Awkward, inadequate but ... ‘Sorry’

My day started and finished with blueberry tart. A lot of us didn’t want to come to the apology empty-handed.

In the days leading up to Wednesday, Canberrans bought offerings of food and blankets to the Tent Embassy.

For the last few years, I’d been a wallflower in the reconciliation movement: present, but not active. This wasn’t going to be another missed opportunity.

So early that morning, I bought a blueberry pie and, lest this be deemed impractical reconciliation, bread rolls too.

We trickled in along the roads radiating out from Parliament House, tramping over the scrub under muted grey sky. We were separate — not talking, and walking with a discrete distance between us. Whatever fire was going to descend on us and make us one community hadn’t happened yet.

I found my place down on the lawns of Parliament House in front of the screens and waited. Why aren’t there more people?

The Bridge Walk in 2000 was massive. Sydney Harbour Bridge carpeted in people. This was respectable, but decidedly Canberran in its scope.

The screens showed the parliamentary bear pit. Politicians filtered in. I was expecting a Palm Sunday moment — the parliament processing in to a gospel choir. This was positively manila — men and women in sensible suits.

“First order of motion: an apology to Australia’s indigenous people.”

Kevin Rudd spoke. We listened, applauding sometimes, but mostly standing grinning.

Amid rhetoric and politicking, there was enough that spoke sincerely and directly to the Stolen Generations.

A simple three words to the wronged: “We are sorry.”

Brendan Nelson showed obvious concern, but his speech itself seemed a forlorn exercise prospecting for good intentions scattered throughout the project of indigenous assimilation. These things were, and will remain, contested.

Perhaps to weigh up our past policies, we could consider their legacy. By their fruits you will know them.

Where are many indigenous people today?

Down at the tent embassy, a young indigenous girl was writing the words of the apology up on butcher’s paper. Tables in a tent bore big boxes of bread and mountains of oranges.

Dreadlocked folk behind a trestle table served steaming chai. Clusters of people trickled in toward the end of Brendan Nelson’s speech. Some were already there, nursing coffee.

I found someone who looked authoritative and offered her my loaves and tart.

“Jeez we’ve got way too much bread already, love. Take it home and eat it yourself. We’ll keep the cake, though, if you don’t mind cutting it up for us.”

Pulling the cake-box out of my backpack, I opened it up.

The tart was a disaster. Despite my best efforts and good intentions, the topping had slid off the side, leaving a smeared, exposed crust. I scraped it back on with a cake-knife, but it was still a slovenly offering.

Like any gesture in this setting it was awkward and ultimately inadequate, but hopefully still useful.

I remembered Kevin Rudd’s words: “We ... respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered.” It seemed there was more grace in the receiving than the offering.

I divided it up and retreated to a far corner of the tent with my chai.

Coming back to work, I looked for faces transfigured: flickers of radiance.

For so long, the apology seemed an impossibility: our policy on reconciliation was a pillar of salt. Did these people know that our country — our ways of thinking about ourselves and talking to each other — changed in the last two hours?

Nothing obvious. Milling shoppers and café patrons.

Back at the office, googling my heart out, the apology spread out and took shape.

There were a few thousand of us on the lawns of Parliament House and a few hundred inside.

Then my girlfriend’s brothers watching on the television at school. My friend Chris with the people at Redfern. And 1.3 million people watching on television.

This moment stretched out below the obvious. We drew together, just not in one place.

Matt Fenwick is a new Canberran. He took part in About Face 5 in 2002.