Blog 3: Moving Forward
This is my third and final blog entry for our cultural reporter project. My first blog covered the history of the Aboriginal Australian people and some of the hardships they have gone through ever since the British began colonizing Australia. In my second blog I went into more detail of Co-Cultural Theory. I also went more in depth on one of the more extensive hardships they faced in the “Stolen Generations”. For this blog I am going to take a look at some of the things in place to help repair the relationship between the Aboriginal people and the White Australian population. I am also going to talk about how recognizing and cultivating empathy and implicature may help in this healing process (Dace & McPhail, 2002).
First off I would like to talk about actions taken to help repair wrongs to the Stolen Generations. The policy that allowed government officials to take children from their homes began in 1910 and lasted until 1971 (McCarthy, 2000). Since then, successive Parliaments refused to acknowledge any wrong doing pertaining to that policy. This was very frustrating to the majority of the Aboriginal population.
It wasn’t until 1997 that the policy was widely discussed. When they finally discussed it several points were brought up like physical and sexual abuse, exploitation for labor, and the social dislocation that led many of these people to alcoholism, violence, and early death (McCarthy, 2000). Once this came to light the Aboriginal people began organizing protests and other things to show their discontent. In 2008 the Parliament of Australia issued a formal apology to the aboriginal people for the Stolen Generations. Some of the individual states also set up funds to compensate the members of the Stolen Generation from their state (Finn & McSmith). There are still deliberations within the current Parliament about compensating all members of the Stolen Generation. The Parliament has also began implementing health care and education programs for the Aboriginal People.
Moving forward from the apology, I think the ideas of empathy and implicature, from Crossing the Color Line (Dace & McPhail, 2002) would be valuable in the process of repairing the relationship between Native Aboriginals and the White Australians. Empathy means to have intellectual or emotional identification with another person or group (Dace & McPhail, 2002). To me that means to actually identify with or to relate to another person. If both cultural groups would employ this ideal they might be able to understand each other better. This could essentially help the groups “get along” much better. The definition of implicature extends from empathy by differentiating from psychological and physical side to how the self and other are never separate distinct, but are always interdependent and interrelated (Dace & McPhail, 2002). Looking at this makes me think of how a straw basket is woven together. The basket only works if all the strands are work together. If each group could take this idea and realize their similarities and how they could work with each other and help each other then they could build on those pillars. Once these two groups start working together they will be able to mend all the wrongs and move forward to a better future.
References
Dace, K. L., & McPhail, M. L. (2002). Crossing the color line. In Flores, L. A. & Martin, J. N. &
Nakayama, T. K. (Eds.), Readings in intercultural communication (p. 344-351). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies.
Finn, C. & McSmith, A. (2008). Austrailia’s stolen generation. The independent. Retrieved from
McCarthy, T. (2000). The stolen generation. Time Magazine. Retrieved from
