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History's influence on the present
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A composer may question socially ingrained values and suggest their own principles in order to provide an idealistic, universal memorandum for the future. Denis Glover in his article “Redfern speech flatters writer as well as orator” The Australian 10/8/2012 asserts that Paul Keating deserves enormous credit for his political courage. This courage was evident in the manner in which he convey his position on the divisive issue. In his 1992 ‘Redfern Speech’, Paul Keating portrayed Australia’s complex ‘contemporary identity’ as something that ‘cannot be separated from Aboriginal Australia.’ This speech captured the attention of the early 1990s, an era characterised by fierce debate over truth, history and Aboriginal rights in the wake of the Mabo …show more content…
To do this, Keating advocates the importance of acknowledging past events in order to re-build a future. He is using the past as a platform to ensure ALL Australians have to opportunity to prosper into the future. Keating acknowledged responsibility for the high incidence of violent crime, alcoholism and chronic drug use in Redfern when he referred to the ‘devastation and demoralisation’ evident within communities like Redfern as a ‘plight’ that ‘affects us all’. The combination of emotive and inclusive language effectively conveys his argument that our humanity and national identity will remain tarnished as long as Aboriginal Australians live in the metaphorical ‘shadows’. His rhetoric use of inclusive repetition – ‘We took the traditional lands… We brought the diseases…We committed the murders… We took the children’ – conveys an assertive tone which suggests that our national identity is burdened by past atrocities which ‘degraded all of
On the 9th of February, three divisions of Japanese soldiers landed in Singapore; a major British military base and presence in the Pacific, under the control of Lieutenant General A.E Percival. Six days later, over 90 000 British, Australian and Indian troops were forced to surrender. It had been believed that Singapore guaranteed the security of Australia, therefore leaving the country seemingly hopeless under the threat of Japanese invasion. The Fall of Singapore in 1942 was significant in affecting the relations between Australia and the United States as the lack of support received from Britain caused, resulting in a drastic movement towards America for protection.
The 2014 Walkley Award winning documentary, "Cronulla Riots: the day that shocked the nation" reveals to us a whole new side of Aussie culture. No more she’ll be right, no more fair go and sadly no more fair dinkum. The doco proved to all of us (or is it just me?) that the Australian identity isn’t really what we believe it to be. After viewing this documentary
Of the 8 successful, the 1967 referendum which proposed the removal of the words in section 51 (xxvi) ‘… other than the aboriginal people in any State’ (National Archives of Australia ND), and the deletion of section 127, both, which were discriminative in their nature toward the Aboriginal race, recorded a 90.77% nationwide vote in favour of change (National Archives of Australia, 2014). As a result, the Constitution was altered; highlighting what was believed to be significant positive political change within Indigenous affairs at the time (National Archives of Australia, 2014). Approaching 50 years on, discussion has resurfa...
Throughout our rich history, we have overcome these issues by making great changes in our country by promoting multiculturalism and giving everyone a fair go which means giving everyone chance to live a healthy and prosperous life. But, even with these changes, Australia once was plagued with injustice. Australia now has a good reputation, but our horrid past will never be forgotten.
A political debate derived from 1990’s that held the British colonists culpable for the beginning of the ‘history wars’ that many protagonists became involved in. ‘History wars’ is divided into two views, one being a conservative view that considered the European settlement to be an achievement of taming hostile land. The progressive view on the other hand, perceives the history to be a reminder of the invasion of their land, frontier violence and dispossession of Indigenous owners. John Howard who represented the liberal party was one of the main protagonists within this controversy, representing the conservative view. Paul Keating, the labor party representative became a legacy, a Keating legacy that began reconciliation evolving in practical and symbolic ways (Ke...
Both Banjo Paterson and Kevin Rudd successfully conveyed the use of distinctive voices in both texts Saltbush Bill J.P.(SBB)(1905) and the National Apology Speech(NAS)(2008).which create interesting views on society as they explore Australia’s identity through social and political constructs ,as well as exploring a range of different voices
Through numerous poetic techniques Paterson has shown that the Australian diversity is as diverse as the country itself. The Australian identity concerns the way Australia is viewed by other people. There are a variety of different aspects that contribute to this identity of Australia which include historical icons. Paterson recognizes how lucky we are to live on a land notorious for its diverse landscape. He is signaling that we are missing out and we need to cherish the great land we were given.
The Stolen Generation has had a profound impact on every aspect of the lives of Indigenous communities. It has jeopardised their very survival. It has impoverished their capacity to control and direct their future development. The Stolen Generation has corrupted, devastated and destroyed the souls, hopes and beliefs of many Australian lives through damaging assimilation policies established in an attempt to make a ‘White Australia’ possible. Discrimination, racism and prejudice are some of the many permanent scars upon Indigenous life that will never be repaired. However, recently Rudd and the Australian public have sincerely apologised for the detrimental effects the Stolen Generation had caused. The Stolen Generation has dramatically shaped Australian history and culture.
The power of the spoken word has allowed Keating to connect and challenge to both the immediate audience and the wider crowd. What was the purpose of Keating’s speech. Keatings purpose was to ensure a movement towards a national mindset which could build a reconciled society with a unified national identity. He encourages the audience to accept the values of recognition, empathy and reconciliation, instead of guilt. What sort of long term responses did Paul Keating’s speech have on the audience? It is through the impact of the speech on the wider crowd in which initiates long term responses such as the Native Title Act 1993 and the Native Title Land Fund. The speech put reconciliation on Australians political agenda, it is responsible for paving the way for 2007s formal apology to Indigenous Australians and providing the aboriginals of Australia with the acknowledgement they had been longing for. Although the speech was not given a lot of media at the time, it is now regarded as one of the greatest Australian speeches of all time. It is through Keating’s emphasis on “we” in which he creates a sense of inclusion and acceptance towards the audience as they develop a mutual understanding and sense of support “To bring the dispossessed out of the shadows”. It is through the same line where Keating reflects on his duties to lead the nation through instilling the ideal of racial equality in his appeal to the pathos of European Australians. Power of the spoken word is then illustrated through Keatings repetitive demands for the audience to “imagine”. This evokes the audience to become immersed into the ideal of racial equality as they are encouraged through reassurance “It can’t be too hard” and certainty “I am confident that we will succeed”. Keating further uses
Throughout both ‘Rainbow’s End’ and ‘The Rabbits’, the audience discovers the plights that the Aboriginal Australians faced, due to discrimination and assimilation, in intensely confronting, yet intensely meaningful ways. We see how the discrimination and forced assimilation of cultures was common in the lead up to modern times because of composers like Harrison, Marsden and Tan reminding us of these events, allowing us to discover and rediscover our past wrongs through their works, in order to pave the way for a brighter, harmonious future. Without these documentations and retellings of events such as these, history would repeat itself, conflicts would be more apparent and we as a species would not be able to thrive and prosper due to our prejudices and superiority complexes.
Through an analysis of the impacts of colonization and the concomitant Australian government policies of genocide and assimilation, this paper will argue that the social inequality experienced by Indigenous Australians, in the forms of higher rates of ill-health and mortality, are a direct result of structural violence which has incubated intergenerational trauma and effectively gotten under the skin of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Ladies and gentlemen, do you truly understand what the Stolen Generation is and what the Indigenous Australians had to suffer? I am not here to tell you right from the wrong, no, I am here today to present all the facts for you to make the decision yourself. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd may have apologised to those affecting in his "sorry speech", but Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you; sorry is not going to change the past, nor it is not going to fix it. My job today is to inform you that the Stolen Generation is still a problem today. The conversation will focus on how it is still effecting their culture today, the issues the suffer due to the past, and that they are still looking for their families.
But the reconciliation is not enough to make things right but a treaty should be done in other to amend the fragmentation and division over white-indigenous relations. In Auguste’s article In February 2008, Australian government apologized to the Stolen Generations, the Indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their families on racial grounds. This speech was done by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, he said “the responsibility of the government, of the parliament of the nation in what he described ‘the darkest chapter’ of the history of the country” (Rudd, 2008). “He recognized the difficulty of forgiveness, but called for reconciliation” (425). The apology is one of the major steps taken by the Australian government to amend the division in the nation over white-indigenous relations. The Australian government coming to admit to what they did to the lost generation was good but is not enough because the Indigenous deserve better. This is why a treaty needs to be done between the Australian government and its indigenous communities. The treaty would really help to amend the division in the nation over white-indigenous relations in the long run. According to Auguste’s, “more than 200 years after the colonization of Australia and 37 years after the Larrakia’s petition, the treaty moved from being a legal instrument to becoming a sort of moral nation-building tool that would
Coming into speech class, I mentally and physically prepared myself for what was in store. I never really like giving speeches, especially impromptu speeches. Signing up for speech was hard for me to do because I absolutely did not want to take it and was considering not taking it in high school and wishing that I would never have to take it. My fears for COMM 101 was being judged. I am not really one to care about what people think about me, but something about public speaking gives me a fear that people will judge me if I stutter or not be able to complete a speech. I just wanted to do my best in this class and just breeze through this class and get it over with. Getting up in front of the class for my first speech, was petrifying for me
Indubitably, media has been insistent on the recurring violent in this community. Print media such as Murdoch and Fairfax have focussed on the pessimistic. The words constantly used to describe Aboriginal community are “alcohol, drugs, poverty and violence”. This portrayal – if not putted to an end – will not change our society way of depicting on Indigenous.