30 May 2018.
Written by Anglicare Chief Executive Officer, Jeremy Halcrow.
We are currently celebrating Reconciliation Week and the nation-wide theme this year is “Don’t keep history a mystery”. One frightening statistic being promoted by Reconciliation Australia is that surveys have found that 1 in 3 Australians “don’t believe that Aboriginal people experiences mass killings and forced child removals in the past”. No doubt the silence of the education system for older generations is a factor. However I have discussed this with Anglicare staff groups and one factor is that many new migrant arrivals have no knowledge of this aspect of Australian history. For this reasons alone, it’s important that we mark Reconciliation Week and take the time to listen to the experiences of our Aboriginal colleagues.
As an organisation heavily involved in the Care system we cannot afford to forget history. The way the Foster Care system is structured is risking a repeat of the stolen generation. If not handled wisely the new permanency planning reforms in NSW may make the situation worse. There needs to be greater understanding and appreciation of how the adoption practices of the 1950s and 1960s went wrong.
In 2016 ABC broadcaster and Wiradjuri man Stan Grant gave a powerful Australia Day speech in which he made the point that “racism is destroying the Australian dream”. He argued that when AFL star Adam Goodes was “hounded and booed” by AFL crowds across Australia he was being told that “he was not Australian”. Grant said that the impact of hounding Goodes out of the game had on many Aboriginal people was profound: “When we heard those boos, we heard a sound that was familiar to us.. we hear a howl of humiliation that echoes across two centuries of dispossession, injustice, suffering and survival”.
I am a sporting partisan so I understand that you can get caught up in the mob at a football game. But it when it comes to the injustice of racism in this country we must stand up against the mob. At best, those went along with booing Adam are being wilfully ignorant of history, not understanding that they are turning the Australian dream, as Stan Grant puts it, into “a howl that says to Aboriginal people again that you are not welcome”.
This year I was shocked when I personally witnessed racism to our own Aboriginal staff when they were denied service at a Canberra hotel. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that this would happen in contemporary Canberra, but I was. As a middle aged white person it is important that I keep in mind the extent that I receive a free pass which eases my passage through my life which is not always afforded to our Aboriginal brothers and sisters.
Why is Reconciliation Week so important? It is important that we listen to the tragedies and triumphs of Aboriginal Australia so that we can grow into a healthier society . If we can’t understand the pain of others, how can we take a step towards healing? Only then can we hope to tackle Stan Grant’s call to ensure all of us are included in the Australian dream.
