The Aboriginal Issue

 

Shared by Santos Suárez:

I would like to share in this forum an event in Australian history that from my point of view should be remembered for its important implications for the new generations so that mistakes are not repeated in the future.I am referring to the problem of stolen generations that members of Aboriginal society have suffered for decades.

Every year Australia commemorates National Sorry Day or National Day of Healing, in memory of the tens of thousands of indigenous children who,between the 1890s and 1970s, were forcibly removed from their homes by the state and placed in the care of white families or institutions to assimilate them into the settler society.

Some statements by an activist in defense of the victims of this racist practice serve to understand the dimension of the problem. "If you listen to someone from the oldest group of the stolen generations and another from the younger generation, the essence of what they say is the same. They never knew their mother, they never knew their grandmother. They feel like they don't belong anywhere. They feel the same inside”.

Obviously such a tragic event in the history of Australia has had its repercussions in the cultural sphere.  In the field of cinema, I would highlight the film entitled “Rabbit-Proof Fence”. The plot is based on a true event: the long epic journey of return of three girls of aboriginal origin to their families of origin from the settlement to which they had been taken to undergo a process of enculturation to be integrated into white society. 

Peter Gabriel devised the soundtrack of the movie: “Long Walk Home”. In the following video the English singer presents his experience in relation to his work for this film

Another cultural display of how Australia has tried to account for its colonial past and discriminatory policies against Aboriginal people is the song "Beds are burning" by the Australian rock group Midnight Oil. This song deals with the right of the aborigines to their ancestral territories in the face of the policies that forced them to move to settlements determined by the government. Its performance at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics is memorable. I still remember what this song made me enjoy in the 80s even though at that time I didn't understand anything about the message it conveyed.