Still serving the master after the master has left

By now you've probably heard the great news that as its first official act the Australian government of Kevin Rudd has formally apologized to the Aboriginal population.  I read about it this afternoon in an AP article, but nearly fell out of my chair when I hit this part:

From 1910 until the 1970s, about 100,000 children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were dying out, and saving the children was a humane alternative.

We've all seen the press bend over backwards to parrot an official government line, but this is truly an extraordinary and sickening example; even as the Australian government is recanting and condemning its own former policies, AP is making sure it gives us the official justification.  A careful parse shows that "based on a premise" is the AP writer presenting the rationale that was given when the policies were being implemented, but why even pass along that kind of shameful rationalization now of all times?

AP may have realized just how awful this sounded as well, because by this evening the article had been changed to omit "saving the children was a humane alternative" (the original version is currently available here if you want to compare).  But as if to compensate for this improvement, AP also replaced a quote of Michael Mansell saying "It was clearly the Australian policy to breed out those Aboriginal children that were grabbed ... it was an attempt at genocide" with this:

Michael Mansell, spokesman for the rights group the National Aboriginal Alliance, said the word "sorry" was one that "Stolen Generation members will be very relieved is finally being used."

And the word "genocide" is now completely missing from the article, despite the fact that it was a key finding of the official Australian national inquiry into this issue.  AP isn't alone in this; according to Google news, out of approximately 3100 hits for articles about the apology, only 90 refer to "genocide", and nearly all of those were published in Australian news outlets.  There's a strange mechanism at work here, as though the press understands that using the word outside of the standard/approved frames—and especially in a discussion of official accountability—may eventually lead to it being applied in contexts that are completely unacceptable (like, say, the extermination of Native Americans by the US government).

But setting aside the press response, this is a great moment.  Congratulations to Kevin Rudd's government for having the resolve to go through with this after years of stalling and double talk by former governments.  I can only hope that some day we'll be fortunate enough to have a government here that's willing to take responsibility for even a fraction of its many crimes.

Comments

[Save the Oocytes]

The aboriginal folks aren't pleased that there's no reparation pay though. I understand they picked out the lightest-kids, the mixed-race ones, in an attempt to eventually whiten them to a civilized level. The BBC is being much less gentle than the AP about this issue, it seems.

[petey]

i don't hear in the AP report what john hears. i didn't know about the separations/govt kidnappings, and therefore not about the excuse given, so i'm glad to heave both pieces of information.

[John Caruso]

petey: I agree that it's good to know the rationalization, and I don't really have a problem with that. I didn't express it well, but it's actually the way AP chose to frame it that bothers me. Imagine this alternative:

From 1910 until the 1970s, about 100,000 children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws. The official justification given at the time was that Aborigines were dying out, and saving the children was a humane alternative. However, in its 1997 report, a national inquiry concluded that these policies had "the purpose of eliminating Indigenous cultures" and amounted to "genocide".

(Or to satisfy Godwin's Law, imagine a similar quote about Nazi eugenics that includes the rationales without any significant caveat or rebuttal.) Reading the original, it wouldn't be unreasonable to conclude that the Australian government is just being forced to apologize for a magnanimous but misguided policy rather than a conscious campaign to wipe out the Aborigines.

If you're interested, there's a good film (a drama, not a documentary) called Rabbit-Proof Fence that brings these policies down to the human level.

StO: We'll see what happens with reparations now—it's still early days (the government line was "Sorry, the first step"). Speaking generally, I'm not sure that reparations as direct payments are the best way to address these kinds of issues anyway. Rudd's government is proposing measures to reduce or eliminate the various forms of inequality in the Aboriginal population (life expectancy, literacy, income, housing, etc), and as long as they follow through on that talk with the level of funding it deserves I think it's a better solution than just handing out lump sum payments.

[petey]

"From 1910 until the 1970s, about 100,000 children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws. The official justification given at the time was that Aborigines were dying out, and saving the children was a humane alternative. However, in its 1997 report, a national inquiry concluded that these policies had "the purpose of eliminating Indigenous cultures" and amounted to "genocide"."

that provides even more info, and i'd agree that it would have been better to print it this way.

[Save the Oocytes]

My limited reading on Aussie politics indicates Rudd's not really particularly heroic, but okay.

[John Caruso]

You probably know as much as me about Rudd. I'm not saying he's a hero, but no matter what, I give his government credit for doing this (and a few other things, including plans to withdraw from Iraq). If Obama were promising an official, formal apology to Native Americans—or anything else of that significance—I might take his "change" rhetoric seriously.

[ms_xeno]

Hell, Obama could apologize tomorrow, if he wanted to. He's already a prominent Senator and front-running candidate. No need to wait and see if he wins the trip to D.C. later.

I'm setting my alarm for sunrise on the East Coast. But it might not go off. Feel free to wake me when he issues the statement. Just a few pebbles thrown at the bedroom window should do it.

[Serafina]

There are people in the U.S. who will rabidly defend the genocide of the Native Americans--and will object to it being called genocide, or to any mention of it that doesn't end with "But we're still the best, honest, and this was just a blip on the screen during the great American movie of freedom!"

Sometimes I think that our current foreign policy is the direct result of our inability to truly confront our past atrocities, like genocide and slavery.