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<div class="MsoNormal">Friends, Colleagues and Rony,</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Australia has recently had a significant change of government.</div><div class="MsoNormal">I am told (I am in Ulaanbaatar), the new golden boy Prime Minister has changed the atmosphere in the nation.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="MsoNormal">The long awaited apology to Australia's Stolen Generation, was made. For the first time, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians were involved in the opening of an Australian Parliament.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="MsoNormal">The draconian workplace legislation is being broken down.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="MsoNormal">Change is in the air. It's all good. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="MsoNormal">This note, and the poem, came from an Australian artist and friend, Megan Evans. Her husband a Koorie activist was a Stolen Child. In 1998 there was a sorry day in Australia, to say sorry in the face of a government who stated they would not say sorry, and people were asked to sign a book. That was ten years ago. Megan wrote this poem then, in 1998. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="MsoNormal">2008, is an important moment in Australian history. I hope this is the beginning of a better future in a post, post modernist de-colinisation, way forward ;-)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; "><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span style="font-family: Helvetica; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Handwriting">Tracey</font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Handwriting"><o:p style="font-family: 'Lucida Handwriting'; "></o:p></font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Lucida Handwriting"></font></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><br></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><a href="mailto:tracey@traceynaughton.com">tracey@traceynaughton.com</a></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; ">skype: tracey_naughton</div><img height="64" width="64" src="cid:C26D52DA-EAD3-438E-BFF5-0D9BBAD40FC7@rdg.dial.mweb.co.za"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; "><div style="font-family: Helvetica; "><br class="khtml-block-placeholder"></div></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>In Response to National Sorry Day.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>I haven’t signed the sorry book. It seemed
to me to too small a thing to do to express a very big feeling.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>My husband was one of the stolen children.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>He was a year younger than me.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>I’m sorry.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>I’m sorry that when I was a child of seven
wearing party dresses and carrying my suitcase to school, he was regularly
being beaten with a strop strap at a Children’s Home and running away by
hanging underneath a train all the way from Sale in Gippsland to Richmond
station.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>I’m sorry that his mother died in 1988, the
year of the bicentennial, at the age of 46 and I am lucky enough to still have
the company of my mother at the age of 75.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>I’m sorry that I am about to embark on my 8</b><sup><b>th</b></sup><b>
year of tertiary education and he had to study for his HSC from books he begged
in jail.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>I’m sorry that he was 9 years old when his
mother was eligible to vote, having some small say in a future on his behalf,
yet my parents took that right for granted for all of their life and mine.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>Most of all I am sorry that I couldn’t ever
know his pain or do anything that would take it away. He used to say that he
wished someone from the government would apologise for the mess they had made
of his life.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>I am sorry that he died a lonely and
painful death with a noose tied around his neck in 1993, the International Year
of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>Megan Evans 1998</b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b> </b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b>*This was read out in the Senate by Senator
Nick Boulkos at the closing of the Wick debate in July, 1998</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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