NEVER FORGET THE PAST’S MISTAKES

From a young age we’ve been taught to learn from our mistakes: never shove your hand in a toaster, always lock your front door, always remember to brush your teeth before you go on a date... we learn from our mistakes and as a result we don’t (hopefully) repeat them. Why then, do so many fail to engage in their own country’s historical mistakes? For many years the importance of engaging in the past in order to ensure a brighter future has been understood as exemplified by philosopher George Santayana in 1905: “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. This blog will look at the dangers that arise from repeating historical mistakes.

In 2013 I bounded off to Australia for a year long history study abroad programme at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. As I boarded the plane I was overwhelmed with excitement at the prospect of a year of sunshine, blue skies and a year long tan. I had no idea, however, of the shock that awaited me. During my first term I took a course on genocide, and during one lecture we were taught about the Australian genocide. There are two elements of Australian acts towards its Indigenous population which fall under the United Nations definition of genocide:

Article 2 of the United Nations Genocide Convention:

Genocide = ‘any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group; …

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group’.

[endif]--Frontier Violence: this is the term used to describe the conflicts that caused the majority of Indigenous deaths from invasion in 1788 until 1910. During this time the Aboriginal population were massacred on a large scale – the populations, estimated at around 750,000 when the colonists arrived – was reduced to just 31,000.

The Stolen Generation: this was a policy of assimilation which lasted from 1910 until 1970, the aim of the policy was to breed out the Aboriginal race by removing Indigenous Australian children from their families and raising them either in white families, or in white institutions. height="273" src="file:///C:\Users\Sumaila\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image005.png" align="left" hspace="12" /

Learning about such a dark area of history was understandably shocking. However, what I was not prepared for was the fact that the Australian students in my class shared in my shock. Unlike me, they had grown up in Australia. Yet they had never been taught about this at school, or by their parents. “That didn’t

happen here!” cried one of my classmates. Another argued “we wouldn’t do that!” This seemed unbelievable to me: how could this class of Australian history students have no idea about the history which has arguably had the biggest impact on shaping their nation? I knew that their parents must have grown up during the Stolen Generation. I left my class stunned. How? That evening I asked my Australian friends about their knowledge of the Australian genocide and I was greeted with the same vacant expressions: ‘we were never taught about this’.

Then, six months later I took a course on Australian History. Fourteen weeks past by and the ‘g word’ failed to be mentioned once by my lecturer. Instead he chuckled nervously as he quickly brushed past this darker side of his nations history, referring to it as an ‘unfortunate blemish’ on the country’s history. I found this avoidance of the topic extremely concerning. If he was not going to teach a lecture room full of eager history students the truth about their own history, then who would? How can Australians be expected to know about their own history, when the darker aspects of this history remain silenced, even to university history students? In 1968 historian W.E.H. Stanner referred to this as the great Australian silence, he stated:

‘What may well have begun as a simple forgetting of other possible views

turned under habit and over time into something like a cult of forgetfulness

practised on a national scale. We have been able for so long to disremember

the Aborigines that we are now hard put to keep them in mind even when we

most want to do so’.

Australian historian Henry Reynolds was so puzzled by this tendency to forget that he wrote a book Why were we never told? – which traces his own path of discovery into this realm of history. In this book Reynolds admits that ‘knowing brings burdens which can be shirked by those living in ignorance’. This is due to the fact that ‘with knowledge the question is no longer what we know but what we are now to do, and that is a much harder matter to deal with’.

Without the knowledge of this past Australian society is able to continually overlook the severity of their treatment towards their Aboriginal population. Consequently, instead of trying to make amends for their actions – they repeat these actions. In historian John Pilger’s 1985 documentary The Secret Country he exposes the presence of nuclear testing in the outback in the 1940s. Pilger states that nine bombs were exploded in areas where there were Indigenous tribes living who were given no warning. Pilger concludes that this is evidence of a nation that has not learnt from its history: one hundred and sixty years after settlement in 1788, the land was once again viewed as empty, the Aborigines were not viewed as human. Shocking!

Furthermore in 2014 Pilger wrote an eye opening article in The Guardian: Another stolen generation: how Australia still wrecks Aboriginal families. You can read about it here: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/21/john-pilger-indigenous-australian-families In this article Pilger explains that the Stolen Generation, which technically ended in the 1970s, remains in Australia because the Australians are failing to learn from their history. The Aboriginal community are 3% of the population of Australia, yet one third of children removed from their families in Australia are Aboriginal. This haunting statistic clearly shows the dangers that come from a silenced history. The past is being repeated by societies who, on the whole, have not been taught about their historic mistakes and thus cannot learn from them.

A further example of this silenced history is apparent every year on January 26th. This is the day the First Fleet of British ships arrived in Australia. and since the mid 1930s this day has been marked officially as “Australia Day”. This, however, is seen by Indigenous Australians as “Invasion Day” because this is the date their land and ancestor’s lives were stolen, the first day the massacres began. History is forgotten. On this day there is a national holiday in Australia and

Australians enjoy a party, which they see as completely positive, when in reality this date marks the start of the Australian genocide. My Australian friends switch on their favourite radio station and listen to the official Australia Day top 100 songs countdown, paint Australian flags on their faces, play drinking games and enjoy a day of care free partying. None engage in the true meaning of the date: the day the massacres began. The 26th January should be a date of solemnity but instead it is a day of celebration. History is forgotten.

Watch this short clip to see the Aboriginal response to ‘Australia Day’:

https://youtu.be/G8czHlPYXew

I hope this blog has helped to highlight the severity of the problems that can arise when people turn away from mistakes. Though this blog is looking at historical mistakes and how silencing these mistakes can greatly impact a society, it is also still important to understand that on all levels mistakes should never be forgotten. Mistakes cannot be brushed over, you have to accept mistakes, learn from mistakes and work hard to ensure mistakes are never repeated.

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