Samara Trilling

Anatomy of an Apology: Responding to Australias Aboriginal Policies

3651 words
Say youre sorry.
Sorry.
Say it like you mean it.
The offering and acceptance of an apology is one of the first conflict resolution
techniques we are taught as children. Apologies are presented as a virtually failsafe way to
absolve our five-year-old selves from the sin of whichever minor transgression we have
committed. What cannot be resolved immediately by an apology is usually forgotten and
remedied with time.
But as we enter the greyer world of adulthood, disputes and wrongdoings involve more
actors, generate more intense consequences and affect more people. With a world of
organisational structure, chains of command and delegation of tasks, new notions of divided
culpability, concealed motives and unclear paths to resolution are introduced into a once-simple
person-to-person application for forgiveness. Who made the decision to take action? Which
adverse aspects of the reality we see are true consequences of that decision, and which are
unfortunate but unrelated? What if the organisation responsible is no longer in power or the
individual perpetrators are no longer alive? What if the immediate victims are no longer alive?
And crucially, why is it so difficult, especially for actions with truly tragic and widespread
consequences, to issue an meaningful apology?
1
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
The modern apology takes many forms, but one of the newest, most visible flavours that
also affects the most people is the government apology for injustices and atrocities committed in
the past. On the unfortunately long list of such apologies, and the even longer list of atrocities
that deserve one, Australias history of colonisation and relations with the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples exhibits many of the nuanced complexities that make an apology anything
but simple.
For the purposes of examination and evaluation, the history of relations between
Aborigines and white settlers (who eventually became 98% of the countrys population ) may be
1
broken into four general categories of interaction, all of which negatively affected the Aboriginal
population, spanning the full timeline of contact between the two groups. First: colonisation and
seizing of Aboriginal land. These are inextricably linked, as colonisation would not have been
colonisation without settler expansion onto new land, and this land was occupied by Aborigines.
2
Second: violence against Aborigines on the frontier of white settler expansion. John Hirst argues
that this, too, is an intrinsic part of colonisation, but it is a controversial enough topic to merit its
own analysis. Third: the forced separation of Aboriginal children from their parents in the period
3
of 1910-1970; and fourth: the ongoing status of Aborigines as socially and economically
disadvantaged.
The publics understanding and opinion regarding each of these issues is complicated by
conflicting and incomplete records and memories about the extent to which each of them the
2
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/
1
a0dbf953e41d83d3ca257306000d514b!OpenDocument, accessed 24 April 2014.
John Hirst, Sense & Nonsense in Australian History (Melbourne, 2005), 87.
2
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 86.
3
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
reasons why they occurred, and the degree of brutality with which they occurred. Muddying the
waters further is the indisputable fact that the white Australian public has in many ways
benefitted from past injustices that marginalised the Aborigines and secured their own dominant
place in the social and economic hierarchy. Inquiry into and reevaluation of the past is
4
inherently not in the interest of those in power.
Of course, that is not to say that such inquiry and reevaluation is not desired or will not
happen. Many white Australians, including but not limited to trade union leaders and members of
the Communist party, have been sympathetic to, allied with, and in some cases, major proponents
of the Aboriginal cause. However, the fact remains that launching an inquiry is expensive,
5
uncomfortable, disruptive and invites scrutiny and condemnation from nearly all sides. The only
major direct benefits for 98% of the population are a clearer conscience and the potential for
better future relations with the other 2.3%; regardless of how individuals feel, the objective risks
outweigh the subjective rewards.
6
It is possible to issue a blanket apology for the past, and indeed this has happened at a
regional level. However, any true apology needs to be based on mutual agreement of exactly
7
which injustices were committed, otherwise the apology lacks both sincerity and force.
3
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 91.
4
Noel Loos, Edward Koiki Mabo: The Journey to Native Title, Journal of Australian Studies, 54
5
(1997), 111.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/
6
a0dbf953e41d83d3ca257306000d514b!OpenDocument.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Report, Bringing Them Home, Report of the
7
National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their
Families, 249.
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
Accordingly, there have been multiple significant efforts to establish truths about events in each
of the four issue categories defined earlier.
In the first category of initial colonisation, Kathy Butler, in analysing the conception of
the term Terra Nullius and its later importance in legal proceedings, dispels the myth that
Australia was ever thought to be uninhabited: it was regarded as sparsely populated but
Aborigines were viewed as not conforming to European notions of civility and as such they were
positioned outside the prevailing rights discourses which had emerged in Europe.
8
With respect the frontier, Henry Reynolds chronicles the violence against Aborigines that
had been widespread since settlement began, fueled by blatant and well-documented racism in
contemporary newspapers. Robert Foster et al document many settlers prideful accounts of how
9
many Aborigines they intimidated or killed and their vehement opinions that it was essential to
maintain this terror within the Aboriginal community in order to protect themselves and their
property. While European deaths were much better documented than Aboriginal ones and
10
Foster acknowledges a detailed study of the South Australian experience has yet to be
undertaken, estimates drawn from the pattern of violence suggest a highly speculative ratio of
4
Kathy Butler, Overcoming Terra Nullius: Aboriginal perspectives in schools as a site of philosophical
8
struggle, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 32 (2000), 94; Chris Cunneen and Teresa Libesman,
Indigenous People and the Law in Australia (Sydney, 1995), 10; Richard Mulgan, Maori, Pakeha and
Democracy (Auckland, 1989), 34.
Henry Reynolds, Why Werent We Told? A personal search for the truth about our history (Ringwood,
9
2000), 86-8.
Robert Foster, Rick Hosking, and Amanda Nettelbeck, Fatal Collisions: The South Australian frontier
10
and the violence of memory (Kent Town, 2001), 5-8.
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
five to ten Aboriginal deaths for every one European death, resulting in an Aboriginal death
count of 400-800.
11
Perhaps the most well-known fact-finding effort has been Bringing Them Home, a
government-ordered inquiry into the policy of forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their
parents. The inquiry found with certainty that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous
children were forcibly removed from their families and communities in the period from
approximately 1910 until 1970. In addition, the report found that the policy of removal
12
violated fundamental common law rights and breached the international prohibition on racial
discrimination as well as the international prohibition of genocide.
13
Finally, investigations into general economic discrimination included the 1992 Mabo
ruling on land rights and the 1965 hearings on equal wages for indigenous pastoral workers.
14
The Mabo ruling, while admittedly not strictly a fact-finding mission, established the historical
truth that native title had existed before European colonisation which occasioned the judicial
ruling that it still existed unless it had been subsequently extinguished buy the sovereign
state. The 1965 equal wages hearings shed light on the convoluted legal history of Aboriginal
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wage policy, finding that paradoxically, the modern campaign for complete equality in wages
resulted in a disadvantage for Aboriginal workers.
16
5
Foster et al, Fatal Collisions, 8-9; Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (St. Lucia, 1981),
11
121.
Bringing Them Home, 34.
12
Bringing Them Home, 241.
13
Bill Bunbury, Its Not the Money its the Land (North Fremantle, 2002), 15; Loos, Mabo, 117.
14
Loos, Mabo, 117.
15
Bunbury, Its not the money, 15, 77-8;
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Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
Each of these efforts at inquiry have faced attempts to discredit them through ridicule,
presentation of counter-evidence, accusations of black armband history, rationalisation of the
motives behind events they describe and dismissals of their importance. Various historians,
17
pundits and government officials, including former Prime Minister John Howard, have asserted
that it would be foolhardy, inappropriate, unnecessary or downright wrong to apologise for some
or all of these four chains of events in Australias history.
18
The effects of these efforts are quite visible in present Australian society. The myth of
Terra Nullius has been propagated in schools through the omission of any significant discussion
of Aboriginal peoples, and until the 1992 decision in Mabo v. Queensland, the concept of Terra
Nullius still had legitimate legal status. With regard to frontier violence, historical commentator
19
Keith Windschuttle produced several books stating that the number of Aborigines killed in
frontier violence had been greatly exaggerated and the true number was 120. John Hirst
20
reprimands Windschuttle for his misuse of sources but produces his own evidence that, contrary
to what he characterises as the rose-colored glasses of the liberal imagination, violence was
central to Aboriginal society: all adult males were warriors and Aboriginal warfare was
endemic. Hirst asserts that after the first attack - the taking of the land and the crushing of the
21
6
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 81; Butler, Terra Nullius, 95.
17
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 87, 91, 96.
18
Butler, Terra Nullius, 94-5, W. E. H. Stanner, After the Dreaming (Sydney, 1969),
19
25.
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 80.
20
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 86-87.
21
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
resistance - the Aborigines were more or less left alone, but in any case this matters not because
the Aborigines were depleted in numbers more by disease than violence.
22
No effort at fact-finding, however, has been more thoroughly decried and picked apart
than Bringing Them Home. The media criticised the facts it presented as untried, untested,
unsworn and unsupported statements presented by tragically, emotionally disturbed individuals
to a willing audience of social engineers bent on attracting a new welfare market. The most
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common critique was that its estimates of children affected were too high (later investigation into
the technique indicated that the one-in-three estimate was indeed incorrect; the one-in-ten
calculation was better supported) and that the stories were presented in overly emotional
fashion. Some tried to rationalise the motives by pointing to the poor conditions in
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communities from which children were removed and quoting dubitable justifications (that only
children of single mothers or only children of half-Aboriginal descent were taken). John
25
Howard simply admonished the report for navel gazing, as though that obviously invalidated its
factual findings. Of course, some of these concerns are valid: historians with both liberal and
26
right-wing sympathies agree that the report has some factual flaws and omissions and that it does
rely somewhat on memories, making it difficult, even for those who support a formal apology, to
ascertain what is accurate enough to form the basis for such an apology.
7
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 88; Stuart MacIntyre and Anna Clark, The History Wars (Melbourne, 2003),
22
160-61.
MacIntyre and Clark, History Wars, 157.
23
Robert Manne, In denial: the stolen generations and the right (Melbourne, 2001), 3, 25; MacIntyre and
24
Clark, History Wars, 157.
Manne, In denial, 16, 25.
25
Manne, In denial, 3.
26
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
The Mabo case also attracted historically-based attacks, many of which centred around
the idea that all Aboriginal people were encouraged to think that they had been deprived of land
rights regardless of whether these claims were supported by Aboriginal tradition and history -
for example, the differing traditions of land possession and inheritance in different groups and
regions.
27
Some investigations, by virtue of their (at least ostensible) goal of finding the truth
regardless of its usefulness to one particular ideology, provide ammunition to groups who wished
to diminish Aboriginal claims to land and equal rights. It is easy to see how the findings of the
equal wage hearings could easily be oversimplified and construed as evidence that liberal
campaigns for Aboriginal rights do more harm than good.
Despite the lack of consensus about the facts surrounding the history of Aboriginal-white
interaction, cases have been made for and against a formal apology. Predictably, these arguments
are varied in substance and scope. Windschuttle argues that no apology whatsoever should be
made. Hirst argues that Australia cannot apologise for colonisation (this would be hypocritical,
28
because white Australians only exist now as a result of this colonisation) but that it should
apologise for the forcible removal of children from their parents. Finally, he mitigates all of this
29
with a pragmatic appeal that more settler Australians would be ready to acknowledge this wrong
[of forcible removal] and apologise for it if the proponents of apology did not urge apologies for
everything. The Hawke-Keating government supported the idea of reconciliation and in 1991
30
8
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 92.
27
MacIntyre and Clark, History Wars, 167.
28
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 91.
29
Ibid.
30
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
created a Reconciliation Council, which drafted a document acknowledging that the Aborigines
were the original owners, that the land was colonised without their consent, and apologising in a
roundabout way: as one part of the nation expresses its sorrow and profoundly regrets the
injustices of the past, so the other part accepts the apology and forgives. The Australian people
31
were also polled regarding their support for an apology. Forty per cent of those polled said they
agreed with the statement On behalf of the community, governments should apologise to
Aboriginal people for whats happened in the past; 57 per cent disagreed. Then-prime Minister
32
John Howard amended the document to replace the apology with a more tempered expression of
profound regrets that past injustices had occurred; the amended version was rejected.
33
Closer to the actual perpetration of the forcible removals, Robert Manne reports that a
almost all of a group of senior Northern Territory patrol officers interviewed in the 1980s
expressed shame and regret at the policy they had been required to implement. Does this
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constitute an apology, or a desire to make formal one? The lines are blurred with so many
reservations, qualifications and personal opinions that it seems impossible that any sort of
consensus about a formal apology could ever be reached.
In the face of so much confusion and opposition, however, government apologies have
indeed been made. They vary in every possible respect: degree of culpability admitted, specific
wrongs mentioned, seniority of government official, emotional connotation of words used, and
9
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 94-96; http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/car/2000/16/text02.htm,
31
accessed 24 April 2014.
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 96.
32
Hirst, Sense & Nonsense, 96; http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/IndigLRes/car/2000/16/text02.htm,
33
MacIntyre and Clark, History Wars, 154.
Bain Attwood, The Stolen Generations and genocide: Robert Mannes In denial: the Stolen
34
Generations and the Right, Aboriginal History, 25 (2001), 165; Manne, In denial, 42-4.
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
promise of changes to come. In order to present them concisely, the following table evaluates
some of the more well-known apologies on several of these spectra.
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Date Text Author/
Speakers Title
Regional or
national?
Specic to
stolen
generation?
Personal
admission
of
culpability?
1988 the Public Policy regarding the
care of Aboriginal children
had been a serious mistake
Australian
Representative
to the United
Nations Human
Rights
Committee
National Yes No
1993 it was we who did the
dispossessing. We took the
traditional lands and smashed
the traditional way of lifewe
committed the murders. We
took the children from their
mothers. We practiced
discrimination and exclusion
Prime Minister
Paul Keating
National No Yes
1994 appalling and breathtakingly
paternalistic practice of taking
Aboriginal children from their
familiesthe consequences
of past mistakes are carried
from generation to
generationReconciliation
appropriately involves an
honest acknowledgement of
the impact of colonisation
South Australian
Minister for
Aboriginal Affairs
Regional No No
1995 past legislation, practices and
policies have adversely
affected Aboriginal people in
Tasmania
Tasmanian
Government
Regional No No
1995 The extent of government
control over the lives of
indigenous people of the
State[has] had wide-
ranging and often tragic
impacts on Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people in
Queensland
Queensland
Government
Regional No No
10
Bringing Them Home, 248-249, 254; http://www.nsdc.org.au/, accessed 24 April 2014; Manne, In
35
denial, 6.
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
While Prime Minister Keatings apology is undoubtedly the most vivid and personal true
apology for the widest range of injustices, it has been Prime Minister Rudds 2008 apology that
has seemed the most definitive and is followed by the most significant course of action. Any
1995 the early history of child
welfare in Victoria is
hallmarked by policieswhich
evolved in accordance with the
views of the Victorian
community of that time. Many
of these approaches to child
welfare would be
unacceptable today
Victorian
Government
Regional Yes No
1996 I reafrm in this place, formally
and solemnlyon behalf of the
government and the people of
New South Wales, our
apology to the Aboriginal
people. And I invite the House
to join with me in that apology,
andacknowledge, with deep
regret Parliaments own role
in endorsing policieswhich
devastated Aboriginal
communities
New South
Wales Premier
Bob Carr
Regional No Yes
1998 National Sorry Day established Bringing Them
Home report
suggested,
Aboriginal group
formed
committee, state
governments
supported
National Yes Yes
1998 Sorry Book Campaign Advocacy group
Australians for
Native Title
National Yes Yes
2008 For the pain, suffering and hurt
of these Stolen Generations,
their descendants and for their
families left behind, we say
sorry.
Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd
National Yes Yes
Date Text Author/
Speakers Title
Regional or
national?
Specic to
stolen
generation?
Personal
admission
of
culpability?
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Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
analysis of government apologies for past injustices would be incomplete without a mention of
more practical apologies - measures for reparation and compensation. A complete summary is
beyond the scope of this essay, but the series of efforts aimed at giving teeth to Prime Minister
Rudds 2008 apology is interesting for its dual purpose: on every anniversary of the 2008
apology, new programs have been rolled out to address some aspect of the Aboriginal
condition. This combination of public commemoration of and recommittal to the apologys
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principles by enacting new programs is somewhat unusual; the commemoration is reminiscent of
Britains 200-year anniversary celebration of the end of the slave trade, but Australias tradition
improves upon the British one by accompanying a self-congratulatory event with (at least an
attempt at) real change. For example, on the second anniversary of the 2008 apology, the
Australian government invested $585,000 in the leadership skills of the Stolen Generations to
support them as positive role models in the community. In 2013, the Australian parliament
37
passed an Act of Recognition, which was characterised as an important step towards
recognising the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in the Australian constitution.
38
However, the fact that the first reported apology occurred at least 18 years after the period
of forcible removal of Aboriginal children supposedly ended points to a reality echoed from the
white frontier settlers comments all the way to the Howard governments reasons for not issuing
an apology: an apology communicates weakness. It is much easier to overcome this fear of
39
12
http://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/indigenous-australians/programs-services/recognition-
36
respect/apology-to-australias-indigenous-peoples, accessed 24 April 2014.
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Foster et al, Fatal Collisions, 5-8; MacIntyre and Clark, History Wars, 154.
39
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling
apologising after any threat of retaliation has been extinguished; and because a majoritys fear of
an unprecedented uprising from a 2% disenfranchised minority is usually much stronger than the
actual danger of this happening in a way that seriously threatens the majority, the threat of
retaliation is often not perceived to be extinguished until the minority population is so
diminished in numbers that revolt is impossible; the population is so marginalised through
economic and social hegemony that there is not enough energy and social capital to attempt one;
or all the original victims have already passed away and with them, some of the imperative for
immediate recompensatory action. With this combination of an abundance of fear and a lack of
incentive, it is relatively easy, if not pleasant, to understand why apologies were not forthcoming
or why a sincere one took so long. But as John Hirst admirably recognised, it is this opportunity
to truly repair past ills by apologising and issuing reparations directly to the victims, before the
consequences have begun to fester and spread through the next generation, that makes the case
for a speedy apology compelling: the victims are still alive.
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Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling

Bibliography

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MacIntyre, Stuart and Clark, Anna, The History Wars (Melbourne, 2003), 142-70.
14
Anatomy of an Apology Samara Trilling

Manne, Robert, In denial: the stolen generations and the right (Melbourne, 2001).

Mulgan, Richard, Maori, Pakeha and Democracy (Auckland, 1989).

Reynolds, Henry, The Other Side of the Frontier (St. Lucia, 1981).

Reynolds, Henry, Why Werent We Told? A personal search for the truth about our history
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