Well, one year ago Rudd made the apology for the stolen generations in Federal Parliament, and the sky did not fall. The sky is an amazing feat of nature defying political gravity.
We will leave it to the habits and addictions that produce greenhouse gases to poison the atmosphere, as they surely will. What has happened with the Apology is that forces of resistance have weakened to almost insignificance. A similar simple and striking phenomena will, I suggest, be witnessed in the US following the election of Obama with increased economic self interest not divided along racial lines.
Now we get to read reports, that previously would not have been written. For example, Indigenous Affairs Reporter, Joel Gibson, in The Sydney Morning Herald writes:
A YEAR after Parliament apologised for removing indigenous children to integrate them into white society, new research has shown what many suspected – the policy had the opposite effect.
Many members of the stolen generations have reconnected with their indigenous culture but it has not saved them from suffering higher rates of arrest, poor health, risky alcohol consumption or unemployment, Curtin University Business School has found.
Associate professor Mike Dockery used data from the 2002 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey to test whether indigenous Australians with an attachment to traditional culture fared better or worse in economic terms.
The statistics showed that culture and wellbeing were connected in most cases, leading to the conclusion that employment programs should not be pursued at the expense of culture.
But members of the stolen generations and their families bucked the trend. They were more likely to engage in cultural activities than others in their geographical area, possibly because they had “taken compensatory steps to re-engage in their culture”.
But according to the data their economic wellbeing was below that of other indigenous people living in similar circumstances today.
“The legacy of these policies is still apparent in significantly worse health status and higher incidences of arrest and alcohol abuse,” Dr Dockery found. “Even though these policies were intended to accelerate the integration of indigenous people into the mainstream economy, the results pertaining to employment outcomes suggest they had exactly the opposite effect.”
Since this a good opportunity to make like a reporter, not a blogger, here we go, via the media release from National Reconciliation Australia:
On the eve of the anniversary of the national apology, Reconciliation Australia has released a landmark study on how Indigenous and other Australians see and feel about each other. The Australian Reconciliation Barometer is a national research study that looks at the relationship between Indigenous and other Australians. Designed to be repeated every two years, the Barometer explores how attitudes and perceptions affect progress towards reconciliation and closing the gap.
The study was conducted for Reconciliation Australia by social research company Auspoll who canvassed the views of 600 Indigenous and 1,000 non-Indigenous people. “The themes coming out of the research highlight very significant opportunities since the national apology but also very real barriers we need to tackle,” said Barbara Livesey, chief executive of Reconciliation Australia.
The main positive findings were:
• A majority of both groups believe the relationship is important and improving
• A strong belief among both groups that all Australians should know about Indigenous culture and history
• Many shared “Australian” values – each group is strong on family orientation, pride, an easy going nature and sense of humour
• A majority of non-Indigenous Australians would like to have contact with Indigenous Australians
• A majority of non- Indigenous Australians have taken steps to advance reconciliation in the last 12 months.
Other findings demonstrated challenges in our national effort to close the gap, including:
• Low levels of trust between the two groups
• We don’t recognise qualities in each other that we value in ourselves
• Non-Indigenous Australians don’t know what they can do to close the gap.
“This is the insight we need to do our work effectively, and it’s of great value also to government and other sectors working to close the gap,” said Ms Livesey. “We need to take advantage of the opportunity to educate and engage people at a time they’re clearly open to
it. And we need to be realistic that lack of trust is a real issue – something that governments and all of us have to work on if we want to get better results.”
The executive summary of Australian Reconciliation Barometer is available along with the full report.