'Sorry' to Aboriginals

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he will apologize to the Aboriginal people on February, 12, the day the federal members of parliament adjourn in Canberra (Australia's version of Washington, D.C.), according to the Courier-Mail.

He told guests at The Lodge on Saturday night that he wanted indigenous people to be "full participants" in society, rather than marginalised Australians.

But his plan to use the opening of Parliament – when the new government traditionally outlines its reform agenda – to push a new compact with indigenous people will be controversial.

Former prime minister John Howard steadfastly refused to apologise to the Stolen Generation – a move that damaged race relations but gained the former Liberal leader widespread backing.

The paper also reported that Canberra's local Ngunnawal elders will in some way welcome the folks to their land.

However, according to the newspaper The Australian, Jenny Macklin, the Indigenous Affairs minister, isn't sure the date will stick, as she wants to make sure all members of parliament are consulted.

A major point of contention in Australia is the relationship between the country's Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Aboriginals, having been pushed to the outer limits and considered non-human and, well, just way to different, have been calling for an apology.

A report called "Bringing Them Home: The Stolen Children Report," written in 1997, details among many other things, what happened to a generation of Aboriginal children taken from their parents who were deemed unfit. These children were sent to homes and taught how to assimilate into white culture, thus stripping them of their own.

Rudd's impending symbolic gesture is big, especially given the fact that the prime minister he just unseated refused to say anything.

The best part, though, is the fact that most Australians are pretty much against it. "What about the white children who were taken from their parents?!" is a common complaint, as well as the suggestion to make available an "opt out of the apology" list.

It's an acknowledgment of what took place, as well as the subsequent treatment they received as a result of racist attitudes toward them based on skin color. I kind of wish I were blogging a decade ago when I was in the midst of my race crisis and subject (or at least no longer ignorant) to similar chants of covert racism such as these. It's really an amazing thing, and I wonder how it feels to reject the notion of an apology -- a

apology. No, generations of today were not there 230 years ago. So I wonder what the problem is?

Some of the commenters, which I'm sure represent much of the angst over the issue, say that being taken from ones family happens to white people, too. Yes, of course it does. And that aspect of it is no less traumatic.

Something else went on for the Aboriginals, and I say this not being Aboriginal. They were not only taken from their families; they were taken from their culture. The language, the celebrations, the customs, all of it was stripped from them the minute they were snatched. Wearing a badge of color means to most people that there is a shared heritage. I can't relate being taken from a shared cultural group, but I can relate to searching for the belonging that my skin color dictates.

"What are you?" "Where are you from?" Half black and white. Los Angeles. Of the first answer I am not totally certain, because others have placed a litany of other ethnicities on me. And as a sociology professor once told a classroom full of grad students in New York, half of ethnicity is what you bring to it. But half is what others bring to it.

Aboriginals taken from their families grow up knowing they are Aboriginal. But as a descendant of a member of the stolen generation said this morning on ABC, the language is gone. The culture is gone.