Runner Is a Symbol of Aboriginal Freedom

When Cathy Freeman took to the track early this morning to run the 400-meter finals at Olympic Stadium, she was wearing the prescribed Australian team uniform, green and gold.

But her shoes--those were yellow, red and black. Yellow for the sun. Red for the land, the red center of this vast island continent. And black for Australia’s indigenous people, the Aborigines.

“What I’m about, really, is just being free to be who I am in my own country,” says Freeman, a 27-year-old Australian of Aboriginal descent. The two-time defending world champion in her event, at the Sydney Games she has emerged as the most potent symbol of a nation’s hopes both for Olympic glory and reconciliation for the sins of its past.

“Really, I’m such a shy thing,” she said a few days ago, her hand covering her mouth. Giggly, too. And tiny--all of 5-foot-4, perhaps 115 pounds. But also fiercely competitive. And, as well, enormously proud of her combined heritage and unafraid to use her celebrity to try to effect change. On her right triceps is a tattoo that reads: “Cos I’m Free.”

“People like to symbolize me,” she said. “But I would just like for young Aboriginals to think that they can live in a world of unity of all people and religions.”

Ten days ago, in the climax to a night of symbolism and ceremonies highlighting the theme of reconciliation, Freeman was the one who lighted the caldron to open the Sydney Games--an Aborigine anointed as the chosen one by Australia’s overwhelmingly white power structure. More than 100,000 people in Olympic Stadium roared their approval. Billions of people watched on TV the world over.

Ultimately, the vision of Freeman--clad in white, ringed by fire and water--may prove to be the defining image of the Sydney Games.

Already, the selection of Freeman to light the caldron has done precisely what politically savvy Games organizers had hoped it would: It has muted Aboriginal activists who for months had threatened to disrupt the Games with protests. It also has amplified the visibility of Aboriginal achievements in sports, art, politics and other areas of mainstream Australian culture.

At the same time, Freeman’s selection has focused attention on the ways many Aboriginals remain disadvantaged--in health care, literacy, life expectancy and so on. And, most telling, it has intensified a nationwide dialogue on a topic that is perhaps the most divisive in Australian society:

Should the prime minister apologize to Australia’s indigenous people for the sins of the past?

Yes, says an emerging wing of influential academics, politicians and newspaper columnists.

“It obviously has become important symbolically,” said Henry Reynolds, a professor at the University of Tasmania who has published several books on white-Aboriginal relations in Australia.

“All the evidence from the various truth commissions and bodies around the world that have dealt with historical problems of injustice have been quite clear: Recognition given in the form of leaders’ apologies is among the key steps in healing.”

As in the United States, the Australian system features several states as well as one federal government--and many of Australia’s state governments have offered apologies.

But not conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who has been in power since 1996.

Howard has carefully used the word “regret” in discussing the issue. The words “I’m sorry” are highly unlikely to pass his lips in this context, said a spokeswoman, Pru Goward.

“I am not willing to apologize for things my government and my generation of Australians didn’t do,” he said earlier this year.

Goward added in an interview: “He regrets what happened. He won’t apologize because he considers that taking a responsibility for something that happened a long time ago.”

Two months ago, Freeman rebuked Howard’s government as insensitive for the refusal to apologize for policies that, from 1910 until the 1970s, forced the removal of thousands of Aboriginal and part-Aboriginal children from their homes. The children were given to white families with the expectation that they would be assimilated into the mainstream.

Estimates of how many children were involved vary considerably; some say it was as high as 100,000.

In July, Freeman revealed that her grandmother had been part of this so-called Stolen Generation. Her grandmother, Freeman said, did not know her own birth date.

“I was so angry because they were denying they had done anything wrong, denying that a whole generation was stolen,” Freeman said.

“The fact is, parts of people’s lives were taken away, they were stolen. I’ll never know who my grandfather was, I didn’t know who my great-grandmother was, and that can never be replaced.”

Aborigines are believed to have been on the continent that is now called Australia for 50,000 years. White settlement began in earnest in 1788.

There are now an estimated 386,000 Aborigines in Australia, out of a total population of 19 million--about 2%, comparable to the percentage of Jews in the U.S.

Discrimination against Aborigines was so virulent that until the 1960s they were not counted in the national census or allowed to vote. It wasn’t until 1992 that courts recognized that Aborigines had owned Australia before whites arrived.

Aboriginal life expectancy is 20 years below the rest of the population and infant mortality five times higher. Aborigines are 20 times more likely to be imprisoned at some point in their lives. The national unemployment rate is a bit over 6%; for Aborigines, it’s about 25%, at least officially. Some Aboriginal leaders say the true figure is more like 50%.

A run-down Aboriginal housing project near downtown Sydney--called “the block”--is a haven for heroin addicts.

In Ramingining, a village in Australia’s Northern Territory that is home to about 600 Aborigines, supplies have to be picked up at the mouth of the Glyde River, about 20 miles away. They come in weekly by barge from Darwin, the nearest big town.

“A doctor comes in every couple of weeks,” said Kieran Rayner, 22, who works at Bula Bula Arts, the local artists cooperative. “Makes it a bit hard to be sick.”

This year, the federal government will spend about $1.5 billion on a wide range of programs aimed at improving the quality of Aboriginal life, said Goward, the prime minister’s spokeswoman.

Most, she continued, “are focused on practical matters,” including housing, health care, employment, literacy, the prevention of domestic violence and substance abuse, job-training and so on.

Aborigines have also been given title to about 15% of the continent, although most of the land is in the remote Northern Territory. In addition, the government has set up a $1-billion land fund for urban Aborigines.

It’s not, Goward stressed, that the premier is opposed to reconciliation. Far from it, she asserted.

“This government has focused on health and education,” she said. “It doesn’t want to get into polemics. It doesn’t want to get into ideology--just focus on the practical outcomes.

“Which is, in a way,” she acknowledged, “a philosophical statement itself.”

For more than a decade, the issue of reconciliation has dominated Australian political life.

And there are indications that many in the mainstream have been moved by the Stolen Generation reports.

In May, about 200,000 people joined a march for racial healing across Sydney’s Harbor Bridge. It was the largest demonstration here since the Vietnam War.

Many in the reconciliation movement had been aiming for resolution by next year--when Australia will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its confederation.

Even the sunniest optimists now concede that’s not going to happen.

The question now is, how will the symbolism wrapped up in the Games further the national debate?

Organizers have consistently made a deliberate point of including indigenous culture and traditions.

The 100-day Australian torch relay began at Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, the massive red monolith in the nation’s center. The first torchbearer on Australian soil was Nova Peris-Kneebone, the first Aboriginal gold medalist; she was part of the winning women’s field hockey team at the Atlanta Games in 1996.

During the opening ceremony itself, said Michael Knight, president of the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and the New South Wales minister for the Olympics, “I wanted to send a very strong reconciliation message.”

The ceremony featured Aboriginal songs, customs and dances. The entire production--which has been widely praised in the Australian media--was keyed to a dream sequence linking a young white girl and an Aboriginal elder.

In his speech to open the Games, International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch said, “I would like to express our respect to those who have made Australia what it is today, a great country, with a special tribute to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.” The islands are north of the Australian mainland.

Then came Freeman’s moment at the caldron. Howard was among those in the audience that night.

“Everyone loves her. So does the prime minister,” spokeswoman Goward said.

All Freeman has to do now is win tonight (when it will be early this morning in Los Angeles). Her chief rival, France’s Marie-Jose Perec, left Sydney a few days ago under mysterious circumstances and will not be in the race. Perec won gold in the 400 at the 1996 Atlanta Games, Freeman silver.

If Freeman wins, she has said she may take a victory lap with the two flags that matter to her: Australia’s, emblazoned with the Southern Cross. And the Aboriginal flag--red, yellow and black.

“As my emotions get stronger, my pride in who I am gets more obvious,” Freeman said. “That’s a good thing.”

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UP-TO-THE-MINUTE RESULTS

For complete Olympics coverage, including the outcome of Cathy Freeman’s race, visit the Times’ Web site: https://www. latimes.com/olympics.