Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at an Erebus Commemoration event where the Prime Minister formally apologised. Photo / File
Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at an Erebus Commemoration event where the Prime Minister formally apologised. Photo / File
COMMENT It's hard to comprehend how deeply psychic wounds cut until one is wounded and then, somehow, healed.
Something in the healing process defines the depth and breadth of the hurt itself; only afterward is it possible to look back and know the measure of the scars.
That people can beamazed at that measure, and surprised by the change healing brings, and above all have such a feeling of relief from suffering, shows how keenly our minds – some would say our souls – can be wounded without us realising.
And while there are many ways such hurts might be healed, most often the truest healing comes from something simple yet heartfelt – an apology for a wrong.
Friends and family of the Erebus disaster victims discovered this, to their shock and doubtless later joy, when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern unreservedly apologised to them last week for the Government's role in, in effect, covering up for national carrier Air New Zealand's flaws.
Forty years of insincerity, of shifting blame and formless innuendo, that had made the loved ones of the victims feel victimised themselves, came to an end.
The relief was most potent for the families of the crew, the pilots and flight engineer who were originally blamed for the 1979 crash into the Antarctic volcano. It felt, the engineer's daughter said, like a weight had suddenly been lifted from her shoulders.
A similar scenario is playing out with the families of the victims of the Pike River mine explosion. In their case, news an expert crew is about to re-enter the drift brings the hope that evidence will soon be found to answer the question of what exactly happened, and why.
Bruce Bisset
And even if it turns out no particular person or fault was to blame, that in itself will provide a type of healing; the doubt is the wound, the knowing is the salve.
It's like that with colonisation. And even more so with decolonisation – the act of trying to experience the world by standing in the shoes of the colonised.
Imagine how much harder it is, how much more pain is involved, if you are not merely – no disrespect intended, but bear with the comparison here – the loved ones of the victim of a tragic accident, but of having your ancestors slaughtered, your land confiscated, your homes burned, your livelihood taken away.
On a lie; on a convenient pretext; just because might was thought right. And then to be forced to be, to conform and behave as, those who have come to rule you by force.
That is some measure of the grief of the colonised.
Is it any wonder that, even heartfelt, an apology is simply not enough?
Now imagine that you are – as many of you will be – one of the colonisers. Because the original wrongs happened long ago, you may not know of them, and even if you do, are inclined to consign them to history, for they do not touch you.
All your life you have lived with the people who are colonised, without ever seeing the hurt they carry, or at least, without ever fully gauging its measure. Because you either do not know, do not look, or worst, do not care.
You've read all the horrifying statistics; you've tutted over the appalling crimes; you've perhaps had enough sympathy to thank God you're not one of them.
But you've never seen yourself as a coloniser, have you? Never thought you might be a cause of the problem.
Start to think it. Doubt may be the wound, but knowing is the salve; you need the first to bring the second on the road to decolonisation.
