ABSTRACT
On February 13, 2008, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, formally apologised to indigenous Australians for “the wrongs of the past”. He was referring specifically to the mistreatment of the “Stolen Generations”: those indigenous children who in accordance with government policy had been forcibly separated from their families and communities to be assimilated into colonial culture. “Sorry Day”, the name for the day on which Rudd made the Apology, was hailed as a profoundly significant event for the nation: an acknowledgment of the grief and distress of indigenous people, an amelioration of the shame felt by many non-indigenous Australians for the treatment of the Stolen Generations, and an articulation of a vision in which indigenous and non-indigenous Australians might live together in mutual respect as “truly equal partners”, with shared responsibility for forging Australia's future.
Whilst recognising and celebrating the importance of the Apology, especially the stirring language contained in the first half of it, this chapter by Melinda Turner also notes blind spots in the Apology which may indicate the presence of a cultural complex. She draws attention to the distinctive voice of modern Western culture that can be heard in the second half of the Apology where, in bureaucratic language, it envisions how the core institutions—educational, medical, and political—of the modern West will improve life for indigenous Australians. Turner notes that, apart from alluding to “these great and ancient cultures we are truly blessed to have among us”, there is nothing in the Apology about what newcomers to Australia could learn from the indigenous people who have lived in Australia for millennia. There is thus an absence of mutuality in the language of the suggested “partnership” that reveals a cultural complex of which then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was simply a carrier.
