by Valencia Garner

Created on: July 03, 2007

The Howard government is more shameful than sorry. Institutionalizing Christianity by putting chaplains in schools is only one symptom of a majority and dominant culture ignoring and attempting to assimilate one of the oldest living cultures on the planet. The Aboriginal people have suffered insult upon injury with the perpetuation of legislation that denies them an apology for the atrocities since invasion. Assimilation of Aboriginal culture into a mono-culture is detrimental to the whole of Australia.

A recent media poll of non-Aboriginal Australians suggested that the Aboriginal people surrender their land rights and come in line with mainstream Australia. We hear about the poor conditions in many Aboriginal communities, the overcrowded town camps, high English illiteracy rates, petrol-sniffing, alcoholism, sexual abuse and domestic violence. But we don't hear that these are symptoms of an oppressed culture and won't be fixed by imposing the values of the oppressors.

The tauted Howard values of "mateship", Christianity and English for all echo much like the Bush one form of "family values" for all the American diversity. Everybody's gotta learn English we hear from a president who has made historical grammatical errors. Howard too is pushing a uniform morality and code at a time when he could be making historical strides in healing and unifying Australia by simply saying "Sorry." It's not an end but a beginning in a process that has already been modeled and begun by countries like Canada and South Africa.

Both Australia and the U.S. were founded with the seizing of land from indigenous peoples, genocide of these people and with the uncompensated labor of enslaved people. The current state of affairs reflects what has gone on before,the physical trauma, psychological and spiritual too.

It is easy to look at the blunders but more difficult to imagine the healing possibilities. While it is necessary to keep a critical eye on the leadership of our nations, it is also imperative to envision and act as our own leaders on these issues. The administrations of John Howard and George Bush could learn much from looking at and following the examples of countries that are acting in the local good for global well-being.

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