A disgraceful legacy

Kevin Rudd, the prime minister of Australia, recently apologized to the indigenous peoples of… Kevin Rudd, the prime minister of Australia, recently apologized to the indigenous peoples of his nation “for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss” on their communities.

He apologized especially for the policies that separated indigenous children from their families and communities as recently as the 1970s, creating what have come to be known in Australia as the Stolen Generations.

The Stolen Generations are comprised of an estimated 50,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were taken from their families during a period of about 60 years in an attempt by the Australian government to destroy indigenous cultural practices. These children were sent to Christian boarding schools, forcibly converted and raised to be domestic servants and manual laborers.

I applaud Rudd for making this apology. More important than simply saying sorry, Rudd also pledged to address the inequalities that exist between Australia’s indigenous and non-indigenous populations. Within his speech, Rudd proposed initiatives to provide greater educational opportunities to indigenous communities and to begin narrowing the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians in standard of living.

But while Australia is making progressive strides in its relationship with indigenous peoples, the United States has refused to apologize to American Indians or native Alaskans and has allowed poverty to fester throughout the reservation system for generations.

If the Australian government was able to come to terms with its past and issue an apology for its crimes against indigenous peoples, then why can’t the U.S. government do the same? Indeed, the federal government has already apologized to Japanese-Americans for their illegal detention during World War II and to native Hawaiians for the illegal overthrow of their government in 1893.

So why hasn’t the U.S. government formally apologized to American Indians?

It’s certainly not because there is nothing to apologize for. During the past 400 years, the European settlers of this continent have massacred and enslaved native peoples with impunity.

Whole American Indian nations have been destroyed during the history of our country, and it wasn’t until the late 19th century that the United States stopped actively pursuing the physical extermination of American Indians.

But when the massacres stopped, the attempts at cultural genocide began.

In the late 19th century the United States began establishing American Indian boarding schools. Similar to the experiences of the Stolen Generations, American Indian children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to boarding schools where they were separated from their culture and trained to be manual laborers or domestic servants.

In fact, one of those model boarding schools was established in Carlisle, Pa., about 200 miles from Pittsburgh. It was called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, and it was in operation from 1879 to 1918.

Students at the school were whipped if they spoke in their native language, stripped of their names and assigned new Western ones, and they were forbidden to practice their native religions – some even died in attempts to escape from the school. If this was the model on which the entire system of American Indian boarding schools was based, then I would say that our government has quite a bit to apologize for.

And while I do believe that our government should issue a formal apology to the American Indian communities that have been systematically abused over the years, I’m more interested in exactly how the U.S. government can move forward to address the inequalities that exist in our society between indigenous peoples and the descendents of Western settlers.

There is a great gap between the indigenous populations of reservations and the non-indigenous people in this nation when it comes to life expectancy, educational opportunities, employment opportunities and health care. Of the 10 poorest counties in the United States, eight are dominated by American Indian reservations and one is predominantly native Alaskan.

An apology by the U.S. government will not solve these modern problems, but it could pave the way for federal initiatives that address these inequalities.

In his speech, Rudd said, “None of this will be easy. Most of it will be hard, very hard. But none of it is impossible, and all of it is achievable with clear goals, clear thinking and by placing an absolute premium on respect.”

It’s time for our government to follow Australia’s lead with clear goals of addressing inequalities, clear thinking on how to achieve these goals and respect for the cultures and communities that our nation has wronged in past generations. E-mail Giles at gbh4@pitt.edu.