The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By Stephen Cooper
10 December, 1992
The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By Stephen Cooper
10 December, 1992
The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By News Ltd
10 December, 1992
The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By Stephen Cooper
10 December, 1992
The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By Bob Finlayson
10 December, 1992
The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By Bob Finlayson
10 December, 1992
The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By Bob Finlayson
10 December, 1992
The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By Bob Finlayson
10 December, 1992
The Redfern Park Speech
The Redfern Park Speech
By Stephen Cooper
10 December, 1992
On December 10, 1992, at the official opening of the United Nations International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in Redfern Park, Sydney, the then Prime Minister Paul Keating made a landmark speech to a crowd of predominantly indigenous people, which became known as the Redfern Speech. For the first time, an Australian prime minister publicly acknowledged to Indigenous Australians that European settlers were responsible for the injustices Australian Aboriginal communities continued to face. “It was we who did the dispossessing," he said. "We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?” Although little media attention was given to it at the time, The Redfern Park Speech is now regarded by many as one of the greatest Australian speeches. Its importance in placing Reconciliation on the national agenda has since been recognised and is credited as paving the way for 2007's formal apology to indigenous Australians. 


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