I have a question.
Should I have to condemn October 7, or the Bondi shootings?
No one is asking people of today to be guilty because you are responsible. We are asking them to acknowledge and understand, then take active and sincere steps to rectify.
Someone comes into your house. Claims it for themselves. They beat you up when you tell them to leave. They eat your food, sleep in your bed and use your clothes. I come along some time later. They invite me in and give me the spare room. They move you from the couch to the doghouse outside. That person passes away. You tell me that your house was stolen by that person. I respond, "well I didn't do it, so why should it matter to me. Move on".
I agree totally with condemning the actions in Bondi and wanting to see it never happen again.
I feel sorrow and anger about it.
I do not feel guilty about it or feel like I have any ownership of the cause or act itself - because I didn't. Care but not fault. Work together to resolve but not with blame.
The impact of the Bondi killings should not negatively impact on my lifestyle though (not saying it does - just making the point).
My own exaggerated example would be someone buying a sharp knife in Woollies and going on a rampage a year later. The individual and the act is the problem - not knives, selling knives or owning knives. I should not have to line up for a security screening before I buy a steak knife.
Our society often loses perspective and focus when we look at problems - choosing more and more control over addressing the real issues. It is much easier to make more restrictive rules than genuinely root out the problems.
There is an element of that lost perspective in addressing indigenous affairs.
We are not looking at it the right way.
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The date (like 9/11) is not the damnation of that date though. There are only 365 days most years - there have been atrocities for every day in history I am sure but it would be pointless making the anniversary of each date a nationally bad day. Remembrance and respect is not the same as actively maintaining the pain of a critical day. It works for good things but not for bad things - because the good part of remembrance and joy can be genuinely tied to the anniversary every year. The bad feelings and pain should only belong to the actual event - without the date itself being contaminated. How much pain and shame should people feel if they are born on Hitler's birthday? None!
To make one point clear though - I agree the reason a date is celebrated is still relevant. If the first indigenous person came to the country on 26 January, the date would have meaning. If 75,000 years later the land was illegally claimed by a foreign power on the anniversary, 26 January is still the best day for the anniversary. But if the reason for the holiday is the date it was taken I openly concede it is wrong.
I just don't see changing the date as anything more than a cosmetic bandaid against the actual problems and issues that have to be addressed and resolved. It won't fix anything; but fair enough it would send a message about recognising the past.
Thinking about it through this discussion, I don't actually have a problem with the date being changed to anything meaningful or randomly selected. I do think the reason for the 26 January date is the wrong reason.
Call it Australia Day and have it reflect the agreement day (between which 'acceptable' individuals though I wonder). Any date can still represent a celebration of this country without it being tied to the wrong historic event.
We celebrated the Queen's Birthday on a day that wasn't her birthday and it was changed by some States or Territories to suit themselves. The same date became the King's Birthday celebration. A date is not fixed in concrete when it comes down to it.
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For the 'taking of my home' issue, it is more complicated than your question.
Do it to me and it is illegal. Do it to a country and it is not. Unfair but it has always been that way. Australia 200 years ago is no different.
The key issue about traditional ownership is that the world has moved on from tribal society. "I was born here and this is my country too" transcends historic tribal ownership. As unfair as that is - it is how the world has to be.
There is actually no difference between Roman conquest and the invasion of Australia 200+ years ago because every single person involved on the bad side of the act is dead. It is not a 'get over it' - it is a need to recognise and accept what happened, work on genuine ways to resolve it once and for all, but not with any level of guilt or 'responsibility' for the act.
The British Empire did it. Captain Cook lied about the occupation of the land. It cannot be undone because in this case the situation has moved far beyond "my ancestors were here first". In a tribal society, invasion leads to battle and possibly to one side being wiped out, taken over or absorbed. Guaranteed some tribes will have taken other tribes land - but it happened so long ago that the original occupants are irrelevant.
My father spoke to an elder a long time ago and the elder spoke of a group of people they called something like "the thin men". They were terrified of them and killed them all over time. My father went to the National Library and found books that confirmed it - but political machinations saw that history removed. There is no place at the table for those events.
Historic crimes of this nature just cannot be reversed or undone after time has passed. You can't punish children for the sins of the parents but our attempts at resolution are partially that.
Countries now have to look at those born in the country, or born to parents of that country as fair and equal sharers of the land. People who have worked their lives to earn money and buy the land have a right to that land.
Once the tribal survival need for specific areas of land passed, the weight of 'need' granting ownership is gone. Is that unfair? Yes. Is it how it has to be? Yes. The idea of a tribe holding more land than they would ever have 'used' because they may have passed over it once or twice a year at most is not a relevant ownership benchmark.
Population growth and global movement of people has made it impossible to hold to traditions and customs of land ownership and land rights from tribal days. For the same reason that it is not acceptable in our society for a traditional owner to pick up a spear and kill someone for walking on their land without permission, or for an elder to claim a woman because it is their right - the world has changed.
What has to happen is recognition of the pain and suffering in our country's history. The ongoing racial abuse has to be corrected and I think that education, and the passage of time and generational thinking, will get somewhere with that.
The land cannot be 'owned' to the exclusion of those who have an equal right by birth or citizenship to public areas - or there is sure to be bloodshed and resistance condemning us all to a never-ending cycle of pain and outrage.
This is far beyond a simple humanitarian issue or an issue of fairness for traditional owners. Fairness for all has to be factored in or we won't get anywhere. And I genuinely think most traditional owners want the same fairness for all along with recognition of their loss and suffering.
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