This post gives some insight into what life was/is like for the First Peoples of Australia. Even people who have lived and worked alongside Aboriginal friends may not know of this obscene bureaucratic practice. One can think of two book-ends - on one end what has done/is being done to Australia's First Nations and on the other end is what has been done/is being done who seek refuge and asylum in Australia.
Did you know that all people that were born under the flora and fauna Act did not have birth certificates???Until the...
Posted by Susan Rankin on Monday, 21 March 2016
FYI & Victorian networks.This will be a significant book launch and meeting, Consider attending & listening to both Yingiya Mark Guyula book contributor and (of the Yolŋu Nations Assembly , Arnhem land) and Terry Mason (of the the Awabakal language group and Institute of Koorie Education at Deakin University) on TREATY. If unable to attend Geelong, perhaps consider the,
Melbourne 12th forum the following day, to hear from Yingiya Mark Guyula, Adam Frogley (Taungerong man) and Jon Altman.
3)The Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, NT, Australia, need a treaty asap. They need their law respected by governments and they need a space of their own that honours their way of life.
For Victorian networks . This will be a significant book launch and meeting. Geelong 11th: Listen to both Yingiya Mark Guyula (of the Yolŋu Nations Assembly -Arnhem land) and Terry Mason (of the the Awabakal language group and Institute of Koorie Education at Deakin University). Or, consider Melbourne 12th- forum the following day- hear from Yingiya Mark Guyula, Adam Frogley (Taungerong man) and Jon Altman.
See also,
1) Treaty,...
This is a wondrous and dangerous essay.. Worthy of being read, and bookmarked to be revisited and re-read more times.. First Peoples in every Sovereign Ancient Nation probably have some similarities in the lifestyles of the Gunditjmara of the South East..
So how could previous archaeologists have missed all this, given the scale of the operation and that the fish farms would still have been operating when Europeans arrived?
Builth suspects it is because the Gunditjmara disappeared quickly after white settlers came. "History tells us, many (of the settlers) had a military background and they knew tactics - they knew how to survive - they knew how to win, and they knew how to get rid of Aboriginal people pretty quickly."
By the time archaeologists had arrived in Australia the only Aboriginal people still leading traditional lifestyles in significant numbers were the ones living on the less desirable land.
"Most studies - certainly anthropological studies - focused on people dwelling in desert in semi-arid conditions, because they were the last people to live in their traditional land. These people (the Gunditjmara) were the first to lose their land, that's the difference."
From http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-24/stan-grant's-racism-is-killing-the-australia-dream-speech-viral/7110506 A powerful speech by Indigenous journalist Stan Grant in which he says the "Australian dream is rooted in racism" has gone viral.
Key points:
Grant spoke about the impact of colonisation and discrimination in Sydney
Speech viewed more than 736,000 times on Facebook and 15,000 times on YouTube
Grant addressed an audience in Sydney on the impact of colonisation and discrimination as part of the IQ2 debate series held by The Ethics Centre.
The speech was made last year but was published online just a week before Australia Day. It has resonated with Australians, having been viewed more than 736,000 times on Facebook and 15,000 times on YouTube.
In his address Grant was asked to argue for or against the topic "Racism is destroying the Australian Dream", and said racism was at its heart.
"When we heard those boos, we heard a sound that was very familiar to us ... we heard a howl of humiliation that echoes across two centuries of dispossession, injustice, suffering and survival," Grant said.
"We heard the howl of the Australian dream, and it said to us again, you're not welcome."
He said we sung of the Australian dream, "Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free".
"My people die young in this country," Grant said.
"We die 10 years younger than the average Australian, and we are far from free. We are fewer than 3 per cent of the Australian population and yet we are 25 per cent — a quarter of those Australians locked up in our prisons.
"And if you're a juvenile it is worse, it is 50 per cent. An Indigenous child is more likely to be locked up in prison than they are to finish high school."
He referenced a famous poem from Dorothea Mackellar, saying his people's rights "were extinguished because we were not here according to British law".
"I love a sunburned country, a land of sweeping plains, of rugged mountain ranges," Grant quoted from the poem My Country.
"It reminds me that my people were killed on those plains. We were shot on those plains, diseases ravaged us on those plains."
Grant has received praise online, including from journalists Hugh Riminton and Fran Kelly, as well as Mike Carlton who described it as a "Martin Luther King moment" on Twitter.
He said he had succeeded in life not because of, but in spite of, the Australian dream.
"My grandfather on my mother's side, who married a white woman, who reached out to Australia, lived on the fringes of town until the police came, put a gun to his head, bulldozed his tin humpy, and ran over the graves of the three children he buried there. That's the Australian dream," Grant said.
"And if the white blood in me was here tonight, my grandmother, she would tell you of how she was turned away from a hospital giving birth to her first child because she was giving birth to the child of a black person.
If your ancestors were dispossessed, slaughtered and had their land and their children stolen, would you celebrate the date on which that all began?
Obviously, you wouldn’t. It’s simply insane that anyone could expect Aboriginal people to embrace January 26 as the national day, given what it means to them.
The most common refrain against this is, ‘It’s time to move on’. Here’s the problem with that statement.
If you apply the same logic to non-Aboriginal Australia, then we should stop commemorating Anzac Day. ‘It’s time to move on. The wars were years ago.’
Obviously, we’d never treat our veterans with so much disrespect, living or dead. The simple truth is we shouldn’t treat Aboriginal people that way either. If we think it’s important to still mark the sacrifice of our ancestors for something that happened 100 years ago, why would we expect Aboriginal people to react any differently?
Another common refrain directed at Aboriginal people is: “I didn’t do it, it was previous generations.”
That’s probably true – if you’re a young Australian, aged 23 or under, then the laws which dispossessed Aboriginal people were not created by a government in your lifetime (the Mabo High Court decision, which found Aboriginal people owned the land prior to invasion, was handed down in 1992).
But here’s the problem: All Australians, regardless of their age, have directly benefitted from the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. You enjoy the privileges of everything Australia has to offer directly at the expense of Aboriginal people. That’s something worth acknowledging.
And here’s another problem: the policies that flowed from the arrival of the British are still being enforced on Aboriginal people today – contrary to our claims, Aboriginal people do not have the same rights as non-Aboriginal people (Google ‘NT intervention’) in Australia – for example, child removal rates are higher today than at any point during the Stolen Generations era.
The debate among Aboriginal people to #changethedate is not a new one – it’s been raging, for a long, long time.
Perhaps the most important occasion in recent history occurred in 2009, after Kevin Rudd came to power.
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. (IMAGE: UK Department for International Development, Flickr)
In Opposition, Labor had promised Aboriginal people if it was elected it would change the date of Australia Day to one that is more inclusive. The promise was contained in the ALP’s 2007 National Platform, which guaranteed the implementation of the Roadmap For Reconciliation, a series of policies produced by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 2000.
Rudd won the election, but in the lead-up to Australia Day, the story broke of his promise. Rudd did what so many politicians before him have done – he lied, and then back-tracked.
After denying the promise was even made (startling, given it was freely available to download from the ALP website) – Rudd tried to quell the media storm with this one-liner: “To our Indigenous leaders, and those who call for a change to our national day, let me say a simple, respectful, but straightforward no.”
It was neither simple, nor respectful. It was a broken promise, but non-Aboriginal Australians were either uninterested, or quickly moved on. Every year since, the debate has still raged (and it raged for many, many years before as well).
Aboriginal Australia has been asking non-Aboriginal Australia to consider their feeling son this matter for generations. They’ve been largely ignored.
Unfortunately, there really is only one way forward if Australia wants a truly inclusive national date – #changethedate. Until we do, our national day will be marred by this conversation every year.
Tell your friends by sharing this story on social media.
Just when you think humanity couldn’t get any more offensive… a newly released app on the Apple iTunes stores – rated for children aged 12 years and up – allows players to beat to death an ‘Aborigine’ during their quest to survive on the Australian continent.
And a WARNING TO READERS:
This story contains virtual imagery which may be extremely upsetting,
in particular to Aboriginal people.
Called Survival Island 3 – Australia Story 3D – the app, by developer Kristina Fedenkova, was released last month, and retails for $4.49.
The theme of the game is to survive in Australia, by hunting and building a home. The developer explains, “Your goal is to survive. Beware of angry animals, especially if you don’t have any weapon. At nights, there is really dangerous, (sic) try to hide somewhere…. Hunt animals or grow plants – you have to eat something. You also have to fight with aboriginals (sic) – you invaded their home!”
One of the screencaps promoting the game on the Apple iTunes store includes a screamer across the page which reads, ‘Beware of Aborigines!’
Most remarkably, Apple has rated the game PG, for kids aged 12+. The bludgeoning to death of a ‘virtual Aborigine’ earns itself a warning of “Infrequent/Mild Realistic violence”.
Helpfully, a Youtube player calling himself ‘R2 Darksaber‘ has already dived in and provided an online review of the game – a series of five videos which give a walkthrough of how to play.
In the fourth video in the series, ‘R2 Darksaber’ notes he’s “searching for the natives” before beating to death an Aboriginal man with a stone axe.
He then asks “OK, what do we get?” when a screen pops up to reveal the loot he wins as a result of the killing.In the fifth video, ‘R2Darksaber’ remarks: “This lost tribe have forgiven me for killing one of their members. They said that they were going to kill him anyway. He was a bit of a dopey ass causing trouble all the time and they said that their place was a bit overcrowded anyway. They said I can actually join them and build a little home..”
At a scene where Aboriginal men are running everywhere, R2Darksaber adds: “This place is just crawl… holy crap, well anyway, they said they’re gonna teach me how to throw boomerangs and stuff and how to hunt.”
New Matilda is seeking comment from Apple and the developer overnight.
While we await a response, here’s a screengrab (thanks to reader JPJ) of Apple’s terms for application developers… with the relevant part highlighted.
