What does National Reconciliation Week mean to me?
This means different things to different people. For many years, due to my family and professional life.
I’ve been aware of all sides of the debate. In 2018 I made a conscious decision to make a contribution based on my skill set as an educator and made a written submission to the constitutional recognition parliamentary inquiry and made a public statement at the other hearing at the Aboriginal Centre of Excellence in Redfern.
That has been the extent my public involvement in this issue. In preparation for this program we have been talking about today what national recognition means to me I recently listened to a podcast about Gandhi and his use of popular activism and nonviolence.
This particular podcast made the point that there are not to but three stakeholders in this discussion. The oppressed the oppresses and the watchers.
From my perspective there are three ways to understand watchers .
Firstly, there are those you have an opinion I don’t want to express it due to their unwillingness to be criticised from those on the opposite side to what their opinion is.
Secondly there are the watches you have an opinion but don’t have the confidence or all the arguments to support their opinion and therefore remain silent.
Thirdly there are those that are watchers because they genuinely see both sides of the argument and cannot work out where they sit.
For me it’s about respecting the views of these three groups of people in the group called watchers and working together.
Moving forward, if progress is to be made to bring the nation together, the watchers need to get involved in the discussion; building their awareness, working with others, establishing a critical mass and a dialogue to build a strategic direction.
There is a saying I heard form Nathan Cleary the Penrith rugby League player:
“Good actions in the future are best policy for bad actions in the past.”
I have been brought up on the understanding two principles.
Firstly, that in the past you did something wrong intentional or otherwise you should apologise and say sorry. As a country we have made progress on this front.
Secondly, the next thing I have learnt in life is to then work together not revisiting the past to improve the situation.
This is where I would like the watchers make an impact on national reconciliation.
Martin Pluss 