yep well said Darryl, I too am pleased that finally the formal apology is about to happen! it is exciting to think that we can all move on as a nation very soon.
I sometimes get a little annoyed when aussies who's ancestry wasnt involved in the early settlement of this country, say it was completely utterly nothing to do with them, which is technicallly true. But if you move to this country, you are by a maybe very tenuous proxy, or association, very indirectly partaking in the 'spoils' of the colonisation of oz. not that that means they should feel guilty, but they shouldnt feel so righteously removed from these things, and so morally superior somehow.
It is hypocritical to me to point fingers at the early white australians, and then buy/own land and profit from that was once aboriginal lands!! and pretend you have no 'blood on your hands'! even if it is just the faintest of traces.
Also annoys me that, sometimes i get the impression? that some new australians think that the indigenous peoples were all directly wiped out by direct bloody murder! when i fact that overwhelming vast enormous majority of deaths as the result of british colonisation, was from introduced diseases, to which the indigenous people had no immunity of course, just like the rest of the so called 'new world' the americas for instance. (where i read in some cases they
intentionally distrubuted blankets infested with a vector bugs being lice? which were carrying the usual deadly diseases, smallpox ect.?)
i have read that the combined aboriginal pop. at time of discovery/invasion, depending on your point of view, may of been as much as 1 million, australia wide, and this diminished to a few hundred thousand? after diseases made their way through the nations. But i find it interesting that natural restraints kept it to 1 mill. or less, the theoretical pop. limit of oz?
Those same kind of people that indiscrimitarily murdered aboriginals, still make the headlines shooting seals, dolphins, whales, kicking quokkas to death, and the like today. they are still out there. all over the world. IMO
I know a young fella, a computer programmer/ code jockey who has direct lineage to the whalers of KI, the original white settlers of SA, who ALL had aboriginal wives i believe, (european women werent large in number in those days?) as did his direct ancestor. And he is as white as the driven snow, positively nordic looking master race type, but they dont make a fuss about it, and it is just a conversation piece, like a few others with very distant diluted aboriginal heritage i have known.
anyway, looking forward to the end of feb
cheers