Every day I wake safe in my home, fenced in on lands where once you walked proud
I don’t even know the name of your people, never asked of your stories, never thought where you’ve gone
“I have done nothing wrong, it is mine, I have bought it.” But what cost do you pay for my right?
Every day in my car, I heedlessly race, cross your paths, your slow ways, your land covered now with pollution, construction, and haste
I buy food grown on your sacred places, burn energy mined from under your dreaming, learn esoterica in torpid advantage.
I partake of a culture that assumes I am white. Red, White and Blue, Aussie mate.
No one walks toward me, looks at my skin, furtively wondering “Is she drunk, violent, bludger, or stoned?”
I’m lucky, I don’t have to wake, being black, on the margin, excluded, derided, denied.
Nearly 200 years my family has walked here
Trodden with confident right,
Today I say sorry, with all of my heart, for what we have stolen, what we’ve claimed for our own,
without thought, without care, to your loss.
“I have done nothing wrong”, I used often to think
Defending, “I’ve no other home”
But I missed the point and I’m here to confess: I’m racist, I’m privileged, I’m white.
I have never consciously done you a wrong.
I have every day thoughtlessly done you great wrong.
Aboriginal Australia, I’m sorry.
Wendy's Out of Station 