Aborigines hope Cathy’s gold will boost race ties

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Sydney: Australian Prime Minister John Howard said it was terrific. Opposition leader Kim Beazley said she had run 400 metres of reconciliation.

Now comes the tough part. Aboriginal leaders have to harness the emotion sparked by Cathy Freeman's 400 metres Olympic victory on Monday to win equal rights and mend race relations.

The Aboriginal runner, a potent symbol of national aspirations after her historic victory, was certainly eager to maintain momentum.

"Let the wheels turn on reconciliation," she said after her victory halted an adoring nation in its tracks.

"It's quite fitting that I have won an Olympic gold medal right now and reconciliation is a topic right now," she said.

Across the world, her lighting of the Olympic cauldron and emotion-charged 400 metres victory were hailed as poignant reminders of unfinished business.

"Freeman, the pride of Australia, the joy of the Aborigine people, carried this continent 400 metres across the finish line and light years farther," the 'New York Times' said.

Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson certainly hopes so.

He called for the "emotionalism and symbolism" surrounding Freeman's win to be matched with a commitment to the "unfinished business" of race relations.

"The will is there and the desire is there but we have got to have substantive action," he said. "The great majority of the Australian people want to see the indigenous situation improve."

Prime Minister Howard hailed Freeman's victory and supported her decision to carry both Aboriginal and Australian flags in her victory lap round the packed and cheering stadium.

But Aborigines are demanding more, arguing that his government has whitewashed Australia's history of abuse and injustice against Aborigines.

They make up just over two percent, or around 400,000, of Australia's population and have a life expectancy 20 years less than other Australians.But Howard has steadfastly refused to apologise for past atrocities inflicted on Aborigines who have been here 40,000 years.

They were massacred in their thousands after Australia was colonised by white settlers from 1788, evicted from their ancestral lands and derided by many white Australians until recently as Stone Age relics.

Between the 1920s and 1960s, the government imposed a policy of forced assimilation of light-skinned Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families to live in the white community.

And that is where Freeman has proved such a powerful voice to speak for her people.

The gold medallist, whose grandmother was one of the "stolen generation", has in the past slammed Howard for what she called his "insensitivity" on the highly charged issue.

One Aboriginal leader warned before the Games that visitors would see "burning cars and burning buildings".

That language has since been tempered and Aboriginal protests confined to a "tent embassy" of demonstrators.

Now with the groundswell of support triggered by Freeman's golden Games, they could at last have the impetus they need to achieve their goals.

But the 'Sydney Morning Herald' injected a note of caution into the country-wide euphoria, "We need to create a national house of reconciliation and that's a long, agonising brick-by-brick task."



(c) Reuters Limited.