Paul Keating’s Redfern and War Memorial speeches, written over 30 years ago, remain a powerful indictment of Australia’s failure to reckon with its past and present.

The Redfern Park speech contained some words which should be engraved on the footpaths outside the homes of every Australian who voted “No” in the Voice Referendum of 2023.

If it isn’t reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkable harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the First Australians, the people to whom the most injustice has been done.

…the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us, the non-Aboriginal Australians.

It begins, I think, with an act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.

We brought the diseases and the alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.

It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things could be done to us.

With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask, how would I feel if this were done to me?

As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded us all.

    • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
      61·
      21 days ago

      When comments like yours think they have validity, then it shows we still have a long way to go. You and fucking Danby.

    • Joshi@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
      31·
      21 days ago

      Thanks for the response.

      I have to assume that you’re quite young since you seem to think that 30 or 50 years is enough time to erase the kind of trauma anglo-Australians put indigenous Australians through, this is living memory for many of us.

      There really is no denying that coming from parents who have suffered trauma and economic disadvantage leaves the children at severe disadvantage themselves, ie the sins perpetrated on the grandparents of today’s young adults are a key reason for their disadvantage.

      This kind of reasoning is often taken as ‘excusing’ bad behaviour, it shouldn’t be but it is explanation and we do bear some responsibility to alleviate that disadvantage while still holding people responsible for individual actions.

      The final key point is that systemic racism remains rife. You would have to be willfully blind to not see that indigenous people are treated differently at the Centrelink office, the emergency department triage desk, at a job interview.

      You correctly point out some big numbers involved in current support for indigenous focussed programmes, I suspect that much of this is providing services that they find difficult to access through the mainstream due to systemic racism which is kind of a bare minimum, regardless we have a long way to go.

      The past isn’t gone, it isn’t even past. I hope you can appreciate that there is a but more subtlety to this issue than you seem to give it credit for.

      • Ilandar@lemmy.todayEnglish
        21·
        20 days ago

        You correctly point out some big numbers involved in current support for indigenous focussed programmes

        Spending without proper consultation of Indigenous stakeholders is wasted money, and it’s not Indigenous Australians upon whom it reflects poorly. Every time right wingers bring up the spending it’s a massive own goal.on their part.

        • Joshi@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
          31·
          20 days ago

          I can’t help but feel you haven’t read the article posted or my comments. You’re not addressing any of the points raised and instead just seem to have a bee in bonnet about the referendum which is at best tangentially related.

          I do understand the fatigue of this being an ongoing issue but that doesn’t really change the situation.