The Hardest Word - Part One: Me

I've been mulling over whether or not to write this but the issue has simply been bugging me for the past week and a bit, especially in the lead-up to Australia Day.  I've been prompted by the following statement at the site of local blogger Samuel Gordon-Stewart  at this post -

...I did not steal children and therefore I have nothing to apologise for...

It was the only time I'd ventured a glance at his stuff and, given it appears that Samuel regularly checks Google for his own name, it may be that this will prompt another post by him on the same topic.  We'll see, and welcome Samuel if you do read this.  I don't expect nor necessarily intend to change your opinion or that of anyone else.

I acknowledge at the outset that I believe it's hard for a white Australian to write about indigenous issues without having some sort of academic, policy or life background.  Professionally I've had some exposure (in a way it's been hard not to) but I think I'll kick it off with a personal recollection of my exposure to just one or two aspects of the maelstrom that is the Stolen Generations issue.  Part Two will be about the facts and Part Three will touch on the vexed issue of compensation and seek to come to a conclusion of sorts.  I expect I'll be updating and adding as time goes on but that's just the way I do it.  I didn't want to spend several days writing an essay prior to putting it up.

My simple view is this:  In the same way that we, as Australians, take pride in our past achievements and successes, we also have a responsibility to take responsibility for what we have done wrong.    

So.  Me.  And Dwayne.

Some day I'll have to talk to my child about one of the family photographs hanging on the wall of my parents' bedroom.  It was taken in Townsville in the early 1980s, and shows all of us seated against a blue sheet background.  My two sisters, toothy grins and pretty little dresses.  My father, army fit but with hair just beginning to thin.  My mother in a dark blue dress with just the hint of stress in the corner of her eyes.  Me, the little blond-haired boy, smiling and looking off centre, presumably at the photographer.  And Dwayne, light brown skin, liveliness in his eyes, his typically huge cheeky grin and a hearing aid just visible in his right ear.

Dwayne came from Palm Island and his mum was having a few problems looking after him given his hearing problem and other dramas.  His dad was out of the picture and, honestly, that's all I know about the whole situation.  My mother, who knew Dwayne from the special school that she helped out at, agreed to take him in.  So that's how we came to have a foster brother for about a year.

I think I've mentioned before how the several years I spent as a small kid in Townsville are the ones that have left the deepest impression on me.  Dwayne was a big part of that.  Kids being kids, we didn't really start to get along at all until towards the end of his time with us.  He was a year younger than me, in between me and my sister J.  I don't think they remember much about him but it's something I'll discuss with them the next time we see each other (which, as I've gotten older and my affections mature, feels increasingly like too long a time).

The primary school we went to, Vincent State Primary, had a special school attached for kids who couldn't hear, or who had cerebral palsy, or other difficulties, and we all shared lunchtimes and play facilities.  Given mum's involvement with the classes we often went on the weekend outings to places like Blue Creek, or the Botanic Gardens, wherever.  I'd like to think that back then I stood up for them whenever they were teased by the other kids with the usual cries of "spastic!" flung at them, but I honestly can't remember.  I probably stayed silent, cowardly, not letting on that just the other day I'd played, laughed and chased in the clear and clean waters of Blue Creek with the very objects of their derision.  It's something that's really stayed with me though, manifesting itself as a deep seated protective and defensive instinct, an emotional reaction, that I don't think I'll ever be able to shake. 

But when you're six or seven years old you don't really think too much about why that kid's a different colour or why that kid's walking funny, or why that kid talks weird and can't seem to hear you.  Kids are just kids.  And people are just people.  We're arseholes, heroes and ordinary schmooks, all of us, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes stubbornly.  

It sort of meant that as I got older the usual, everyday prejudices of colour and disability that I encountered never quite sat right and I couldn't seem to overlay them onto my personality like everyone else seemed to.  It was like that at Loganlea High when I was 12 years old - why did Bruce, a brilliant fellow student and indigenous kid, have to cop so much shit just 'cos he was black?  Why was his older brother expected to be a vicious fighter at the train station after school - was it because "their heads are harder with their thicker skulls"?  Why were people being so fucking stupid?

Several years ago I attended cultural sensitivity training run by an indigenous man who started off my asking us to talk about our experiences with black people.  So I talked about Dwayne, about how we'd taken him into our family for a while.  But this bloke evidently decided that Dwayne, from his point of view, had been removed and proceeded to snark me for the rest of the afternoon.  And what could I do?  I wanted to explain that it wasn't like that, that we didn't take him on because he was black and needed to be rescued, he was just a kid who needed a home while his mum got it together.  Did we really do something wrong?  If it was ultimately a rewarding experience for me, not knowing how Dwayne feels about it, does that still make it an injustice perpetrated against him and his family?

As I've been writing this the boy has woken up, and I've been playing with him, changing nappies (category 5 with B grade viscosity and a near hull breach in the upper right quadrant, thanks for asking.  Wait, you didn't actually ask did you?), and thinking back to the question I posed at the beginning about how I'll talk to him about Dwayne, and about the broader issue of our nation's indigenous past and what it might mean for the future he's got a part in.  It's starting to come together with the aid of posts like this one, and of course it's something I'll also have to discuss with his mum.  But basically - I had a brother named Dwayne for a time, and, with the usual dramas families have, we got along alright.  We weren't really that different - we both liked playing with toy soldiers and tanks in the gravel amongst the stilts of the house, and we ran around and chased and fought each other a bit as well, just as kids do.  He was always faster than me, but I was stronger.  I think about him from time to time, and I hope he's doing alright.  That's about it.

Part Two tomorrow, perhaps - the facts.