after 11 years...welcome to 1967

I cannot say sorry

for our attempts at cultural genocide

for 200 years of squatting on your land

for breaking treaties with you and your ancestors

for deliberately poisoning your children with arsenic laced flour

for the hurt and devastating harm caused by introducing

alcohol into your communities

for failing to acknowledge your existence

for failing to acknowledge

the depth, strength, diversity

of your culture

for stealing your children

for the missionaries "saving" your souls

for introducing a thousand diseases into your lives

for building carpets of concrete and asphalt

across your beautiful land

for failing to understand

the affinity we need have with this fragile country

for trying to exterminate your languages

for the languages we did exterminate

for decimating your population

by any means we deemed appropriate

for the massacres

for the murderers we let loose amongst you

for having twenty more years of life in me

because my skin is white

for all that has been lost on the rivers of time

for all that will never be recovered

from the dust

with the last breath

of your dying men

for all the pain I will never know

you have lived through

for my governments attempts

to consign your lives

to the pits of history

for..........................................

(health spending 2007:

urban population: $400 per year average

rural : $360 per year average

Indigenous: $200 per year average)