13 February marks the 18th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations (13 February 2008)
In recent years, the Anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations has focused on what it says about the place of Indigenous Australians in the land in which they were the First Peoples. It has been seen to mark a new beginning, a hope that was disappointed in the conduct of the Referendum about the Voice to Parliament.
That perspective is right. This year, however, the Apology has a deeper relevance to Australian life. It represents a decent and respectful shaping of relationships between Australians at a time when that decency is under threat. In much public conversation, people do not speak to one another but shout at one another. On social media, respect is often surrendered to abuse, the search for common ground to polarisation, and respect to contempt, reaching out to cancelling. The choreography of human engagement with one another does not represent respectful conversation but war, complete with masks, hateful slogans and the edge of violence. Hatred can express itself in destroying property and in killing, as in Bondi. Political exchanges are directed not at truth and justice but at embarrassing opponents, not finding common ground, but at winning a battle.
The choreography of the Apology, in contrast, speaks to the challenges facing us today. It was not shouting about Indigenous issues, but a conversation between representatives of the Australian nation and Indigenous representatives. The Prime Minister made the Apology in person to representatives of the Stolen Generations. He was supported by the Leader of the Opposition Party. In doing so, he emphasised that all Australians are equally entitled to respect, and that the Government is responsible for ensuring that all Australians are treated equally regardless of their race and history. The Apology also recognised that Indigenous Australians have a special place in Australia as the First Peoples. They are not the objects of Australian policy, but persons who are agents in their own lives.
This conviction of the Apology needs to be reaffirmed in the face of the disrespect for people who are different prevalent today. The removal of children was dictated by the disrespectful claim that the children were defined, not by their shared humanity, but by their inferior race. This claim was used to justify the massacres, displacement, expulsion from land and the cultures it nurtured, violation of sacred places, the taking away of their children, discrimination enshrined in law and in custom, racism and condescension within Australian life, and imposed marginalisation. It obscured the heroic story of endurance, resistance, guarding of culture and language, organisation, pride and constant struggle for justice that were also part of the Indigenous experience.
The dignity and respect involved in the Apology need to be kept in mind both in negotiating the relationship between Indigenous and other Australians and in responding to the social fragmentation evident in public life today. It needs to be enshrined in public life and in the day-to-day conduct of politics.
The Apology was a step toward reconciliation. Despite the scars left by the conduct of the Referendum on the Voice to Parliament, the memory of the Apology brings joy and hope both to our Indigenous members and others. But its ritual and its words, however, show that the path to reconciliation will demand great change. To accept and to implement that is our common challenge.
Read more about the National Apology via the National Museum of Australia.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ writes for Jesuit Communications and Jesuit Social Services.
