Two Faces of Australia

Australians are a robust and increasingly diverse people. I have just been at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (or MCG as everyone here refers to it) to watch one of their national pastimes, an Australian Rules football game, a spin-off from Gaelic football. It was a wet day and catching (or 'marking') a rugby-like ball, an integral part of the game, was difficult. The resulting language from the partisan crowds became as robust as the game. There are obviously all sorts of rituals-not least the wave of booing that greets the umpires as they come on to the field.

The robustness of Australian humour was also evident after the record 76-0 defeat of England by Australia at rugby football that same day. One Australian paper suggested that the English men's rugby XV should now take on the New Zealand women's team. And a reader wrote, 'May I assure you that this was classically a match where the scoreboard did not reflect the game I was watching-England were, in my humble opinion, lucky to score nil.'

So a national Sorry Day which took place while I was here might be felt by some to be out of character in a Crocodile Dundee culture, and at odds with local Queensland elections which were felt by observers to have racist undertones.

I was present on Sorry Day in the Anglican cathedral in Perth when leaders of all the churches read out their denomination's apologies for the 'removals'. The Moderator of the Uniting Church, the Rev John Dunn, added his personal apology for 'my participation in taking the children'. Patrick Dodson, former Chairperson of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, responding, told the crowded congregation, 'Take confidence, because in the hearts of many young Australians there is a desire to go into the next century with the banner of reconciliation fully unfurled. I can survive without your apology but the integrity of the nation cannot survive without it.'

I was also present in Adelaide when a national monument to the 'stolen generations', as they have become known, was unveiled. The granite carving portrays an empty coolamon, or cradle, with water, representing tears, washing down over the faces of Aborigines who had been taken away from their parents. The inscription reads: 'And every morning as the sun came up the whole family would wail. They did that for 32 years until they saw me again. Who can imagine what a mother went through? But you have to learn to forgive.'

I shared a spot on a national radio programme with one of the 'stolen generation,' Avis Gale. She courageously accepted the apologies but said that she in turn had some apologizing to do. She was learning to love her enemies. Lois 'Lowitja' O'Donoghue, the first and only Aboriginal to address the UN General Assembly, said the day was 'a milestone on the road to reconciliation'.

I think it will be a long time before Australian Rules football catches on abroad but I have a feeling that many countries could do well to catch on to the courageous way Australia is looking at its past. In words that might be heeded in all our nations, Australia's Governor-General, Sir William Deane, said, 'Where there is no room for national pride or national shame about the past, there can be no national soul.'

Copies of 'One America Dialogue' are available from the President's Initiative on Race, The New Executive Office Building, Washington, DC 20503, USA. (Tel: +1 202 395-1010.)