Stolen Generation

[Lignum]

That's $10 innit? (please say yes)

Thats $310.000 of rate payers money

[pawnhead]

While we shouldn't go around wringing our hands in despair because we've discovered some skeletons in the closet, we also shouldn't plunge our heads into the sand and loudly deny that these things happened (like some of the contributors to this thread have done). .

That's a strawman argument. I don't see anyone in this thread denying anything.
You might want our govt. to shout sorry from a rooftop, but how's that going to help the Aboriginals, unless of course it aids them in some sort of compo claim.

It's the 21st century, and they are afforded all the rights and priveliges that this country has to offer, and in a lot of cases, more priveliges than any non-Aboriginal. Certainly their current situation has a lot to do with the clash of cultures, and we do have a responsibility to aid them in whatever way we can. That's not an easy endeavour though.

Buckets of money and truckloads of appologies won't stop them getting drunk and mistreating their own wives and children though. Of course that's not an analogy of all Aboriginals, but it's undeniable that there are many Aboriginals who don't want to take responsibility for their own actions, whilst they want all other Australians to take responsibility for the actions of our forebears.

If they want to revive their rich cultural history, then they have every opportunuity to do so, and to be proud of it. If they want to dwell on past injustices, then they have every opportunity to do so, and every right to protest about it.

But it's time to bury the hatchet. If they want to live and succeed in 21st century, multicultural Australia, then they have every opportunuity to do so. Or to not do so, if they so choose.

And that is exactly what the problem is, as I see it. They could do everything, but they don't have to do anything.

[Rossluck]

As for whether kids should be taught about it, I don't see an issue with it, as long as the context is in terms of how Australia has since attempted to right the wrongs. Our past governments have done a lot of wrong, either in the mistaken belief that they were helping, or the even more mistaken belief that we had the right to do what we want to 'savages'.

I'm happy for my kids to know about it, so long as it's not from the point of view that we need to do anything about it. Feel sympathetic but not responsible.

Thanks Silent. One thing I've noticed about writing contentious stuff in this forum is that people quite often don't actually read what you've written and, then run a strong argument against what they think you're saying.

My initial statement was more or less along the lines of what you've said. I'm not asking for "sorry" or self flagellation or anything. I just like the idea of representations of history being relatively accurate, and not fairy stories that gloss over the bad bits.

We are righting a lot of the wrongs of the past in this country, and we can do this by acknowledging that they happened. This is where history is at it's most useful: learning from the past how to improve the present.

If you read any anthropological text books on Australia's indigenous people before the arrival of Europeans, it completely changes your view of them. Anthropologists see them as contemporaries, with a complex, rich, and extremely valuable culture and heritage. What worries me is that after 200 years of exposure to our culture, they've lost touch with, and respect for, their own.