Australia's shame lingers

As most people know, Australia was originally a British penal colony. Thousands of petty criminals were transported here from the British Isles from 1790 to around 1870. Under the not-so-gentle supervision of their overseers, their labor laid the foundation for the Australia of today. But not even the convicts were there first.

Groups of people known collectively as the Aborigines populated Australia many tens of thousands of years before white settlers. Nobody's quite sure how they got here. Research shows their time in Australia predates reliable overseas navigation, yet the Australian land mass was never connected to another continent. And the Aborigines weren't telling; some scholars estimate the various tribes combined for 750 different languages, none easy to discern.

So the Europeans, many of whom who weren't emigrating to Australia voluntarily, did what Europeans in those days did to people they can't figure out: they tortured them, they marginalized them, and they took their land and anything else they could take. They built cities and forced the Aborigines into the bush. They killed thousands of Aborigines, some by violence, most by European diseases to which the Aborigines were not immune.

Then they tried the most awful way possible to "fix" the problem. From 1900 until 1970, the Australian government did not recognize the parental rights of Aborigines. The states took thousands of Aboriginal children from their parents and put them in orphanages, in foster care, in concentration camps. The intentions behind this were almost worthy: The idea was that these children would be more easily assimilated into larger white society if they were raised outside of their tribal customs, giving them a chance at jobs, education and a successful (read: more white-like) existence.

In reality, children were taken from their parents, always against the parents' will, sometimes violently so.

The policy no longer exists, and Australia has spent most of the last 20 years apologizing for it in various ways. But it's also still paying for it.

A few of the surviving Aborigines are often seen around Sydney, usually drunk, aggressively panhandling. I saw evidence of this sad phenomenon this weekend; a scruffy looking dark-skinned man scrubbing windshields at a busy intersection near my apartment, two wasted young women screaming at passers-by to give them money in the Central Business District's more touristy section.

How do Australians feel about this? Don't dare ask. In a country that prides itself on its largely liberal views and its belief that everybody deserves a "fair go," the Aborigines are not a subject to be discussed. My Australian friend and co-worker, who's very liberal, very tolerant and very willing to talk about anything related to his home country, won't discuss them. Other Australians I've talked to dismiss the subject by saying, "yeah, mate, the Aborigines, it's a problem." The fact that many visible Aborigines in urban Australia are drunk, homeless and unpleasant toward others doesn't help their cause.

Few nations have proud records with regard to treatment of indigenous peoples -- not Canada, not Mexico, not most of Europe, and certainly not the United States. And Australia as a nation has been forthright and contrite about the wrongs committed in the past, even if Australians individually would rather not talk about it.

I didn't intend to spend so much space writing about Aborigines. It's an incredibly complex subject, and really kind of out of place in what is otherwise a fawning travelogue. If you're interested the subject, Google the term "Stolen Generation," or read about Cathy Freeman, the Aborigine who won the 400-meter run at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, in front of thousands of cheering fellow Australians of all races.

Many, many things about Australian society are wonderful, and then some. The Aborigine situation, however, is a stark reminder of the fundamental imperfection of humanity.