Sorry is a word that means different things to different people.

The takeover of Australia by the far-away British Crown was not achieved with any degree of respect for the indigenous population and it is right to admit it, learn from it and even apologise for it.

The challenge now is to make the best of the cultural mix we have inherited. It is to our great shame that the European civilisation has been, even to this day, so blind to the special understanding that Aboriginals have of the land.

We acknowledge it in small ways like: “Gee, they make good stockmen,” or “You know, it’s unbelievable how they can track a bloke for miles through the bush and never lose the trail”. But are Indigenous Australians ever consulted about land management issues?

Our track record on this continent so far is a pretty sorry story:

Stage 1 - Colonisation:

Set up camp, run up the flag, call the whole lot crown land and then sell or lease it to new settlers with the profits going to the far-away crown. Chase the natives away if they cause trouble.

Stage 2 - Exploitation:

Import a mob of sheep and cattle, cut all the trees down so you can find them easily, plant hundreds of square miles of wheat and keep doing it until the soil is completely exhausted. Send all the wool and wheat overseas, cash the cheques and then send all the money overseas as well in exchange for ‘the nice things in life’.

Stage 3 - Exploration:

Find minerals, dig them up wherever they are and send them overseas. Use the profits in the same way as Stage 2.

Stage 4 - Rationalisation:

Sell all the public assets, built with the tax money from stages 2 and 3, to overseas-owned companies. Keep telling Australians that we’ll all be better off when foreigners are once again running the whole show.

Of course the crimes of the past need to be exposed. It’s the crimes of the present, though, that we should devote most of our energy to solving. The colonisers have not finished their dreadful business yet.

Ordinary Australians, black through to white, have more in common with each other than with the greedy bloodsuckers who want to buy and sell us all.

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The question of saying sorry has been going on for quite some time now. I wrote the preceding story in 1999 in Tennant Creek.

There should be no doubt though, about apologising to the stolen generation. The idea that we could take children and save them by dissolving out their Aboriginality through forced assimilation is both cruel and ridiculous.

Any surviving victims of such an ordeal are deserving of all the care we can provide. Acknowledging their suffering and saying sorry is a good way to start.