Our Generation: Land. Culture. Freedom.
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
This new documentary looks good:
Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElW6M0hU7jo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElW6M0hU7jo
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/fe ... ilm-review
Our Generation: Land Culture Freedom - review
Sinem Saban and Damien Curtis's documentary examining the state of indigenous rights in Australia offers an insight into years of neglect, ignorance and stereotyping. But it also offers the hope that things could change.
Neil Willis
Guardian Weekly, Monday 14 February 2011
In 2008, Australia's then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, apologised to the country's indigenous population for the "indignity and degradation" to which past governments had subjected them. Although "sorry" was only a simple word, Australia's First Peoples, the Aborigines, the indigenous population, hoped the apology would herald a new era of race relations. Sunday 13 February 2011 was the three-year anniversary of Sorry Day, but in the years since Rudd's announcement it seems little has changed.
Our Generation is a documentary feature from Sinem Saban and Damien Curtis looking at the complex issue of indigenous rights in Australia. The pair have not only the knowledge and understanding to tackle subject, they have the necessary sensitivity to extract an informative and affecting film without getting bogged down in emotion. Saban's academic grounding in Aboriginal Studies has been supplemented by 10 years of work with the Aboriginal community who are the main subject of the film, the Yolngu in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, where she worked as a teacher and human rights activist. Curtis has for a decade worked with tribal peoples around the world to protect their culture and ancestral lands.
The plight of the Aborigine of Australia has been an issue since the colonial flag was first hoisted on Botany Bay. While other colonised indigenous people were at least recognised by treaties with their new governors, no such document was signed on the Bay. The problem of recognition has stayed with the Aborigine ever since.
For all their knowledge and passion for their subject, Saban and Curtis do not lose sight of the fact that their film is the conduit through which the argument for indigenous rights is presented. Many of the civil rights leaders interviewed in the film have been bearing the torch of indigenous rights for years, but years of being ignored by both a conservative media and the governments of John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have taken their toll. Our Generation is very much a call to a new generation of Australians, Aborigine or city-dwelling white suburbanite, to relight the torch and carry it forward.
The testimony of the Yolngu is significant for the film. Aside from Saban's personal connection with the community, they are seen by other Aboriginal groups in Australia as the community that has managed to retain most of its culture, traditions and land. The Yolngu remained stubbornly resistant to most forms of colonisation. Crucially, the community did not cede control of its lands to settlers and managed to retain sovereignty – the issue and importance of which runs throughout the film.
There is much to admire about this documentary, least of all the fact that it was made at all. Curtis and Saban relied on donations to get the project off the ground, but the nature of the independent production meant the film-makers had complete editorial control. The airing of the issues contained therein – racial discrimination, funds for community projects in exchange for land rights – are not addressed in the mainstream media nor can they be found on the political agenda. The result is a film that gives those who contributed a sense of participation ownership over the finished product, especially when their names are included in the credits.
Saban says she was inspired by Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine, examining the issue of gun ownership in the US. The advance of the documentary format on to mainstream cinema screens has allowed audiences to familiarise themselves with how to watch them. In the case of Saban, like Moore, the idea is to show all of the facts — not just the soundbites given by media or politicians — in a way that spurs the audience into action. Even after the film-making was finished the pair embarked on a national and international promotion, including talks and events, to continue to raise awareness of their subject.
The film works as a traditional piece of cinema because it uses the same blueprint as a traditional linear narrative. The complex issues are laid out in chronological order, from Botany Bay to the current arguments about interventionism, the approach favoured by John Howard's government, which used the media by playing on stereotypes to whip up a moral panic over child abuse and alcoholism in Aboriginal communities. The main protagonists are also laid out for the audience to see. For example, the missionary's paternalistic approach of assimilation — removing children from their families to live with white families, as seen in the Golden Globe-nominated Rabbit-Proof Fence. Not only is this style easy to follow, it is vital in informing the audience of the history of the subject without browbeating them with something akin to a 74-minute political broadcast.
Interviews with young and old Yolngu people, ranging from community leaders to ordinary grandmothers, allows an intriguing look at a culture that is too often overlooked. The Aborigine communities are short on housing and facilities. Health problems mean that life expectancy is far below that enjoyed by their fellow Australians in the cities. Much of the political action has taken aim at the ills of these communities without examining the cause: the current incompatibility of the traditional Aborigine culture, including a more nomadic existence connected to the land, with the more recent western idea of permanent, city-dwelling society. One of the main demands of this documentary is the need, at the very least, for greater integration of these ideals.
Although the film has an agenda of sorts – to both unite First People communities into one voice and encourage that voice to be both used and heard – its main task is to provide a platform for education and action. On the one hand, the film is used to document the misguided policies of the past. However, the effect of the project is to spur a greater number of people to learn about the issue of indigenous rights and demand action be taken. In a similar way to Saban's experience with Bowling for Columbine, audiences should feel compelled to get involved, speak up and eventually force the issue on to the political agenda.
The subject of indigenous rights is a difficult and complex one for modern Australia. It is nagging problem yet to be tackled in the back of a national consciousness. However, facing up to such a subject may stir up emotions long buried or uncover old resentment, guilt or even shame. To a certain degree Kevin Rudd's apology has completed the hardest part. Now the examination of what went wrong and, more importantly, how best to move forward should be the focus.
You can get more information about the issues raised in the film, and buy your own copy of the documentary by going to the Our Generation website at http://www.ourgeneration.org.au
There is a special screening of the film, including a Q&A with the film-makers and a guest appearance by Professor Germaine Greer, on Wednesday 16 February at the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR. Tickets can be booked through the Our Generation website.
Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElW6M0hU7jo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElW6M0hU7johttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/fe ... ilm-review
Our Generation: Land Culture Freedom - review
Sinem Saban and Damien Curtis's documentary examining the state of indigenous rights in Australia offers an insight into years of neglect, ignorance and stereotyping. But it also offers the hope that things could change.
Neil Willis
Guardian Weekly, Monday 14 February 2011
In 2008, Australia's then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, apologised to the country's indigenous population for the "indignity and degradation" to which past governments had subjected them. Although "sorry" was only a simple word, Australia's First Peoples, the Aborigines, the indigenous population, hoped the apology would herald a new era of race relations. Sunday 13 February 2011 was the three-year anniversary of Sorry Day, but in the years since Rudd's announcement it seems little has changed.
Our Generation is a documentary feature from Sinem Saban and Damien Curtis looking at the complex issue of indigenous rights in Australia. The pair have not only the knowledge and understanding to tackle subject, they have the necessary sensitivity to extract an informative and affecting film without getting bogged down in emotion. Saban's academic grounding in Aboriginal Studies has been supplemented by 10 years of work with the Aboriginal community who are the main subject of the film, the Yolngu in Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, where she worked as a teacher and human rights activist. Curtis has for a decade worked with tribal peoples around the world to protect their culture and ancestral lands.
The plight of the Aborigine of Australia has been an issue since the colonial flag was first hoisted on Botany Bay. While other colonised indigenous people were at least recognised by treaties with their new governors, no such document was signed on the Bay. The problem of recognition has stayed with the Aborigine ever since.
For all their knowledge and passion for their subject, Saban and Curtis do not lose sight of the fact that their film is the conduit through which the argument for indigenous rights is presented. Many of the civil rights leaders interviewed in the film have been bearing the torch of indigenous rights for years, but years of being ignored by both a conservative media and the governments of John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have taken their toll. Our Generation is very much a call to a new generation of Australians, Aborigine or city-dwelling white suburbanite, to relight the torch and carry it forward.
The testimony of the Yolngu is significant for the film. Aside from Saban's personal connection with the community, they are seen by other Aboriginal groups in Australia as the community that has managed to retain most of its culture, traditions and land. The Yolngu remained stubbornly resistant to most forms of colonisation. Crucially, the community did not cede control of its lands to settlers and managed to retain sovereignty – the issue and importance of which runs throughout the film.
There is much to admire about this documentary, least of all the fact that it was made at all. Curtis and Saban relied on donations to get the project off the ground, but the nature of the independent production meant the film-makers had complete editorial control. The airing of the issues contained therein – racial discrimination, funds for community projects in exchange for land rights – are not addressed in the mainstream media nor can they be found on the political agenda. The result is a film that gives those who contributed a sense of participation ownership over the finished product, especially when their names are included in the credits.
Saban says she was inspired by Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine, examining the issue of gun ownership in the US. The advance of the documentary format on to mainstream cinema screens has allowed audiences to familiarise themselves with how to watch them. In the case of Saban, like Moore, the idea is to show all of the facts — not just the soundbites given by media or politicians — in a way that spurs the audience into action. Even after the film-making was finished the pair embarked on a national and international promotion, including talks and events, to continue to raise awareness of their subject.
The film works as a traditional piece of cinema because it uses the same blueprint as a traditional linear narrative. The complex issues are laid out in chronological order, from Botany Bay to the current arguments about interventionism, the approach favoured by John Howard's government, which used the media by playing on stereotypes to whip up a moral panic over child abuse and alcoholism in Aboriginal communities. The main protagonists are also laid out for the audience to see. For example, the missionary's paternalistic approach of assimilation — removing children from their families to live with white families, as seen in the Golden Globe-nominated Rabbit-Proof Fence. Not only is this style easy to follow, it is vital in informing the audience of the history of the subject without browbeating them with something akin to a 74-minute political broadcast.
Interviews with young and old Yolngu people, ranging from community leaders to ordinary grandmothers, allows an intriguing look at a culture that is too often overlooked. The Aborigine communities are short on housing and facilities. Health problems mean that life expectancy is far below that enjoyed by their fellow Australians in the cities. Much of the political action has taken aim at the ills of these communities without examining the cause: the current incompatibility of the traditional Aborigine culture, including a more nomadic existence connected to the land, with the more recent western idea of permanent, city-dwelling society. One of the main demands of this documentary is the need, at the very least, for greater integration of these ideals.
Although the film has an agenda of sorts – to both unite First People communities into one voice and encourage that voice to be both used and heard – its main task is to provide a platform for education and action. On the one hand, the film is used to document the misguided policies of the past. However, the effect of the project is to spur a greater number of people to learn about the issue of indigenous rights and demand action be taken. In a similar way to Saban's experience with Bowling for Columbine, audiences should feel compelled to get involved, speak up and eventually force the issue on to the political agenda.
The subject of indigenous rights is a difficult and complex one for modern Australia. It is nagging problem yet to be tackled in the back of a national consciousness. However, facing up to such a subject may stir up emotions long buried or uncover old resentment, guilt or even shame. To a certain degree Kevin Rudd's apology has completed the hardest part. Now the examination of what went wrong and, more importantly, how best to move forward should be the focus.
You can get more information about the issues raised in the film, and buy your own copy of the documentary by going to the Our Generation website at http://www.ourgeneration.org.au
There is a special screening of the film, including a Q&A with the film-makers and a guest appearance by Professor Germaine Greer, on Wednesday 16 February at the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR. Tickets can be booked through the Our Generation website.
Post edited by Byrnzie on
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Comments
I don't know why i'm into Aussie history more than American, but i am.
This is a good one - Incident at Oglala - The Leonard Peltier Story
Part One:
Part Two:
Cool! You are the Man! i'll check this at work tomorrow and forward to She who sha'll not be named.
You like Midnight OIL
Did you Know that bands lead singer has been in the current government as minister for the last few years
Do you remember all their songs
about Uranium -HE hasnt done a thing about it
about aboriginals - he hasnt done a thing about it
sang a lot of songs. brow beated the governments
but when he gets in
HE DOES SWEET FUCK ALL
PG is a HYPOCRITE
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Yes I Did, and it breaks my heart. but their were other people in the band who i still put on a pedestal.
MAte the reason aboriginals get a lot of greif from Mainstream Aussies is the amount of handouts that they receive from the government.
also they will go on about the historical significance of a place so that they can claim it as a sacred site. as soon as they get their hands on it they lease it to mining companies for profit.
this pisses a lot of people off
The Gov is creating a massive problem of people reliant on handouts.
instead of creating jobs and futures they just throw cash at the problem.
And unfortunatly a lot ( not all) just take that money and Drink it. and thus the stereotype continues
Sure anglos also have these same problems. But Aboriginals are treated differently.
I work witha few abotiginals at my worksite, from workshop to engineers, they hate this issue. they see themselves as aussie aboriginals. they dont want handouts for their people they want handups.
succesful people who are proud of what they do and are.
My theory is to apologise ( done that) and pay a massive payout to the aboriginal community. then after that they receive the same as everyone else. no extras.
the same
bring on the insults
They're mostly just drunken scroungers, right?
Maybe, like the Native Americans, there's a difference between Aboriginals who want to be integrated into White society, and Aboriginals who want to be left alone to live their lives the way they choose, free of government interference and without the government constantly looking for ways to steal more of their land?
What's your opinion on the fact that the intervention was based on lies and was motivated by the greed of mining companies to open up valuable tracts of land for uranium, iron ore and zinc?
What's your opinion on the fact that a UN report – State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples – found that Australian Aborigines have the worst life expectancy rates of any indigenous peoples in the world? (In Australia the life expectancy gap is 20 years. In Guatemala it is 13, and in New Zealand it is 11.)
What's your opinion on the fact that the UN special rapporteur on indigenous rights James Aneya, said racism was entrenched in Australia and that the Northern Territory intervention was an attempt to disempower Aborigines?
“It undermines the right of indigenous peoples to control their own destinies, their right to self-determination” - James Aneya
What's ypur opinion on the governments efforts to force them out of meaningful Territory-subsidised employment (CDEP) and force them back onto the dole?
What's your opinion on the Aboriginals being forced to sign over their land to the federal government for 99 years in exchange for housing development?
What's your opinion on the fact that the Australian constitution makes no mention of indigenous people, and that Australia is the only western democracy without a bill of rights?
What's your opinion on the findings of the 'Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination' whose criticisms were that:
* proposed reforms to HREOC that may limit its independence and hinder its effectiveness at monitoring Australia's compliance with the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
* the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), an elected body of indigenous representatives, the main policy-making body in Aboriginal affairs
* a lack of legislation criminalising serious acts or incitement of racial hatred, in the Commonwealth, the State of Tasmania and the Northern Territory
* that no cases of racial discrimination, as distinct from racial hatred, have been successfully litigated in the Federal courts since 2001
* reversal since 1998 of progress made under 1993's Native Title Act and Mabo case, with new legal certainty for government and third parties provided at the expense of indigenous title
* diverging perceptions between governmental authorities and indigenous peoples and others on the compatibility of the 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act with the Convention
* that proof of continuous observance and acknowledgement of the laws and customs of indigenous peoples since the British acquisition of sovereignty over Australia is required to establish native title
* very poor conditions of employment, housing, health, education and income for indigenous Australians, compared with non-indigenous
* mandatory sentencing in Western Australia, which disproportionately impacts indigenous Australians
* the "striking over-representation" of indigenous people in prison, and dying in custody
* that indigenous women are the fastest growing prison population
* that many have been in detention for over three years
* that the Federal Government has rejected most of the recommendations adopted by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation given in 2000
A lot there to get through so will try to reply in depth later.
firstly though I dont think They are scroungers. Its a bloody big problem. and its a focus for those in australia who are racist ( and their is alot of them)
Its funny how in all those reports their is nothing about how much more you get in this country IF YOU ARE ABORIGINAL. And thus with that issue those racist australians use that as a focus point.
you mentioned that some want to be left alone and live a traditional life. Plenty of space in this country to do just that.
The intervention was based more on the problems revolving oround alchahol and the problemsthat caused, many sober aboriginals in the communities affected are actually happy, more kids are turning up for school.
Im compassionate about the plight many aboriginals face
many live in communities with no work for them, the only shop in the community being a grog shop.
I want everyone white , black and blue to be equal. to have oppertunities to do and be whatever they can be, want to be. IF THAT MEANS taking the grog off their parents so they are sober enough to get their kids to school well maybe thats required.
as I said im very compassionate about the plight of this mighty aboriginal nation. Yes we took their land , yes many bad things have been done in our short history. But we are moving forward sommetimes slowly.
by browbeating australia The UN is getting more and more people to raise their middle finger to them. To many in this country aboriginals get a lot more than others, and it pisses em off no end that they are then told that the aboriginals should have more
I was born here on this great land, So was Jason my good Koori mate 2 years apart
his skin is black mine white , and that should be the only difference.
which is really no difference at all.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
a bill of rights doesnt necessarily guarantee equal rights. you should know this steve.
australia isnt immune from bigotry and we dont pretend to be. the australian constitution reflects the time in which it was written. a time in which the interests of white male middle-upper class politicians who drafted it were paramount.
in 1967 section 127 of the australian constituition was repealed in order that aboriginal australians be able to be counted in the census as citizens. and therefore as people.
so you see steve there was(though thats not IS, is it?) mention of aborigines in the australian constitution ... but thats not quite what you meant is it?
should the traditional caretakers of this land be recognised in the constitution? i think so. God is and the Queen frequently is mentioned so it stands to reason the indigenous first nations should be. it is the right thing to do imo.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
So you're saying that Aboriginals are better off than whites?
So which is it? Are they better off than whites, or are the majority of them living in poverty?
Or should it be the only difference?
Aboriginals are different from white Australians. They have their own culture, history, and religious beliefs. Or are you talking about the fact that there should be no difference in terms of equality of the standard of living for those whose traditional way of life has been lost, or taken away from them?
aboriginal australians are/were not the only people here who had their own culture history and religious beliefs... and who had that taken from them.
in modern times it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a semi nomadic people to maintain the culture theyve held onto for thousands of years. does this mean we should just roll right over the top of them? no it doesnt. there has to be a balance.. and it has to be a viable balance. and everyone should be treated equally.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Check it out:
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - Djarimirri:
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu - I Was Born Blind:
Yep.
Racial discrimination = not good.
yes i have.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
ANY discrimination not good.
im kinda curious steve about what you propose we, as a nation do, in order that equality be achieved. youve clearly be reading a bit about australia lately and id like to hear your thoughts on how we go about providing the services needed to those remote aboriginal communities.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
I read that in the first 5 years of the intervention - which was supposedly designed to improve living conditions in Aboriginal townships, and where new housing was declared a priority - zero houses were built. Instead, the mining companies moved in and began tearing up the land.
So maybe that should be addressed for a start.
And this looks to be a positive step:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/na ... 5901336628
Aboriginal communities ask government for drink bans
August 05, 2010
THREE Aboriginal communities around Halls Creek have had stringent new alcohol bans imposed on their lands.
The communities in Halls Creek, one of the country's most troubled remote shires, asked the West Australian government for the bans.
Approving the restrictions yesterday, Racing and Gaming Minister Terry Waldron said fines of up to $5000 would be imposed on licensees and $2000 on anyone else who was caught bringing or possessing alcohol on their lands. Police would also have power to seize or destroy any alcohol they found.
The move brings to 10 the number of remote Aboriginal communities in the west with police-enforceable alcohol bans, with all but one requesting the move voluntarily.
Nine are in the Kimberley and one in the Pilbara.
The alcohol problems in Halls Creek were so severe last year that a ban on selling full-strength takeaway alcohol was imposed on the town, triggering a big drop in assaults, police call-outs and emergency hospital admissions.
The number of incidents attended by police more than halved, and the number of presentations by residents at the local hospital fell 47 per cent.
But significant problems remain, which has prompted the latest move.
Mr Waldron said the 200-strong Ringer Soak (Kundat Djaru) community and smaller Nicholson Block and Koongie Park communities around Halls Creek had approached him for the bans to try to reduce alcohol-related harm and ill-health.
He said it was a credit to them all that they had recognised the threat to personal and social health and chosen to take a stand.
Mr Waldron said that while communities could declare their land dry using their own by-laws, enforcing the rules without government backing was difficult.
Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said police would do their bit to ensure the new bans were enforced.
"Communities that take the initiative to tackle alcohol abuse and the myriad of problems associated with it have my total support and admiration," the Police Commissioner said. "There's an indisputable link between alcohol abuse in remote communities and the level of violence, domestic violence and child welfare issues."
Curtin University professor of health policy Mike Daube said the voluntary bans represented a significant cultural shift that gave hope for the future.
"It's important both in what it will do and symbolically," he said. "The more communities there are, the more it will be seen as Aboriginal people playing a role themselves in tackling this issue."
And also maybe the following could be advocated:
* Continually acknowledge country and the traditional owners in all formal gatherings.
* Write letters to the editor if you see any injustice in our system.
* Lobby to have your kids' schools incorporate more Indigenous history into their curriculum.
* If you run a business, employ Indigenous staff or train an Indigenous apprentice.
* Encourage Local Councils to create and implement policies for Aboriginal representation or employment.
* Create cultural awareness programs.
* Speak up for the rights of Indigenous people.
* Participate in protest marches for Aboriginal rights.
* Get books or the Koori Mail into the library.
* Invite Aboriginal people to do presentations or talks in schools or at community events.
* Watch out that Aboriginal people are consulted.
* Lobby to have the Aboriginal flag flown next to the Australian flag at all times.
Read more: http://www.creativespirits.info/aborigi ... z1EHuoWAys
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/ju ... okextracts
We can dream too
The day white Australians can look in the mirror and say 'I am Aboriginal' is the day their tormented country will start to heal, argues Germaine Greer
Germaine Greer
The Guardian, Saturday 19 June 2004
There is only one way to escape from an impasse, and that is to turn back to the point where you went wrong, sit down on the ground and have a think about it. I've seen too much of the frantic grief that is eating the heart out of Aboriginal communities not to have racked my brain for years trying to imagine a way of healing it, but I'm not here offering yet another solution to the Aborigine problem. Rather I want to suggest an end to the problematisation of Aborigines. Blackfellas are not and never were the problem. They were the solution, if only whitefellas had been able to see it.
The country I love has been crazily devastated by whitefellas who knock down its mountains, grind up its trees, divert its watercourses, build high-rises on its flood plains, creating an endless nightmare of suburbia from which our kids try to escape by sticking needles in their arms. It is obvious to anyone that Australia's "sophisticated recreational lifestyle" comes at a huge cost in terms of non-renewable resources. The senescent bush along the densely populated foreshores will one day explode in firestorms that will wipe out the insurance market and bring the whole shonky economy to its knees.
A good deal of energy has been expended on diagnosing the malaise that leads to high levels of alcoholism, addiction and crimes of violence in Aboriginal society. Whitefella spiritual desolation is seldom admitted, let alone discussed. Problem drinking affected whitefellas long before it made devastating inroads into Aboriginal society, and continues to wreak havoc today. It is one of a galaxy of self-destructive behaviours making a continuum with suicide, drug abuse, reckless driving and self-harming, all of which are rife in the "lucky" country.
What is there for whitefellas to cry about? In Australian literature, the Europeans' corrosive unease expresses itself in a curious distortion of the pathetic fallacy, which characterises the land as harsh, cruel, savage, relentless, the sky as implacable, pitiless and so forth. The heart of the country is called "dead". Vicissitudes of heat and cold are interpreted as a kind of punishment, and the physical world itself given the role of an avenging deity. The vegetation is described as "stunted", "warped", "misshapen", another example of projection of a presentiment of evil within to the countryside without.
It was not the country that was damned but the settler who felt in his heart that he was damned. His impotent cursing, which has left a legacy in the unequalled degree of profanity in Australian speech, was a classic piece of transference. We hate this country because we cannot allow ourselves to love it. We know in our hearts' core that it is not ours.
The settlers did not mean to destroy the Aborigines, but they could not deny that the Aborigines were being destroyed. They could agree not to mention the fact but they couldn't forget it. Their descendants prefer to bicker over just how badly whitefellas treated blackfellas, and just how much or how little the blackfellas deserved it, rather than utter the simple word "sorry".
Saying sorry would not have fixed anything, but it might have reaped the whirlwind, as Australians came to wonder just what it was that they were saying sorry for.
The settlers toiled like madmen to remove the scrub, bush and trees that stood in the way of cultivation. They no more realised that the newly denuded land would be vulnerable to extremes of heat and cold, drought and flood, than they realised that the rising of the water table would bring the stored salts to the surface, gradually poisoning the land. Nor did they realise that the willows they planted along the waterways would spread through entire river systems, until the flows were clogged, or that their garden flowers would become a curse. The settlers imagined that they were redeeming a land the original inhabitants had failed to manage in any rational fashion, and that they could turn it into a new Canaan.
Ultimately, rural Australia ended up emptier than it was before it was "opened up". Australia has now become the most highly urbanised population of any country in the world. The whitefellas who tried to make a living in the bush soon fled from it, and wound up as far from the interior as they could get, on the continent's very edge, where they built themselves houses that faced outwards and away, across the ocean. Happiness is now a house in a seaside suburb with not a single native plant in sight. Most Australians would these days deny that they hate the land, but actions speak louder than words.
There is only one way to purge the taint, uncover the secret and ease the otherwise eternal regret, and that is not to give the country back to the Aborigines, because it isn't ours to give, but to admit that it has been an Aboriginal country all along.
The way out of the predicament in which we find ourselves, I suggest - guilty inheritors of a land usurped by our deluded, desperate forefathers - is the simple admission that ours is an Aboriginal country. All of it. Every single bit. Try saying it to yourself in the mirror. "I live in an Aboriginal country." Even the obvious cannot be recognised as true until somebody says it.
As newcomers to an Aboriginal country, our forefathers should have done their best to assimilate. Instead they took over. From first contact, the traffic ran the wrong way, towards the impasse in which we now find ourselves. The ignorant presumed to teach the learned, even though they couldn't speak any of the many languages that the learned spoke. The ignorant set about "discovering" a country of which the learned all carried immensely detailed maps in their heads. The ignorant didn't ask the learned which way to go, or how to survive. As a consequence, all of the pioneers suffered and an unknown number of them perished. Unabashed, our forefathers continued their ignorant rampaging. Though they relied heavily on Aborigines in their establishment of the pastoral industry, they never dreamt of consulting them as equals, let alone as their superiors in understanding the country, because they were utterly convinced that the most illiterate, drunken, down-at-heel European was intellectually and in every other way superior to the blackfella. So the settlers and the squatters were repeatedly wiped out by drought and flood.
Can it be possible to make a u-turn after 200 years of careering off in the wrong direction? Can there be any point in admitting at this stage that Australia is an Aboriginal country, when only about 400,000 of the population can claim any Aboriginal descent? Would non-Aboriginal Australians who admit that they are living in an Aboriginal country be doomed to think of themselves as for ever aliens in their own birthplace?
Aboriginality is not a matter of blood or genes; Aborigines themselves have to learn Aboriginality. They have to master knowledge of their own country, and of their relationships with neighbouring peoples, and the languages appropriate to trade, negotiation and celebration. Who may learn what is dictated primarily by willingness, evinced in readiness to undergo ordeal in order to be admitted to the deepest secrets, and has nothing to do with colour. It follows that whitefellas can achieve a measure of Aboriginality, and historically they have done. Full-blood white men have been initiated, instructed in the law, and have played their part in the clans.
The second step in the journey is a second statement to the self in the mirror. "I was born in an Aboriginal country, therefore I must be considered Aboriginal." This is a tougher proposition, as long as Aboriginality is thought of as racial, but if we think of Aboriginality as a nationality, it suddenly becomes easier. It would not involve the assumption of a phoney ethnicity or the appropriation of the history of any particular Aboriginal people. The owners of specific dreamings would continue to be so still, and would continue to pass them on according to their law as it applies to those concerned.
It will be hard for a whitefella to believe that, after all that has happened, Aboriginal people will allow him to assume Aboriginality. Any such assumption could well be seen by Aboriginal people as the last and most terrible co-option, a final annihilation. There is a risk, principally a risk of misunderstanding, which mischievous parties on all sides will magnify. Assumed Aboriginality would not allow whitefellas to muscle in on mining royalties or hard-won funding for Aboriginal development and education, but there will be those who will say that it would, just as there were those who said that admitting the justice of Aboriginal land claims would result in wholesale expropriation of owner-occupiers in the suburbs. Admitting Aboriginality would not entitle all Australians to have access to sacred sites - not all Aborigines have access to sacred sites.
My bloodlines are fairly typical of my generation of gubbas. My father was born in Tasmania in 1904; his mother was the granddaughter of two free settlers from Lincolnshire and two convicts. His paternal grandparents were from Ulster. My mother's paternal grandfather was born in the Swiss Ticino and his wife was from Yorkshire; her grandparents on her mother's side were from Ireland and Schleswig-Holstein.
I suppose I am one of those described by Richard Flanagan, winner of a Rhodes scholarship and a Commonwealth Writers Prize, in an article published in an English newspaper, as "the generation of cultural quislings who fled Australia's shores for England, where they thought they might meet their muse, and ever after berated an Australia they no longer recognised". I don't know who else belongs in this category but, much as I might want to fling the word "quisling" in Flanagan's teeth, I have to admit that if I hadn't been studying in England, if I hadn't been living in the genuinely multicultural society of postgraduate students in Cambridge, I might never have grasped the absurdity of Australians mounting street demonstrations against the South African Springbok tour in 1971. And might never have glimpsed the Australian situation from an international perspective.
It was not until I was half a world away that I could suddenly see that what was operating in Australia was apartheid: the separation and alienation South Africa tried desperately and savagely to impose on their black majority, we had achieved, apparently effortlessly, with our black minority.
From first contact, the leaders of many Aboriginal peoples saw that sharing of the land would be possible only if the whitefellas could be drawn into the Aboriginal system. They pursued a deliberate policy of co-option, hoping to civilise the invaders into abandoning their inappropriate concepts of ownership and exclusivity. The most frequently repeated version of the initial attempt at negotiation tells us that the Aborigines, upon first seeing white men, thought they were their own dead kin "jumped up", that is, resurrected as white men. What was in fact an attempt to classify the white men so that they could function within the dense Aboriginal social fabric is usually treated as a naive conviction literally understood. The whitefella didn't hesitate to exploit what he didn't understand, and helped himself to liberal amounts of loyalty and affection from his black "brother" without considering himself bound in any way by the relationship.
For 200 years, the Aboriginal peoples have been seducing the whitefellas, subtly drawing them into their web of dreams, and though the whitefellas struggle and protest, they are being drawn inexorably closer. We yelp with surprise when a popular talkshow host is revealed to have 'istory, as blackfellas say, but we should have guessed. The black communities are bound to us by a multitude of blood ties which it is vain for us to deny, but we are blinded by denial and its companion, guilt.
The majority of non-Aboriginal Australians no longer think of themselves as Europeans, British denizens of an outpost of empire. Even when they did, "British" Australians of Irish blood could hardly have forgotten their ancestors' revulsion at imposed Britishness. To accept Australia's Aboriginality is not to impose a single culture on all Australians. Aboriginality includes a multitude of cultures and languages, and provides a better template for 21st-century Australia than a phoney multiculturalism that serves only to increase the dominance of a proto-British elite, which insists on wriggling up to the US and replicating the least impressive aspects of British policy.
The common perception from within the country is that white Australians and black Australians are very different, but I for one am struck by the degree of influence exerted by Aboriginal people on the formation of the Australian character and way of life. Australians, despite the official policy of multiculturalism, aren't genuinely cosmopolitan, but they aren't British, either. They exhibit neither British manners nor British values. If Australians should doubt this, they have only to travel to England, where they will feel less at home than they would in any other part of the world. Their gestures are too ample, their voices too loud, their approach too direct and their spontaneity embarrassing. Their lack of class-consciousness mystifies the English.
Australians are amused by the number of times English people will say "please", "thank you" and "excuse me", unaware perhaps that in such a crowded country it is important to avoid friction. Aborigines are not given to "please" and "thank you", either, when "gibbit" will do.
Australians cannot be confused with any other Commonwealth peoples; they behave differently from Canadians, South Africans and even New Zealanders. It is my contention, diffidently offered, that the Australian national character derives from the influence of the Aborigines whose dogged resistance to an imported and inappropriate culture has affected our culture more deeply than is usually recognised. From the beginning of colonisation, the authorities' deepest fear was that settlers would degenerate and go native. In many subtle and largely unexplored ways, they did just that. Indeed, they may already partake in more Aboriginality than they know.
Australian egalitarianism is usually perceived to be the result of the harsh circumstances that drove settlers to make the long journey halfway around the world and the fact that the free settler had scant reason to consider himself a cut above the emancipated convict, especially when so little stood between him and a conviction for poddy-dodging, cattle rustling or simply not having the necessary paperwork. The influence of the Aborigines in deflating whitefellas' pretensions to gentility has nowhere been considered. Australians still place great store on an individual's ability to do what he is asking others to do, whether in terms of endurance or skill or courage, and that too may be a part of their Aboriginal inheritance. You will not find it in Britain, where rank and class still count for more than any personal talent or skill.
Untold numbers of Australian parents have become aware that their children have turned "feral", that they have no ambition, covet no man's goods, and are happy to follow wherever the waves are, living by and for the moment, and occasionally attending secret gatherings deep in national forests where strange things are done and said and strange substances ingested.
The evasiveness of white Australians is another sign of Aboriginal influence. Under the constant pressure from American cultural imperialism, Australians are becoming more loquacious; my father's generation would have regarded the endlessly babbling characters of Australian TV soaps with instinctive revulsion. In life, as distinct from TV, Australian shyness is real; it is based on a principle of waiting to see whether an individual is worthy, "a good bloke", "dinkum", rather than figuring out how much money he's got and to whom he might be related. Australians don't, as Americans do, confront total strangers with a barrage of questions, "Where'y'from?" etc.
Similarly, the Aboriginal way is not to confront or interrogate anyone, whether a first acquaintance or an old friend. Blackfellas never put themselves in a position in which they are asking to be lied to; what you want to tell, you tell, and what you are silent about remains unspoken. The reticence intrinsic to Aboriginal relationships is also a governing principle in the Australian concept of mateship. Mates give each other space, allow each other to come and go, and to retain a measure of privacy, especially about their past and about their intimate relationships.
Though self-revelation is unwelcome and uninvited by Australians of all hues, yarning is a social duty. Australians used to take trouble to spin a good yarn; the best are those in which some incident in real life is expertly spun into something almost mythical. A story by Henry Lawson, Stragglers, published in 1896, describes the tradition:
There are tally-lies; and lies about getting tucker by trickery; and long-tramp-with-heavy-swag-and-no-water lies; and lies about getting the best of squatters and bosses-over-the-board; and droving, fighting, racing, gambling and drinking lies. Lies ad libitum; and every true Australian bushman must try his best to tell a bigger out-back lie than the last bush-liar.
I once heard Tid Dignam, father of the actor Arthur Dignam, describe a game of ping-pong in such dramatic detail that it became a mini-Trojan war. It took me some years to register that Tid was part-Aboriginal and that the making of memorable stories was part of Aboriginal culture many aeons before whitefellas started doing it round the boree log.
Observers of white Australian life are struck by the degree of segregation between the sexes, which cannot be explained by the prevailing mores of the countries they came from. Aboriginal society, too, is deeply segregated; men and women are used to spending long periods in the company of their own sex. The more important the occasion and the larger the gathering, the more likely it is that women will gather in one area and men in another, just as white Australian men gather round the beer keg, leaving the women to talk among themselves. One explanation of the Australian mania for sport of all kinds is that sport is the only remaining area of human activity that is still rigorously segregated.
Australian English is studded with Aboriginal words; the unmistakable intonation and accent bear the imprint of Aboriginality. The Anglo-Celt settlers came with Scotch and Irish brogues, and the burrs of provincial England. The Australian accent bears scant resemblance to any of these. When I first heard blackfellas speak, I stupidly thought that they were imitating the way whitefellas speak, which just shows how upside-down gubbas' assumptions can be. The transfer must have happened the other way about; the broad flat vowels, complex diphthongs and murmuring nasalities of spoken Australian English must have come to us from Aboriginal languages.
In the 2001 census, 410,003 Australians claimed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin, a huge increase on the 1991 total of 265,371. The explanation is to be found not in a population explosion among Aboriginal communities but in a change in the perception of Aboriginal identity itself. Moreover, as in those 10 years more and more Australians had been investigating their family history, hitherto unacknowledged Aboriginal forebears had been rediscovered. Many people who came out as "black" in 2001 had never lived as Aborigines and had never had to endure the discrimination and abuse that Aborigines coped with daily, but no Aborigine inveighed against their claim to Aboriginality. There are now more Aboriginal people in Australia than at any time in the continent's history.
The recognition that Australia was not an empty land when European settlement began has resulted in a good deal of pointless and acrimonious argument about notions of ownership. Aborigines do not consider themselves proprietors of territory, it is argued, therefore they should not be given proprietorial rights. Squatters did claim proprietorial rights, sometimes over tracts of land that were so vast that the idea was meaningless. They were prepared to fight the original inhabitants for the right to exclude them from the land that was their life, but they never became attached to the land they fought for.
Such openers-up of country neither stay long enough nor wait long enough in the country to see how it works before setting about disrupting it, killing or driving off its native inhabitants, building roads, making boundaries. Not for nothing are these users of vast tracts of the Australian hinterland known as squatters. In the topsy-turvy Antipodean way, a word that denotes an abuser of the rights of others has come to signify "old money", an upper class, the "squattocracy". The land they took up was actually leased from the Crown; what they bought and sold was not land but leases. Today, the vast majority of Australians are not squatters but "owner-occupiers" who have acquired the freehold of tiny parcels of land, quarter-acre lots for the most part. In Australia, Crown land has been declared freehold by governmental fiat, usually in return for a money payment, but sometimes by a mere "stroke of the pen".
The Crown is the most absentee of absentee landlords; no protest is ever heard from the Crown Estates Office against the arbitrary creation of freeholds and no action has ever been taken against a leaseholder for abuse of the land. If Aboriginalisation was achieved, the absentee landlord, the British Crown, would be replaced by an in-dwelling entity, the Aboriginal people (ie, all the people) of Australia. If Australia were to be recognised as an Aboriginal nation, Crown leasehold would vanish as a concept in Australian law because the Crown's claim to the land would be seen as invalid or extinct.
Existing freeholds could be ratified, apart from exceptional cases where a pre-existing right of use or occupancy was recognised. If land were to become a national resource, governments could exercise closer control of its exploitation, and citizens would have a clearer perception that restrictions on land-use, for example, were made in their interest and ought to be observed by everyone.
The leaseholders of the major part of Australian land historically speculated, devastated, and disappeared. The traveller across inland Australia will move from abandoned homestead to abandoned homestead, along lines of collapsed fences, past heaps of machinery rusting into the ground, to abandoned townships that once had churches and law courts, concert halls and racetracks, and are now no more than truck stops.
Sheep replaced wheat in the arid inland, and in turn withdrew. None of the whitefellas who once made a living as stockmen, tank-sinkers, hawkers, shearers, policemen, hoteliers or bullockies, felt sufficient attachment to the country to stay there through drought and flood, or even to return when times got better. If the country couldn't earn its keep, the white man wanted none of it. And even when he could make a profit, the white man tended to take his money and run. Only the Aborigines stayed.
Of all the transitory devastators of country, miners must be the worst. They arrived like locusts, stripping every vestige of vegetation off the ground, riddling it with holes and tunnels, and pimpling it with mullock heaps. Behind them came those who preyed on them, tax-collectors, publicans, prostitutes. Nowadays mining is not a matter of fossickers and battlers staking individual claims but of corporations investing in massively industrialised open-cut mining. The ore is carted away along temporary railway tracks laid across the desert. The miners live in trailer camps that will move when they do.
Even the most important provincial towns, such as Broken Hill, where billions of dollars' worth of precious metals have been extracted from the ground, are withering. Their huge hotels are cavernous and empty. The flight from the inland continues; these days not even a new gold rush would get the people back again.
Australians now travel throughout Australia as tourists; in recreational vehicles of all kinds, they penetrate into the remotest areas, driving thousands of kilometres to see funny-shaped rocks, taking photographs of the rocks and themselves with the rocks. They are on safari in their own land, treating their birthplace as if it were an exotic, thrillingly foreign wilderness, travelling from well-appointed campsite or hotel to another campsite or hotel. The people who stay longest in these remote places, and take jobs servicing the itinerant Australian tourist in Australia, are not indigenous, or native Australians, or even residents, but British backpackers.
If we climbed out of the recreational vehicle and sat on the ground, we might begin to get the message that we can't afford to hear, the message that, since contact, Aborigines have never stopped transmitting. The land is the source of everything; if we rip it up and sell it off, we will perish with it, or else move on in our restless European way to devastate someone else's country - or planet.
Aboriginality is not simply a cluster of behaviours and characteristics that individuals could claim for themselves; it is more importantly a characteristic of the continent itself. Australia will be truly self-governing and independent only when it has recognised its inherent and ineradicable Aboriginality. It is already too late perhaps for us to learn how to reverse the devastation inflicted by whitefellas in the short space of 200 years, but some attempt at damage limitation must be made. Recognising the custodianship of the land as a sacred trust would not be a bad place to start.
To accept Aboriginality would be to deny the validity of the annexation of the continent for the British monarch. The planting of union flags on tiny bits of it would be seen from the Aboriginal point of view and understood to have been entirely insignificant. In this version of events, colonisation was attempted and failed. The colonial authorities tried to crisscross Australia with roads and railways, tried to populate the country, tried to build up a provincial society, tried to make money out of the country, tried to accumulate the gravitas of a world power, failed repeatedly and finally gave up. The colonists have now retreated to the beach where they originally landed; the inland remains indomitable.
It has never been clear to me whether Australia in its present state can properly be described as post-colonial, because there seems to be nothing post- about it. The influence exerted by foreign corporations as the principal exploiters of Australian resources reinforces the colonial stereotype. Emerging as an Aboriginal Republic, Australia would stand alongside the exploited, instead of falsely identifying with the exploiter. This might involve a loss of prestige, but Australians have never had much truck with prestige. Australia's voluntary identification with the largest group in the United Nations, namely the emerging post-colonial republics, could provide an opportunity for genuine leadership, rather than the eternal flunkeydom that is our present lot.
If we followed the Aboriginal course, we could follow Aboriginal precedent and simply absent ourselves from activities that we knew to be evil and pointless. Riding on the coat-tails of Britain, itself on the coat-tails of the USA, has brought Australia neither power nor wealth, and has cost us moral authority in our rather tenuous sphere of influence. The respect Australia earned in its handling of Timor it lost in the Gulf.
If Australia were to declare its Aboriginality, all the trappings of fake Britishness could be ditched; the states already have premiers and do not need governors, but if we felt that some such outrigger were needed for the ship of state, we could appoint a council of elders who could comment on legislation from the point of view of Aboriginal law and custom, if they felt like it. Otherwise their function could be, as the gubernatorial function is, largely ceremonial. Already, Aboriginal ceremonial is being built into formal occasions in Australia, though in a rather shy and constrained fashion. If Australia were officially Aboriginal, these ceremonies would be more than lip service. If New Zealanders can reduce huge football stadiums to a breathless hush by performing the haka, we can dance, too.'
Thanks! Congrats to the 40th Anniversary Tent Embassy!
Plain and simple
An academic who dosnt even live in the country. Speak to those who live it.
A few years ago I sat and wept. Watched our government finally say sorry for our past wrongs. So proud we finally said it
Sure their are current wrongs. Some well meaning some not
Sure we have entrenched racism
(should see all the fit in or fuck off posts on fb today)
But as well there are many normal good people who want our aboriginal heritage ( the worlds oldest) to be maintained and celebrated. This great civilization lasted 40 thousand years here. They have been the stewards of our great southern land. I'm fucken so proud of this place, of these people. Of all of us
Asian
Middle eastern
Anglo
Euro
Native of this land
All of us blending into australiana
But an aboriginal born the same day as me in the same hospital has more of a claim
Nope no way. We are brothers and sisters together
Come to my country, join us to make our nation one to be proud of and you are as well.
Germaine Greer left this country as we were not good enough for her intellect . She isn't proud
She can go fuck the female eunuch .
Ethnocentrism is making value judgments about another culture from perspectives of one's own cultural system. The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and subdivisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.[1
Here's the thing I make no judgements on others. Simple. I'm just happy to share this great land with all
Any religion or race that wants to call this land their own , to treat it with respect and others on it as well is very welcome . I enjoy all the different customs. But I won't be preached at
Please show me your claim of techno lath blah in my post here
Qi won't except those women's thoughts on my country is all. She is so full of shit it shines
I didn't do any if the things that we as Australians have been accused of
I've never been cruel to aboriginals and proudly so
So why should I wear any guilt, why is it my or our fault what others have done
Why is somebody born on this land the same day as I have any more claim to this land.
I was born here it's my fucken land as much as anyone else's.
Have a go at me for previous posts on this. Well it's. fact that in many communities their is problems. A lot of these problems stem from governments continued guilt and thus extra $$$$ that instead of fixing the problem it grows it.
I don't want 1 child to suffer nor adults for that matter. I want anyone to have theopertunity to do whatever they want
Be that they want to disappear into the bush and live a traditional life
Be that they want to become the leader of this nation
Anything
Opptunity for all. Equal oppertunity. No matter what race. Sex or sexuality
We are all the same
In her own words:
'I suppose I am one of those described by Richard Flanagan, winner of a Rhodes scholarship and a Commonwealth Writers Prize, in an article published in an English newspaper, as "the generation of cultural quislings who fled Australia's shores for England, where they thought they might meet their muse, and ever after berated an Australia they no longer recognised". I don't know who else belongs in this category but, much as I might want to fling the word "quisling" in Flanagan's teeth, I have to admit that if I hadn't been studying in England, if I hadn't been living in the genuinely multicultural society of postgraduate students in Cambridge, I might never have grasped the absurdity of Australians mounting street demonstrations against the South African Springbok tour in 1971. And might never have glimpsed the Australian situation from an international perspective.
It was not until I was half a world away that I could suddenly see that what was operating in Australia was apartheid: the separation and alienation South Africa tried desperately and savagely to impose on their black majority, we had achieved, apparently effortlessly, with our black minority.'
You make it sound as if any criticism of Australia's policy towards the Aborigines is aimed at you personally. It isn't.
Being referred to as ignorant and ethnocentric makes it personal
I don't feel guilt
I hasn't done anything wrong to feel that.
I'm asking others why they call me ignorant, why they state I don't value our native culture
Well i recognize that hypocrocy and I didn't need to leave
I worked in an industry filled with many cultures. And now there are even more
I say she was ignorant and blinded. It's her failure that she couldn't recognize it. Her failure that she had to go somewhere else to learn lessons that we're right in front of her. Then she can berate us all. Nah fuck her. I will listen to those who live it
My best mate as a young fella is aboriginal, he was with his two sisters removed from his mothers care. Jason was separated from Ruth and Maggie and ironically I never met them until we actually went to school together in high school. Sadly I didn't get to go to highschool with jase. By then he was In trouble with the law, spiraled into drugs and I hasn't seen him in 20 years.
He suffered t the hands of bad policy, he was handed to a monster who did bad things. Who drove him to bad deeds
But my point is I recognized then as a young 10 year old that the stuff that jase had experienced was wrong. That treating people differently because they were a different color was stupid. Jase was a funny fucker. Always goofing around, he played cricket and Footy with us. he wasn't different at all. Just some treated him that way. Like my father who would tell us to keep that boong outside. So we all sat outside
We had the white Australia policy, now we don't
We as a nation refused to apologies to our native people's. We now have
Next we are planning to recognize our proper native history in our constitution
All good stuff but still many still suffer
Nobody should suffer
+1