Daniel Johns' piece, published in News Ltd press 8 July 2007 on the commencement of the Across the Great Divide Tour for reconcile.org.au
Like most people my age I’ve never paid too much attention to party politics. I don’t know a lot about government policies and things like that and I’m not a spokesperson for anyone except myself.
I certainly don’t pretend to have the answers to society’s problems. But when it comes to Reconciliation I do have a few questions. For example:
How come an indigenous man’s life expectancy is 17 years shorter than mine?
How come there’s still so much bad feeling between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians?
How come some people have a problem with saying sorry for the bad things that have happened?
I think most of us have had similar questions occur to us at some point in our lives. Reconciliation Australia is attempting to turn random questions like these into a lasting conversation. They’ve established Reconcile.org.au to encourage people to look for some answers to these questions within themselves and their communities.
Powderfinger and my band, Silverchair, have decided to use our combined Across The Great Divide tour to draw some attention to Reconcile.org.au by making them the presenter of the whole thing. Hopefully it might help all of us start to find some answers to some of our questions about Reconciliation.
We’re not trying to talk people into anything. And in any case, I think most people want to reconcile – we just don’t know exactly how to do it. We all know that some very bad things have been done to Indigenous Australians since white settlement and the impact of those things affects how they live today. It’s therefore an unavoidable part of both our past and our present. It’s embarrassing and more needs to be done about it to make things better in our future.
I know it’s unavoidable that some people will think we’re trying to take the moral high ground by associating ourselves with this issue. These people’s reactions are as unavoidable as they are wrong. My bandmates and I just feel that if we speak up about our own questions and feelings on this issue then it might encourage some other people to do the same and talking about a problem is the first step to solving it. It’s really as simple as that.
In these more jaded times it’s easy to believe that nobody can make a difference on these sorts of issues but Cola companies and other such brands regularly pay lots of money to associate themselves with other music tours. This must be because their market research shows that – rightly or wrongly! - music and musicians can influence people’s choices. Hopefully we can use whatever influence Across The Great Divide has to provoke a conversation about how all of us can get along with each other rather than using it to provoke a conversation about which cola truly “rocks”!
I know from personal experience that music and musicians can influence people. Midnight Oil is one of my all time favourite bands. When I saw them wearing their famous “Sorry” suits at the 2000 Olympic Games it made me start asking some questions about what saying “sorry” really meant. Embarrassingly, it was the first time I ever really gave serious thought to that whole issue. I talked about it a lot over the following hours and I now remember those conversations as much as I remember the fireworks that we all watched from Sydney Harbour that night.
These days I don’t understand why it should be such a big deal to say sorry for the injustices that have been done to Indigenous people. I know some people feel differently but, to me, saying sorry just feels necessary as a first step towards moving forward together.
Maybe it’s a generational thing that people don’t feel it’s their responsibility to apologise for things they didn’t do personally. But, to me, the injustices are still there and are shown in things like the 17 year gap in life expectancy. I think we’ve just got to take responsibility at some point. If these things were happening to any other group in our community, nobody would put up with it – we wouldn’t hesitate for one second to do whatever it takes to give everyone a fair go.
My sense is that Aboriginal people understandably need to hear a sincere apology - a recognition of what’s been done to them - and the more we delay that apology, the further apart we’ll drift as fellow Australians.
There are obviously complex problems on both sides of the fence which need to be solved including problems of health, education and housing. Saying sorry will not fix any of those particular problems directly but I think it would show that we want to patch up some big holes in our collective conscience, and move forward together. It’s not the answer to all the difficult questions but in my opinion it would be a good first step.
DANIEL JOHNS