It was Kevin Rowe (also of the Foreign Language Department of the School of Education) who introduced me to this part of Australian history and who has already posted a text on our blog.
When Kevin Rudd made his formal and public apology to the Aborigines on behalf of the Australian government, I have not cessed to take this issue into my English courses and discuss it with students as much as I could and can. It is a way to deconstruct the "beautiful" and thought to be highly democratic history of England and discover the many stains they have scattered throughout the world in their colonies and others. I am not to say with this that only the English have done wrong or that they have done nothing good. I would rather say that the more we know about countries and nationalities, the more we can be critical towards them and our own countries and the more light and understanding is shed upon present times.
For these purposes, I have used several resources from the web, namely articles from The Guardian: "Snatched from home for a racist ideal" (see also the worksheet I created for this text), "I was holding to Mum's dress", "Australia apologises to the Aborigines" and "We lost our heritage, we lost everything". I also dug up the 500-page-long report "Bringing them home" conducted by government officials and chanced upon this website called Creative Spirits with indepth information on Australia's Stolen Generations.
Have a look and enjoy another glimpse into the history of our world.
CM
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