An effective apology for the dawn raids must end with action – Stuff.co.nz

OPINION: What a moving spectacle it was to watch our prime minister, seated and covered in a woven mat, perform the Samoan forgiveness custom of ifoga. She did this in order to apologise for the immigration dawn raids that, in the 1970s, racially targeted members of the Pacific communities.

My immediate emotional response was huge admiration for Jacinda Ardern, whose humility and empathy has already captivated the world.

Many of the headlines, at home and abroad, echoed my initial sentiment by focusing on the prime minister's act of apology without much acknowledgement of perhaps the harder act of forgiveness, without which reconciliation cannot take place.

The same type of misplaced focus was evident during the media coverage of the mosque shootings. Many stories and headlines (not all) which emerged after the attacks were centred around the compassion and empathy of the prime minister and ordinary Kiwis, rather than extraordinary grace and forbearance of the Muslim communities, many of whom had come to New Zealand to be safe.

READ MORE:* Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's father, Ross Ardern, was part of dawn raids as young police officer* Government's apology for dawn raids 'just the beginning', Pasifika youth say* Dawn Raids apology: PM sorry for 'hurt and distress' of racially targeted policy* Once a Panther: The revolutionary Polynesians who stopped the dawn raids

None of the above is of course the fault of anyone in particular, least of all our prime minister. Ardern has no more control over the media headlines than she had over the script of the film, in which she was to be portrayed as the main hero of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

I say this to make it clear that I thought her apology for the dawn raids and the manner in which she delivered it were absolutely right and appropriate for the main purpose it was meant to serve, which was to reestablish trust and respect. In fact, we now know that Ardern specifically wanted the ifoga to focus on Pacific communities affected by the dawn raids.

Chris McKeen/Stuff

The immigration raids of the 1970s caused great intergenerational suffering and diminished the reputation of Pacific communities.

What dictates the media approach, and our own emotional response to these events, comes from an entrenched habit of seeing ourselves as righteous saviours. The media feeds this narrative because we are conditioned to respond more readily with what resonates with us. We are essentially good, we say to ourselves, to soothe our sense of guilt whenever it bubbles to the surface to unsettle and confront us.

For an apology to be effective, it has to be appropriate to the circumstances and be followed by concrete actions to heal and restore justice. The dawn raids were carried out 50 years ago, but painful memories remain fresh in the minds of many. The raids caused great intergenerational suffering and diminished the reputation of Pacific communities whose immigration status, to this day, is viewed by many with suspicion. It is worth noting that subsequent studies showed that, at the time of the raids, Pacific peoples were no more likely to overstay their visas in New Zealand than people from Europe or North America.

ROBERT KITCHIN/Stuff

Minister Aupito William Sio gets emotional during a press conference as he talked about his dawn raid experiences.

But it wasn't just the reputation of Pacific Islanders that was damaged, the Crown's own reputation as the trustworthy protector of minorities also suffered. This is not a trifling issue. In a multi-ethnic society, distrusting the state and its government could easily lead to societal disharmony and conflict.

The prime minister's apology and her commitment to offering scholarships to Pacific students and incorporating the dawn raids into the school history curriculum should set the groundwork for reconciliation. The Polynesian Panthers have said they expected more to be done to dismantle racism and have vowed to continue their lobbying campaign. But what we witnessed during the ifoga ceremony generally demonstrated the acceptance of the prime minister's apology as sincere and effective.

If an apology is not sincere then it can further harm the relationship. History is full of insincere apologies that read more like preemptive statements of regret designed to deflect guilt. As Oscar Wilde noted, When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has the right to blame us.

Supplied

Donna Miles: I am also proud that our country has recognised that we cannot heal the present without remedying the past.

In 2006, former British prime minister Tony Blair, who, by the way, never apologised for the ruinous Iraq war, expressed his deep sorrow for his country's role in the transatlantic slave trade but stopped short of admitting historical guilt. In fact, no British prime minister has ever issued a formal apology for slavery simply because doing so will inevitably lead to considerable financial liability (likely to be billions of pounds). The general position of the UK as expressed by Blair is that slavery has to be condemned in the present and regretted in the past.

George W Bush's statement on the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib is a good example of a bad apology. He said: What took place in that prison does not represent the America I know, which sounds more like a defence than an attempt to heal and remedy.

I am proud of our Pacific communities for responding graciously to the call for forgiveness. I am also proud that our country has recognised that we cannot heal the present without remedying the past. But for an apology to be truly effective what begins with words must always end with actions.

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An effective apology for the dawn raids must end with action - Stuff.co.nz