...of December 1992, accepting responsibility for the historic actions of white settlers in Australia: 'We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We committed the murders. It was our ignorance and prejudice and failure to imagine these things done...

...non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands...our failure to imagine these things being done to us (Keating 1995: 228). These profound and dramatic changes inevitably had a major impact on education,...

...Year of the World's Indigenous People. In a rare Prime Ministerial display, Keating acknowledged that: We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional...discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice.104 Aside from this, the closest thing there has been to a state-endorsed apology for Aboriginal...

...nonAboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands...exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice [. . .]8 Such language surely implies that the present generation is being asked to accept at least...

...assuages historical guilt. Heirs of oppressors eagerly admit ancestral cruelty, greed, and genocide. "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases and the alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers," lamented Australian...

...who had too often heard such pieties interjected their scepticism. Then came the frank recognition - 'We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional...the murders. We took the children from their mothers . . .' - and the dissident voices fell away, replaced by growing applause as the litany continued....

...non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands...diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We look the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. ... we non-indigenous...

...Australians — the people to whom the most injustice has been done ... Recognising that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands...brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders.24 Keating's statement was candid. In simple terms he said what no other political leader in...

...non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands...failure to imagine these things being done to us" (Keating 1992., 3). This statement seems to have been fashioned after a passage in the conclusion of...

...predecessors or successors, the moral responsibility of non-Aboriginal Australians for past injustices: We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional...exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. Australians should not wallow in a sense of guilt ('guilt is not a very constructive emotion') but...