
Cal Flyn: the terrible truths in my family history - Thevet
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/cal-flyn-the-terrible-truths-in-my-family-history/news-story/7785e4d89d6cd479139be969a88f4047
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jdub
This is a part of our history that Australia has never properly accepted or
dealt with. It's unfinished business for all of us.

(It's almost surprising that The Australian – our only national paper,
published by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia – published this. They tend
to have good indigenous coverage, but an excerpt of a book on the frontier
wars? Wow.)

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PhilWright
People are not guilty of their parents crimes/behaviour. If you meet someone
that has a parent that committed a hideous crime then we do not blame the
children.

This also works the other way, if your parent is national hero that does not
reflect on the children either. You should not take the credit for a parents
good work.

Obviously it can be difficult for immediate children to take such a
dispassionate attitude to parents actions but as more generations go by it
should become easier.

~~~
mc32
Not only that, but everyone, bar pacifist peoples who could only survive if
isolated, committed atrocities of one kind or another. Some peoples kept
better records of their deeds, others not, or things get lost to time.

That's not to say one can't acknowledge that bad things happened in one's
lineage (history), but to think one's lineage is worse than another is
oversimplifying things or a case of selection bias, among other things.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> everyone, bar pacifist peoples who could only survive if isolated, committed
> atrocities of one kind or another

That doesn't sound right. What makes you say that every family committed
atrocities?

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OvidNaso
Because we all have a common ancestor that lived not that long ago[0]

0\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve)

~~~
erikpukinskis
That's a nonsensical argument. My parent comment referred to "peoples" in the
plural. Your argument is that there is only one people, which is a
contraction. The whole point of the discussion is to compare different
peoples.

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Spooky23
Feeling guilt over multigenerational sins is kind of silly.

War and conflict is a messy business.

~~~
pessimizer
Exterminating a people for their land isn't war, and the blood isn't washed
off when the kids get it.

~~~
dracht
At what point does the blood wash off? Are the Britons entitled to reparations
for the viking raids? Should Mongolia make right Khan's conquests? Should
Germany get back the land that was taken from them through the Treaty of
Versailles? Or does this eternal sin only apply when whites did something to
non-whites?

~~~
meric
Descendants of Vikings and Mongolians do not current hold title over the land
they have historically conquered.

The allies gave West Germany back to Germans in 1949.

The Soviets lost East Germany back to the Germans in 1990.

Whites being given back their land after losing the war did happen only
recently.

South Americans had their land returned by Spanish and Portguese forcefully.

Japan had it's country returned. China had Hong Kong returned.

New Zealand Maori's received financial reparations.

So are you suggesting only everyone else get their land back, and indigenous
australian's, well.. water under the bridge kind of thing?

~~~
dracht
Germany lost a significant amount of territory that has not been given
back.[0] East Germany (and the whole of rest of Eastern Europe) to this day is
much poorer than western parts thanks to half a century of Soviet occupation.
I never hear anyone make demands for restitution regarding that bit of very
recent history. Any way, the argument I was making was that at some point the
blood clearly does wash off, and where you draw the line is arbitrary. Why
should a white Australian feel guilty for the Frontier Wars but a German
shouldn't feel guilty for the holocaust?

[0]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Ge...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Germanborders.svg/2000px-
Germanborders.svg.png)

~~~
meric
It was as recent as 1960 the government was stealing children from their
families. Even now, they are behind on every metric, life expectancy,
education, employment, homelessness. Everyday, the only indigenous I see are
homeless on the side of the street begging.

I wasn't even born here, and I feel guilty.

