A couple of people asked me why had put "is sorry" on my facebook status and IM accounts - "but you're a pom" they said. Well...
1. I may not sound like it but I have actually been an Australian citizen for a few years now!
2. Being of British birth I think I actually have all the more reason to be sorry for what happened to the Stolen Generation and the Aboriginal people of Australia. The early government of Australia was heavily influenced by the British and certainly took it's lead from what the British were well practiced at doing in all of it's "colonies" around the world. So - I'm apologising for them too.
Yes - I'm sure you've heard it all before. Pick a war-torn or poverty-stricken part of the world and it's hard not to put 2 and 2 together and attribute some (or in some cases most) of the blame to British (or French, Portugese, Spanish etc etc) Imperialism in the past. We certainly plundered these countries and left little behind but poverty and corruption in it's place.
That is why I'm so happy to see someone like Kevin Rudd* actually doing something positive in this area for a change - and for once I am really optimistic that together we may be able to right some of the wrongs that have been done in the past.
In a similar way I am also really excited about projects like OLPC. Not that we should do these things out of guilt, but it's really empowering to see enthusiastic people in the western world actually putting something back into developing countries rather than taking, and Education is a fantastic place to start. I hope that the launch of this project in Australia may contribute to the healng between our own internal 1st and 3rd worlds.
* I didn't vote for him, but our lovely preferential voting system in Australia at least allowed me to put them no. 2 after The Greens :)
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