Except that the current issues are anchored in history. Indigenous education, health care and incarceration rates are not problems that have developed in the recent past. They go back decades, and many of the social issues facing indigenous communities stem from government policies that saw the likes of the Stolen Generation come about.
Your apparent high and mighty attitude while venerating wanton racial discrimination disgusts me considering what I've had to contend with in life - stemming from my grandparents being subject to, then escaping, Stalin's Soviet Union only to be held as prisoners in Nazi-ravaged Germany, escaping there as well. On arrival in Australia, they rented a tool shed in someone's back yard and used it as a house for they and my newborn father, because it was all they could afford. Whatever the catalyst, they proved to be very abusive people, and I can attest that the abuse survived to the next generation very much intact, and expanded.
I was born in Australia, my mother was allowed to keep me without a fight. However it wasn't that long ago that unwed mothers were routinely coerced into giving their newborns up for adoption. It was automatic for hospital staff to remove the baby immediately after birth and wait for the mother to convince them that she really wanted to keep the child before they would even consider bringing it back. That's what happened with my sister's birth, but she was retained by my mother despite my messed up junkie of a father being in jail and not there to help. Jail makes it sound bad, but those were the best times in my experience.
So what did the native people have for me then? They were good teachers. I learned to run really fast, ride a bike really fast - turned out that having to escape ran in the family. I learned to not dare stand in one spot for too long, particularly after an attempted rape. I would be often verbally abused, and sometimes physically abused - randomly walked up to, they spat in my face.... "You little white 🤬". I left the family home at sixteen and would sleep wherever was free. Never had to do the street thing but I slept in some pretty messed up places and probably should have street'd it really. Thanks solely to being white though (of
course), I turned it around - I did ok. Sure I got a slap in the face when my father killed himself and left the kids responsible for massive debts that he'd accrued, but hey... life's rosy for white people right? Truth is I'm scarred all over, both physically and mentally, at least in part due to the governments that influenced my life.
I could go on, but some of it I'm not ready for. Actually, thinking about it more, I really really could go on. Damn.
I don't get a sorry day from Russia, Germany, or Australia, and I don't want one. I could have used some sort of help at certain stages of life, but even that's fraught. Certain things can come from outside. Other things, like finding true peace, have to be found within (sadly I can only ask that you wish me luck, as congratulations are not in order in the finding peace department). I wouldn't get as much money as an aboriginal person if I was unemployed or studying, but I wouldn't want it. That's "victim money" for people that may or may not actually be victims, and it divides purely on ethnicity. It's so called positive racism, just as the Constitution proposal is - but there is no such thing in reality. Just racism, plain and simple.
I readily admit to being a narcissist, but this post is not an example of it. It's more that the way your attitude comes across with the pompous condemnation of other people suggesting any kind of divide based on race or religion, in conjunction with creating an ethnicity-based divide yourself, incensed me just that bit too much this time. The perceptible self-righteousness combined with cruelly and hypocritically extolling ethnic and not need-based differentiation frankly makes me want to destroy you - but I'd doubtless destroy my membership at the same time. Thankfully I've found at least enough peace to be able to recognise that I have value (despite your constant suggestions otherwise), and I plan to continue contributing here.
Truth about victimhood can be freeing. Constant reassertion of the same truth can be enslaving. I'd say that the content of Kevin Rudd's speech firmly occupied the territory of the former, while annual "sorry day" number 19 is safely in the latter's territory.
Now, go your hardest with the "That's sad but....."
