Home > Insight

Sorry is just the beginning

Apologizing isn’t always easy. Especially when you wait 200 years to ‘fess up for inflicting “profound grief, suffering and loss,” not to mention stealing thousands of children from their families. Even Hallmark doesn’t make a card for that.

The Australian government, however, recently decided it was time to swallow its pride. Newly sworn-in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology before the country’s parliament to the indigenous aboriginal population of Australia.

“For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendents and for their families left behind, we say, ‘Sorry,’”

Rudd said. “For the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say, ‘Sorry.’” The first day of the 2008 parliament session was opened with an aboriginal welcome and ceremony. Rudd said afterward, “Today we begin with one small step to set right the wrongs of the past.”

For those who may not be familiar with the history, just imagine a late starting story of Native Americans, but on an island continent in the South Pacific. The first ships of settlers/exiled criminals landed in Australia in 1788 and eventually pushed the indigenous people into reservations. In order to “civilize” the wild natives, they decided that kidnapping their children and letting white people raise them would be the best idea. The “stolen generations,” as they are called, were forbidden from speaking their own language or practicing their culture and traditions. They were often beaten for any infraction.

Only in the 1960s did the government finally stop the practice of taking aboriginal children. However, the native population remains isolated on the reservation, marginalized in Australian politics and largely suffering from the extreme poverty in which it is forced to live.

An apology, one might say, is in order.

The problem, according to many aboriginal leaders, is that the government failed to back up the apology with any compensation for the victims.

“People get paid crimes compensation for victims of crime,” Lyn Austin, head of the aboriginal rights group Stolen Generations, told a local radio station. “You are looking at the gross violation and the act of genocide and all the inhumane things that have happened to our people.”

Still, it is a step, and a step that no previous Australian administration would take. The former Prime Minister, John Howard, refused, saying it wasn’t his fault personally. And the polls say around 30 percent of Australians agree with Howard.

No one ever said reconciliation was easy.

Metro adjunct professor of Native American studies Kori Guy says an apology has never been given to Native Americans for what they went through, but that, “It is sorely needed.”

Guy said that Richard Nixon came close, acknowledging, “The first Americans – the Indians – are the most deprived and most isolated minority group in our nation,” in the introduction to the 1970 Indian Self- Determination Act. But a “sorry” for hundreds of years of oppression, it was not.

Guy, whose first language is Navajo and whose family lives on the Navajo reservation in Chinle, Arizona, said the living conditions on the reservations would shock most Americans.

“The biggest problem right now is diabetes and heart disease,” she said. Limited access to health care and education, combined with the poor quality of food available, have caused a health crisis among Native Americans, she said.

As far as Native Americans one day receiving a similar apology, Guy said, she is not holding her breath.

“It would be nice, but, because of the past, I am slow to have hope.”

And she does have a point there.

Many people, however, such as Australia’s Howard, maintain that they themselves had nothing to do with the injustice, so why should they have to say sorry or pay reparations? But life, like making amends, just isn’t that easy. We may not have taken part at the time, but we take advantage today of the land, money and position that those dark days have afforded us. The big issue, however, is that right now we are still oppressing these people, be it through refusing to give them the right to govern themselves, or through annexing their land whenever it is economically convenient. The health, literacy and employment statistics for American reservations speak for themselves.

The U.S. should follow Australia’s lead and apologize to Native Americans. (And, perhaps, a few other groups?). We should also back the words with action and funding.

Righting past wrongs – especially when those wrongs include robbing a whole people of their land and culture – is a painful process, but it is the right thing to do. A point that the U.S. should hurry up and learn.