Friday, February 8, 2013

The Redfern Address

Posted by Carley and Amber:
In 1992, Paul Keating, the Prime Minister of the time, delivered a very powerful speech about racistm. So today, we watched the speech, and wrote a paragraph about it.

Most of the seniors thought that it was very appropriate of him to stand up for the indigenous people, because he was non-aboriginal. Here are some examples of what the students wrote after seeing the speech.




Raquel wrote: It was 1992 when the PM Paul Keating made a fantastic speech about how sorry he was for all the things that we did to innocent indigenous people. My opinion of this whole is that it was a terrible way to treat people who live in their own land.

Ivan wrote: Paul Keating wanted to "forge a new partnership" with indigenous people. He said to imagine if our children had been taken from us, imagine if our land was taken from us and to imagine if hundreds and thousands were murdered and we might know how our indigenous Australians might feel.

Luke wrote: In December 1992, when Paul Keating was Prime Minister, he made a strong speech called "The Redfern Speech." He used repetition to remind non-Aboriginal Australians that we are the ones who brought alcohol, disease, murder and also took children from their families. Imagine if that happened to us as well?

Simon adds: Being a Social Justice leader in my school, I will try and do my best to encourage everyone to understand.

Lizzy challenges: Imagine sweeping injustice aside forever? Would we all be treated as equals? Would we all fit in? Well, we certainly didn't when our former prime minister bravely explained how unfair we were to our indigenous people. Their land, their children...we took the lot. But we didn't just take. We brought disease, alcohol and murder as well....one day I hope we unite and forge a new partnership.

Anthony reflected: It made me think about how greedy people are and how we can't share our world and how we destroyed the land in front of them and we don't care. The speech made me ask have we changed or are we still wanting more?


1 comment:

  1. Wow. What a powerful assignment. We discuss similar issues here when we discuss how Native Americans were treated. Just last week, our students wrote about whether Columbus Day should be a holiday here in America, and many students argued that the way he and his men treated natives should negate the holiday.

    Your thoughts in this post are really insightful. It is so interesting to see how the same issues are addressed around the world!

    Mrs. Long
    Grade 10 teacher
    Maine, USA

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