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Friday, May 26, 2023

the cruel ways of Colonists & Churches - National Sorry Day

On field fracas are not new !  .. .. players do let off the steam .. .. a fake Naveen-ul-Haq account on twitter posted apology to Virat Kohli. Fans fell for the series of tweets and retweeted them thinking it was indeed the LSG pacer who was saying sorry to RCB batter… ..  in pic Ben Stokes apologizing after that incident in World Cup



There's something very powerful about receiving or giving a heartfelt, genuine apology. Bad apologies, on the other hand, can be disastrous and lead to more hurt. Apologising is hard because people  don’t want to feel bad about themselves.  We try to have a positive image of ourselves, and our need to protect that can make sincerely apologising quite hard. Showing, not just saying, that you regret what you have done is an important part of apologising.

 

Inglis will return to Perth after the first Ashes Test starting on June 16 and his place will be taken up before the second Test at Lord's by 30-year-old Queensland gloveman Peirson, who has 65 first-class games to his credit.  Alex Carey is Australia’s first-choice keeper for the World Test Championship (WTC) final against India and the five Ashes Tests and Inglis has been selected as his back-up.

No Cricket post but something on apology and Australia !!

Following the loss of its American colonies in 1783, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the First Fleet, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the Union Flag raised at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788,  a date which later became Australia's national day.   The British claim extended to the whole Australian continent in 1827 when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement.  On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved  - After the 1907 Imperial Conference, Australia and several other self-governing British settler colonies were given the status of self-governing "dominions" within the British Empire. 

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands.  The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world.  Australia's written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia.  

.. .. ..and the colonisers were not exactly merciful, they were merchants who fleeced every Nation of their riches and also engaged in promotion Christianity by every possible means .. .. cruelly,  they removed children from original settlers and the  removed children were, in most cases, placed into institutional facilities operated by religious or charitable organisations. A significant number, particularly females, were "fostered" out. Children taken to such institutions were trained to be assimilated to Anglo-Australian culture. Policies included punishment for speaking their local Indigenous languages. The intention was to educate them for a different future and to prevent their being socialised in Aboriginal cultures. The boys were generally trained as agricultural labourers and the girls as domestic servants; these were the chief occupations of many Europeans at the time in the largely rural areas outside cities.  A common aspect of the removals was the failure by these institutions to keep records of the actual parentage of the child, or such details as the date or place of birth.  

The Stolen Generations (also known as Stolen Children) were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals of those referred to as "half-caste" children were conducted in the period between approximately 1905 and 1967,  although in some places mixed-race children were still being taken into the 1970s. Official government estimates are that in certain regions between one in ten and one in three Indigenous Australian children were forcibly taken from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970.

The Aboriginal Protection Act 1869  included the earliest legislation to authorise child removal from Aboriginal parents. The Central Board for the Protection of Aborigines had been advocating such powers since 1860. Passage of the Act gave the colony of Victoria a wide suite of powers over Aboriginal and "half-caste" persons, including the forcible removal of children, especially "at-risk" girls.  As a result of such legislation, states arranged widespread removal of (primarily) mixed-race children from their Aboriginal mothers.  Policemen or other agents of the state (some designated as "Aboriginal Protection Officers") were given the power to locate and transfer babies and children of mixed descent from their mothers, families, and communities into institutions for care. In these Australian states and territories, institutions (both government and missionary) for half-caste children were established in the early decades of the 20th century to care for and to educate the mixed-race children taken from their families – can there by more cruelty to people !!

National Sorry Day or the National Day of Healing is an annual event held   in Australia on 26 May, commemorating the Stolen Generations. It is part of the ongoing efforts towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The first National Sorry Day was held on the one-year anniversary of the 1997 Bringing Them Home report. It examined the government practices and policies which led to the Stolen Generations and recommended support and reparations to the Indigenous population. While Prime Minister John Howard refused to apologise, his successor Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology in 2008 on behalf of the federal government. National Sorry Day has also inspired many public acts of solidarity and in support of reconciliation.

In 2005, the National Sorry Day Committee renamed the day the National Day of Healing, with the motion tabled in Parliament by Senator Aden Ridgeway. In his words: "the day will focus on the healing needed throughout Australian society if we are to achieve reconciliation".  

Sad, sad state of affairs – of the cruel, inhuman treatment meted to humanity by so called kind educated dignified people – the Europeans.

 
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
26th May 2023. 

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