Aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australia: The dilemma of apologies, forgiveness, and reconciliation (original) (raw)
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Reconciliation, Assimilation, and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia
International Political Science Review, 2003
Reconciliation as a peacemaking paradigm emerged as an innovative response to some of the mass atrocities and human rights violations that marked the 20th century. It provided an alternative to traditional state diplomacy and realpolitik that focused on restoring and rebuilding relationships. To that end, reconciliation processes have set themselves the difficult task of laying the foundations for forgiveness through the establishment of truth, acknowledgment of harm, and the provision of appropriate forms of justice. In 1991, the Australian government instigated a process of reconciliation between the indigenous peoples and wider society in order to "address progressively" colonial injustice and its legacy (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act 1991. This article seeks to demonstrate, however, that restrictive policy framing and a lack of political will has severely hindered the progress of the Australian reconciliation process. An alternative conceptual approach to settler state and indigenous reconciliation is suggested.
Australian 'Aboriginal' Reconciliation: The Latest Phase in the Colonial Project 1
Citizenship Studies, 2003
In the 1990s several countries that had been divided by episodes of mass violence or gross human rights violations instigated projects of national 'reconciliation'. Reconciliation initiatives sought to provide an alternative to traditional state diplomacy and realpolitik by focusing on restoring and rebuilding relationships in novel and context sensitive ways that promoted state legitimacy, forgiveness and social stability. In 1991 the Australian parliament unanimously passed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act, which heralded the start of a process of reconciliation between the indigenous peoples and wider society. The Preamble to the Act founded the need for a reconciliation process on the injustice of colonial dispossession and on the continuing dispersal of indigenous people from their traditional lands. Yet, as this paper will show, the notion of 'justice' was deemed inappropriate from the start, and the resulting process was framed in a nation building discourse that placed a definite ceiling on indigenous aspirations. This paper seeks to demonstrate that, far from being a genuine attempt at atonement that is responsive to indigenous aspirations, Official Reconciliation exhibits a subtle, yet pervasive, assimilationist agenda, and consequently the process should be understood as but the latest phase in the colonial project. The paper will conclude by suggesting a de-colonising approach to reconciliation that addresses the problem of internal colonisation and which more closely reflects indigenous aspirations.
The burgeoning literature on transitional justice, truth commissions, reconciliation and official apologies tends to ignore the conditions of settler states in which ‘reconciliation’ needs to take account of indigenous minorities. The settler colonialism literature is worth including in the general discussion because it is exceptionally reflective about political theory (the constitutional recognition of indigenous rights) and ethnogenesis (the origin and viability of both settler and indigenous identities), challenging mainstream liberalism, in particular, to account for difference beyond platitudes about multiculturalism. This article highlights the postcolonial critiques of the Australian governments’ apology to the indigenous peoples of the country. The authors of these critiques seek to protect indigenous alterity from the Australian state, which they regard as irredeemably colonialist, especially in its liberal and progressive mode. The article suggests that Indigenous political agency transcends the resistance/co-option dichotomy presented in much of the apology’s commentary.
Meanings and Perspectives of Reconciliation in the Australian Socio-political Context
The International Journal of Diversity in Organizations, Communities, and Nations: Annual Review, 2007
The policy of national reconciliation between Indigenous and non Indigenous peoples has been on the social and political agenda for decades, yet progress on this issue of Australian's 'unfinished business', seems to have stalled in the last few years. This paper seeks to map the various interpretations and meanings of 'reconciliation' in the Australian sociopolitical context, from the creation of the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991, to the controversies emerging from the 'cultural wars' history debates of the last few years. It provides an framework for the various discourses of Reconciliation, by exploring and analysing the accrued meanings to such terms such as 'genuine' or 'true' reconciliation 'symbolic' reconciliation and 'practical Reconciliation' a term used extensively under the Prime Ministership of John Howard. In the current political context in Australia is reconciliation no more than a normative discourse-a symbolic gesture by mainstream Australia to maintain the status quo and divert our eyes from the more searching questions of the 'unfinished business' of 'substantive' reconciliation such as the issue of a treaty and just compensations for past injustices for Aboriginal people. This paper suggests that the journey towards reconciliation between black and white Australians is convoluted and complex. It is mired with political and social agendas which are inextricably linked with the national consciousness, with Australia's sense of self, the various views and interpretations of its history, and its multiple national identities. In reality, given the lack of national will to address the substantive issues of reconciliation, the journey still has many a path to tread.
Perspectives on Reconciliation & Indigenous Rights
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2009
This paper provides an overview of discourses of the movement for national reconciliation prevailing within the Australian socio-political context since the inception of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991, to the national apology delivered by the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 13 th February 2008. It provides an framework for the various discourses of reconciliation, by exploring and analysing the accrued meanings to such terms such as 'genuine', substantive or 'true' reconciliation; the Howard's Government's 'practical reconciliation' and the Rudd government's great attempt at 'symbolic' reconciliation in the national apology to Indigenous Australians.
Indigenous reconciliation in Australia: do values, identity and collective guilt matter?
Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2007
This paper reports an investigation of the impact of shared values and identities on Australian attitudes towards Indigenous reconciliation across two studies. In Study 1, University students were assigned to one of two conditions in which they completed a questionnaire that measured their value priorities and reconciliation attitudes; either as an individual or as an Australian. As expected, the value of egalitarianism was the strongest predictor of reconciliation attitudes, especially under the Australian condition. In Study 2, participants from the general community were assigned into conditions that manipulated identity (personal vs. Australian) and views of how Indigenous Australians have been treated by Europeans in the past (favourable vs. unfavourable). Under these conditions, participants were asked to report their level of collective guilt and reconciliation views. The results showed that collective guilt was stronger under the unfavourable than the favourable history condition but only when personal identity was salient. The findings also showed some support for the proposition that reconciliation views would be most positive under the unfavourable history condition when Australian identity was salient. The implications of the findings for advancing the progress of indigenous reconciliation in Australia are discussed.
The Practice of Public Apology: Australia Says Sorry to the Stolen Generations
The Culture of Dissenting Memory: Truth Commissions in the Global South, 2019
In post-conflict societies, public apology is a commonplace practice carried out by wrongdoers or descendants of the wrongdoers to reconcile with their victims. It is crucial to the establishment of historical justice in a nation inflicted by past trauma arising from a collective injury. There were public apologies offered by the state or state representatives after the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa to the black population, in Canada to its indigenous people, and in New Zealand to the Maoris. Consequently, studies have been carried out to explore the politics, pragmatics, and the paradox involved in public apologies. In this chapter, I look closely at the public apology of 13 February 2008 delivered in the Parliament by Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister of Australia from 2007 to 2010, to the Stolen Generations. I am especially interested in journalistic documentations that emerged in the Australian public sphere describing the responses to the apology for a worldwide audience and the theoretical discourse surrounding the practice of apology as such. How does the public apology of 2008 fit into the larger narrative of estrangement and belonging present in Australia? How far has the public apology gone in addressing the problems of restitution and reparation? All of the different segments of the chapter contribute to the assertion that in the specific case of Australia, the public apology, as it was between unequal parties, was never primarily concerned with the Aboriginal population but the two views or self-understandings of Australia – one reconciled and the other transgressive.
The Ethics of Apology: A Set of Commentaries
Critique of Anthropology, 2009
■ On 13 February 2008, the Australian government apologized to the 'stolen generations': those children of Aboriginal descent who were removed from their parents (usually their Aboriginal mothers) to be raised in white fosterhomes and institutions administered by government and Christian churches-a practice that lasted from before the First World War to the early 1970s. This apology was significant, in the words of Rudd, for the 'healing' of the Australian nation. Apologizing for past injustices has become a significant speech act in current times. Why does saying sorry seem to be ubiquitous at the moment? What are the instances of not saying sorry? What are the ethical implications of this era of remembrance and apology? This set of commentaries seeks to explore some of the ethical, philosophical, social and political dimensions of this Age of Apology. The authors discuss whether apology is a responsibility which cannotand should not-be avoided; the ethical pitfalls of seeking an apology, or not uttering it; the global and local understandings of apology and forgiveness; and the processes of ownership and appropriation in saying sorry. Keywords ■ Aboriginal communities ■ apology ■ collective and historical responsibility ■ forgiveness ■ racism ■ sorry ■ truth and reconciliation
When sorry isn't good enough: Official remembrance and reconciliation in Australia
When compared with other reconciliation processes, Australian reconciliation and its acts of official remembrance have received relatively little academic attention, and yet the case raises many important questions for settler societies struggling to come to terms with past misdeeds and the burden of the past in the present. This article places Australian reconciliation in the political context of the campaign for a treaty between Indigenous peoples and the settler state that emerged in the 1980s, the institutionalization of common law Indigenous land rights during the 1990s, and the current 'intervention' in the Northern Territory. The nature and trajectory of these political events are at odds with two highly lauded official acts of remembrance made under the rubric of reconciliation, Paul Keating's Redfern Park speech in 1992, and Kevin Rudd's formal state apology in 2008. The article argues that such settler state acts of official remembrance and acknowledgement of past injustices, while far from devoid of value, are considerably diminished by the positively colonial, and inherently unjust, contemporary political context in which they were made.