Do I feel the need, as a descendant of these "invaders" to apologise? No. Did my family partake in the genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines? I have no way of knowing! Is it pertinent to my life today? No.
History is rife with mistakes. We can't change it, and apologising certainly won't.
It's really not about you though, is it? Maybe it is pertinent to Aboriginal people.
I don't get it.. just change the date and move on.
The strange things is that the indigenous Australians I have known, worked with and had working for me over the years we're just ordinary Aussies keen to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. They just thought of themselves as Australians and had no wish to pursue the agenda of some that are actively seeking "compensation" for events that took place more than ten generations ago.
Some indigenous people I met in my 4wd travels felt the townies were just in it for the money and had forgotten their traditional beliefs
That's also my experience. It seems that the majority of Aboriginies are not in support of this constant pressure for change. A look at who was actually protesting at Federation Square supports this view.
Treating one ethnic group as special or different rarely ends well.
What one group of dead people did to another group of dead people can be worth remembering and acknowledging, but allowing it to continue to cause friction is not a good idea.
I was born in Alice Springs in 1973. My mother could not suckle me due to post-delivery issues (she has never forgiven me :p), nd I was suckled by the ladies of the Todd River - several, apparently. My father was the pilot for the TAA subsidiary, QLD and NT Aerial Medical Services - more or less today's RFDS. I grew up with aborigines. I have respect for those in the bush, as they are sincerely good folk!
My family have been farmers/settlers in QLD and Tasmania since first settlement. The Hobart suburb of Rosetta is named after my descendant, Rosetta Heckscher (or Hunsley - I can't remember which as both were in Hobart! Yes, we had MANY first settlers in our family and First Fleeters too - the good and the bad ).
Do I feel the need, as a descendant of these "invaders" to apologise? No. Did my family partake in the genocide of the Tasmanian Aborigines? I have no way of knowing! Is it pertinent to my life today? No.
History is rife with mistakes. We can't change it, and apologising certainly won't.
Wow Lewis. Maybe it's your signature but I always thought you were Greek ancestry.
It seems that human history is filled with the need to dislike and divide ourselves from each other based on the wrongs of the past. Most continents have lingering hatreds based on past dispossessions and atrocities. As a species who wants to reach the stars I don't understand why we look backwards instead of looking forwards.
Having said that, I don't come from one of those groups who feel disposed so perhaps if I'd had that history, I'd feel differently..?
It would be lovely if we could just all get along. Why can't we integrate, unite, forgive and be stronger?
My personal opinion regarding the date. I wouldn't change it as it's become "tradition" to have it on the day. American's will tell you they would never support a change to the 4th of July.
As for the day off... never did like that as a reason to have a holiday. A date is a date, period. The date signifies a remembrance. If it falls on the weekend, too bad.
Les, mysignature is Russian, not Greek. Russian is a distinct part of the continuance of my lineage (on a sidenote, it's all my mothers fault - she learnt Russian in the 1960s for a particular "job" during the Cold War and imbued what she learned into me...)
Anyway, let's just stop dwelling on the past and move forward as Australians
We could all have been Dutch descendants as they discovered the continent first. I guess the King of Holland didn't have an overcrowded prison problem like the Brits did.
That would make an interesting "What if?" movie.
It's probably time we gave some serious consideration to moving Australia Day to a less contentious date. January 26th is not looked on favourably by indigenous Australians, for obvious reasons.
Perhaps it's time to move on and to take a different tack and discuss other issues around the Australia Day theme.
What about the joint propositions that Australia should become a republic and indeed, adopt a new flag?
It is as pertinent to me as an Australian as it is to Aborigines.
While we are at it, let's change the flag, the national anthem and so on ad nauseum ad infinitum
Indeed, as a foreigner, I consider the flag with the Union Jack in it is from the colonial era.
In the bicentennial year 1988 I visited AU and saw proposed yellow-green flags with a Kangaroo and Crux which is more 'Australia' than the current flag. But it did not make it.
The same applies to NZ.
Last year, even the 'real' Aotearoa flag with the Crux stars and the fern leaf did not make it either. It is still almost the same colonial flag as AU with red stars.
Indeed, as a foreigner, I consider the flag with the Union Jack in it is from the colonial era.
In the bicentennial year 1988 I visited AU and saw proposed yellow-green flags with a Kangaroo and Crux which is more 'Australia' than the current flag. But it did not make it.
The same applies to NZ.
Last year, even the 'real' Aotearoa flag with the Crux stars and the fern leaf did not make it either. It is still almost the same colonial flag as AU with red stars.
What's wrong with a flag depicting a country's origins?
We could all have been Dutch descendants as they discovered the continent first. I guess the King of Holland didn't have an overcrowded prison problem like the Brits did.
That would make an interesting "What if?" movie.
Bill, if we're to believe Robert Hughes in his book 'Fatal Shore', it wasn't so much that the pommie prisons were full to over-crowding (although they may have been), the decision to ship them far away was because the thinking of the time was that criminals were in a genetic classification of their own, - in other words criminals were in the family, - sort of 'in the blood'.
So by getting rid of them they'd remove that characteristic from the local gene-pool, and in time be rid of criminals, period.
Of course they didn't know of, or use, terms and concepts like genes and gene-pools, but the basic familial notion was there. And that was how they decided to deal with it. They had a new land that needed 'filling' somehow, so they decided to kill two birds with one stone.
It's probably time we gave some serious consideration to moving Australia Day to a less contentious date. January 26th is not looked on favourably by indigenous Australians, for obvious reasons.
Please don't lump all Aborigines into one monolithic group who all share an identical opinion on this issue. They don't.
On a side note, what we know as the nation of Australia came into being in 1901. Prior to that it did not exist. There were separate colonies, and many separate Aboriginal nations even earlier, but none were called Australia.
Given that the nation of Australia came into being in 1901, doesn't that make every person whose ancestors were born here prior to that date indigenous?
Pemulwuy was an Aboriginal who resisted the initial British invasion fleet in 1788. In 1802 Pemulwuy was eventually caught, decapitated and his head was sent back on the next boat to London in pickle jar. (It's rumoured that ISIS is using similar terrorist tactics in Syria as we speak).
Chris Warren also argues that the first fleet's introduction of the smallpox virus, which killed thousands of Aborigines in 1789 was no accident. Biological warfare of this type was also used in South and Central America and in other regions of the world by the British and other colonising powers such as the Spanish, French and Dutch etc.
The population of Aboriginal people in Australia rapidly declined post 1788 (actually collapsed) - hardly a peaceful policy by a few settlers in boats setting up camp on the coast of this great land of ours
There are lots of questions that are avoided by the media and sadly the education system and academia.
In Australia Aboriginals are jailed at a rate which is 8 times higher than the Black incarceration rate in Apartheid Sth Africa of the early 1990s. Aborigines also have one the lowest life expectancy in the world. I wonder how many Australians know that the Anti-discrimination Act ratified by the Australian parliament was suspended by the Howard government in 2006, and its suspension has continued under the Rudd, Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull governments? Selectively suspended for the Aboriginal people only.
I can understand why there are many today who want to "move on" or have the attitude "it has nothing to do with me - that's all in the past".
Les, mysignature is Russian, not Greek. Russian is a distinct part of the continuance of my lineage (on a sidenote, it's all my mothers fault - she learnt Russian in the 1960s for a particular "job" during the Cold War and imbued what she learned into me...)
Anyway, let's just stop dwelling on the past and move forward as Australians
Oopsie. My bad. Sorry..not up on my Cyrillic obviously.
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