “The British should acknowledge the role they played in the dispossession of Aborigines and in the policy of removing children,” argues Michael Mansell, a prominent Aboriginal lawyer. “The English have certainly got blood on their hands and owe Aborigines an apology for the way they treated them. A country is all the richer if it can face up to the wrongs of its past.” 

Forced separation is not the only crime the British committed in the last century. In the 1950s Britain was looking for a place to test its new nuclear bomb. Although inhabited by Aborigines, the central and western deserts of Australia were said to be perfect because they were “empty”. That decade the British exploded nine nuclear bombs, with almost five times the power of the two bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although three Aboriginal tribes lived in the area, the British maps were re-written with the words “Vacant: No aborigines”. In May 1957, the British paper, the News of the World, ran with the headline: “Tests will harm no one”. 

One young Aboriginal, Yami Lester was around 100 miles way from where the bombs went off: “There was this bang, really loud,” he recalls. “I don’t know how many days after that, but most of the people became sick and we all got skin rashes and diarrhea, and sore eyes and red, red, eyes. You couldn’t open them because they were hurting so much,. And tears were coming from them, and some people died.”

Over fifty years later, the Aboriginal people of Australia are still crying and hurting. One elder, Ada Jarrett, from New South Wales says, “I just hurt so much for the young people today. Because they don't know anything, all the good things that we had – traditional dances in the night, story telling. They're not able to survive.”

It will take more than three hundred and fifty words to heal the pain. Meanwhile, the British government has stayed surprisingly silent. There is absolutely no apology in sight.