Today more from Ali Cobby Eckermann

Under the Radar, first published February 2013

Kia Ora

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufaNpVhC-F8

On 6^th.February  Aotearoa celebrates Waitangi Day. In Australia, Waitangi Day this year was under the radar. On the same day PM Julia Gillard delivered her annual ‘Closing the Gap Statement’ to parliament. The latter elicited very little publicity or discussion. It was almost under the radar.

In her statement our PM blasted the newly elected NT government for its alcohol policies. It was reported that “ the rivers of grog are back on Aboriginal communities”. Here we go again… no more are rivers of grog flowing on Aboriginal communities (definitely not in Yuendumu) than they have finally located the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Yes, a serious increase in alcohol fuelled violence and anti-social behaviour has occurred since the NT Government scrapped the Banned Drinker Register (BDR). The BDR required patrons-black and white- to show ID when buying take away grog. The increase in violence is almost entirely confined to urban centres. The current NT government’s alternative to the BDR is to have a heavy police presence at liquor outlets and to harass and question people to ascertain whether they are going to drink their purchases somewhere where it isn’t illegal to do so, and seizing their grog if they are unable to so demonstrate. No prizes for guessing what the predominant colour of the targeted patrons is.

The leader of the Federal opposition’s response to the Closing the Gap statement was worthy as material for a University Psychology course. When egocentricityand narcissism are discussed, he’d make an interesting case study.

Mr. Rabbit kept referring to his sorties to  outback Aboriginal communities to ‘lend a helping hand’. He also repeatedly lauded Noel Pearson and Cape York Peninsula. The rest of Aboriginal Australia was under the radar. Like a Ken-doll we have already seen Australia’s Action-man in various disguises, fish filleter, racing cyclist, lifesaver, fire fighter, you name it he’s done it…. Tony Abbott is definitely not under the radar. More like in your face.

To wrap up his Closing the Gap Statement reply, Tony Abbott said that should he become the next Australian PM, he would spend a whole week on an Aboriginal Community each year of his leadership. I have been unable to work out if this was a promise or a threat.

Almost three years ago he visited Alice Springs. This is what I wrote in a Dispatch back then:

“As reported by Dan Moss in the Centralian Advocate, Mr. Abbott paid a visitation upon an Alice Springs ‘town camp’ with an entourage of politicians and journalists (17 people in all). I have been told that this visit was unannounced and uninvited. They descended on and filmed an unfortunate amputee sitting in ‘third world conditions’ (I saw it on the ABC TV News). TA gave him a spiel and asked him: “I’m here to help- what can I do?”

The fellow said he’d like some firewood! He didn’t mention a ‘Closing of the Gap’ or a decent house, or a ‘real job’, none of that, just firewood!  Dan Moss wrote: “Did Abbott go fetch firewood? No. He and the stage hands moved on to the next poor bugger to run the same spiel”

…….When our 9 year old grand-daughter overheard us talking about this she chimed in “He’ll have to get his own firewood….. by hopping”….

Regina Spektor- Firewood:…

…and nothing can stop you from dancing…

…don’t look so shocked,

   don’t judge so harsh

   you don’t know, you’re only spying…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KYTWTnbMDE

The above sign says “Yuendumu Mining Co. Est. 1969 Locally owned. Against the Intervention”.

Often now visitors ask me what does it mean. The Intervention (and its euphemistically named continuation: ‘Stronger Futures’) are under the radar.

PM Gillard visited New Zealand a few days ago. The main announcement emanating from that visit is that 150 refugees will be passed on from Australia to New Zealand per annum from 2014. Not a word about the Treaty of Waitangi, and the relationship between New Zealand’s native and colonizer populations. Such is under the radar.

I am told that the Maori/Pakeha relationship is far from perfect, it is none the less light years ahead of Australia’s relationship with its First Peoples.

Last night I saw a New Zealand film on SBS (Australia’s ‘ethnic’ TV channel)…. It is called ‘Boy’ and is an absolute gem. It is charming, touching and hilarious all at once. Everyone knows about ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘The Hobbit’. ‘Boy’ is under the radar.

After writing this Dispatch, I trawled youtube for some suitable music. Something uncanny… I caught Dispatch: Under the Radar- “Open Up”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaOr6FfQrBg

The guitarist is a doppelganger for my musician brother.

As usual I’d like to finish on a note of optimism. Below a list received from Yuendumu’s GEC (Government Engagement Coordinator) that replaced our GBM (Government Business Manager), but must be a doppelganger of the latter, as her looks, behavior, salary and accommodation etc. are identical:

Scheduled Visitors to Yuendumu :

4/2 Kathleen Anderson and Ra Schwalger –  DEEWR  Warlpiri Boarding Facility Discussions

4/2 – 8/2 Helen Kennedy – Batchelor  Conduct VET training at school

4/2/ – 8/2 Ear Nose and Throat Team – DoH  At the Clinic all Week.

4/2 – 6/2 Cliff Alexander, Erin Turner and Sonia Dare from Waltya  Money Management Training

5/2 Alf Leonardi and Rosemary Andrews  – DECS Discussions re proposed Trade Training Centre

6/2 – 7/2 Jenny Davis and Robin Hall – FaHCSIA Stores Team Stores visit

6/2 – 8/2 Joan Whitehead and Fiona Stokes Personal Hygiene Training

7/2 – 8/2 Amy Peachey – Centre for disease Control DoH Trachoma Health Management

10/2-15/2 Gene Martin – Dept. of Housing Tenancy Management

11/2 – 15/2 MyPathway/ITEC JobSeeker Servicing

12/2-14/2 Nick Bewg Families as First Teachers Support FaFT program

21/2 Ray Janz – Cogent Business solutions Visit WYDAC

*These are known visitors as of today – scheduling may change and there may be others that I am unaware of…

I shouldn’t have copied the list. You’ll all be jealous now.

My favourite is the ‘Personal Hygiene Training’ but I just noticed I have missed out. Joan and Fiona arrived and left Yuendumu under the radar.

Ain’t that a shame!   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNNiBcU3BR4

No matter, the Warlpiri Nation has had that bureaucratic socio-political game known as “pick up the soap…” often played against it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huZlL58yvyM

E haere rā

Dear reader. Today’s compelling piece comes to us from that luminary of the near north Lew Skannen. And Lew makes a trenchant point on atrocities. We regret to inform you that these atrocities are of the serious kind. Not those encountered on “Australia’s Funniest home Video’s” or the fact that the Herald Sun has so far devoted four days solid to the Grand Final. We agree that the Grand Final should be clebrated, but it makes us think that perhaps there may be more important issues.

Not that we want to discount the mighty victory of the Richmond Football Club, but just to give balance. “Hmmm, balance” you might say, “all sounds a bit Murdoch”. In which case you’re ahead of the pack. As for Packs, this piece is an Ace in the hole, it’s Bang on, and really hits the mark.

So accurate as ever, here’s Lew, and there is a children warning, he is LOADED.

He writes..

As it is easily calculable that a bullet will never reach its intended target, that logically it will always have half its remaining distance to travel, it is my belief that these so called ‘atrocities’ are simply governmentally generated beat-ups intended, like Orwell’s Oceania and Eurasia, to sway us all in carefully calculated directions.

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my Son..’If you get my drift.

Even supposing there were any truth in all of this supposed mayhem, it is neither the shooter or the gun that kills people-it’s the gold darned bullet! Ban the Bullet, I say!The gun is then rendered useless, the factory manufacturing armaments ditto, then the chaps who are really responsible for putting lethal weapons into the hands of maniacs are magically revealed..
Who, then, are these contemptible curs? What do you think?
It’s the damned government! OR… It’s Saudi Arabia! OR…The many other power-crazed oafs in the world, perhaps?
Oh come on! Wake up, for Gawd’s sake!
‘Tis, I fear, much simpler. The answer is, whether we like it or not, Us, We, Ourselves.
Sadly, through MacMansions and money, we have been whored, seduced and cheaply bought at the price of principle.
Where the hell has our courage gone? Why aren’t we in the streets, everyone of us, howling our horrified revulsion at the criminal antics of our government?

Human rights, (yours and mine and hard fought for) are trampled on, every day, in our country. All over our country, Aborigines are treated like animals and in our concentration camps on Manus Island and elsewhere, wholly innocent people are allowed to languish for years so that in  many cases, these people, who have committed no crime at all, simply give up all hope and kill themselves. Our attitude to refugees is not that of an enlightened, 21st century democracy, Our attitude is in fact, strongly reminiscent of that of the Third Reich.

for pity’s sake, surely we are better than this?

International tribunals, again and again have condemned these practices.

Unashamedly, our governments regularly shrug international criticism off.

One day,mark my words, Australia will be called to account for its actions.

Come on, Aussie! Where’s your sense of shame, your honour, your sense of decency, your ‘fair go’?

If ever it was needed, it is needed now.

END

Lew Skannen

Belated post today, due entirely to internet disruption (and beer)

Our poet today is the other Wyndham Campbell prize winner Carolyn Forché. (We featured  the other winner Ali Cabby Eckermann last week.). Forché coined the term “poetry of witness”.

“Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950, poet, teacher and activist Carolyn Forché has witnessed, thought about, and put into poetry some of the most devastating events of twentieth-century world history. According to Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Times Book Review, Forché’s ability to wed the “political” with the “personal” places her in the company of such poets as Pablo Neruda, Philip Levine, and Denise Levertov.” from Poetry Foundation

This post ‘The Common People’ arrived this week.

Ave plebs,

 Latin: ‘plebs’- the common people|
Latin: ‘scitum’- a decree

A ‘plebiscite’ is thus a decree by the common people.

Paul Young…Love of the Common People…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pvmhSgmLN0

In Australia at present a postal plebiscite is being held.

The question being asked is: “Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry”

There are two boxes labelled ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and just in case the common people don’t quite follow, in brackets it says ‘mark one box only’

Any proposed change to the Australian Constitution must be put to a vote of all Australian voters in a referendum.

The 1967 Referendum in which over 90% of the common people of Australia voted ‘yes’ is widely and wrongly believed to have given Aborigines (and Torres Strait Islanders) the vote, whereas what it actually did is for The First Australians and their descendants to be counted as people in the national census as distinct from being considered part of the Fauna and Flora of this continent.

Another common misconception in Australia is that the Doctrine of ‘Terra Nullius’ refers to a land devoid of inhabitants. As an Australian Prime Minister once famously put it “before the British settled it, Australia was ‘nothing but bush’…” That same intellectual giant also said that living in a remote part of Australia was a “lifestyle choice” that his Government wasn’t prepared to support. Actually Terra nullius alludes to there being no formal ownership of the land. Such was usually conveniently declared, without any effort to ascertain it’s truth or otherwise.

Terra nullius (/ˈtɛrə.nʌˈlaɪəs/, plural terrae nullius) is a Latin expression meaning “nobody’s land”, and is a principle sometimes used in international law to describe territory that may be acquired by a state’s occupation of it.

A quarter of a century ago the Australian High Court overturned “terra nullius” in Australia by what became known as the Mabo Decision.

For years now there have been moves to amend the Australian Constitution so as to recognise Australia’s First Peoples.

In 2010 when such moves once again came to the fore, country music star Warren H. Williams from Ntaria (Hermannsburg) spoke out against it. I quote from an article which appeared back then:

He says it is another move to pacify Indigenous people.

Mr Williams says asking the wider Australian community whether it is okay to acknowledge Indigenous people in the constitution is insulting.

“I mean this is … the 21st century and we’re still going to a vote to get Aboriginal people in the constitution, it is meaningless … we had to struggle to get the referendum in 1967, we had to fight, we had to beg, just about beg to get the Prime Minister to say sorry to our people,” he said.

“Why is that coming in all of a sudden, is it taking away from what we are arguing about, the Intervention and all that? It just seems like why, why is it happening?”

Mr Williams says the move is a weak symbolic gesture that is detracting from real issues affecting Indigenous people.

Great Southern Land- Warren H Williams……https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvbgTQIWw_4

I agreed with Warren H. back then and I still do. The Government sponsored ‘Recognise’ campaign officially came to an end about six weeks ago. These two images say it all:

In Yuendumu the last few days, temperatures have reached the high thirties (Centigrade). A brisk hot and dry westerly wind has sprung up. From a previous Dispatch:

“When wardapi (goannas) hear the sound of the karapurda they wake up from their hibernation slumber. Wirlititi (Emu-chicks) break out of their eggs and wildflowers begin to blossom.

Karapurda is a warm westerly wind which signals the end of the cold season.”

Warren H.Williams….Westerly Wind…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01VOi7MWEYM

Increasingly we are being subjected to the politics of the red herring, the non-sequitur, bread and circuses, distractions all. The Spanish word ‘prestidigitador’ comes to mind.

Donald Trump’s brief trip to Saudi Arabia, when he sold that shining example of Democracy one and a half billion dollars worth of weapons, is hardly mentioned.

All we hear about are the latest Tweets.

…..tweet tweet….tweet tweet ….Bobby Day- Rockin Robin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcmvwFcfWmY

Remote Australian Aborigines are being given the opportunity to mark a box (yes or no) on same sex marriage. No such opportunity is given them when it comes to such as land rights, bilingual education, inclusion of customary law in the legal system and just plain being allowed to decide how to live their lives.

As for the wider Australia, no plebiscite on approving one billion dollars in Government assistance to what would become the largest coal mine in the world.

No plebiscite whenever the Government decides to deploy troops overseas.

No plebiscite whenever the Government decides to sign up on Free Trade Deals.

No plebiscite on whether newcomers to this country should be competent in English. Very many current Australian citizens wouldn’t be- me included- if their parents or grandparents had been subjected to current English competency requirements. Many of our Parliamentarians’ English competency leaves much to be desired, especially when it comes to “clear thinking” which was a significant part of the curriculum when I received my secondary education in Australia.

Must stop. I’ll try and find some nice music to reward those who stuck it out ….

….I may make you feel,
But I can’t make you think…

Jethro Tull… Thick as a Brick…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV-ASc0qkrM

Beatus scitique plebis unus

Cicero

You’d never think that sport could even be political. And we at pcbycp are extremely, glad that the former PM has suggested thus.

Tony V Macklemore.

It never occured to us.

We all remember Berlin back in 36, that might have been a bit political. And we do remember when the Yanks and all clean-minded people boycotted the Moscow Olympics back in 1980, when the Ruskies invaded Afghanistan. And someone has even suggested that the Olympics have been held in the United Sated some five times since its inception may be political. But we know that is rubbish. The yanks are our staunch allies and whatever they do is fine by us. That’s why we’re always first in line to civilise Korea, Vitenam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. We’re mates, and in sport, mateship is what really counts. And now we’re in Afghanistan, and been there now for twenty years, is testament to the fact that we’re on the side of right, and all nay-sayers are just malcontents and soft-cocks.

Big Bob.

Now this Macklemore stuff is way over the top. Who is this bloke? Is he a bloke? We’re really upset. We listen to easy listening, and have a soft spot for Enya and Richard Clayderrman. And they never get a guernsey at the grand final. Bob Katter has it up to here:

“I mean, this CEO bloke who made this decision, mate, it’s tantamount to seeping sewage into the debutante ball.”

“They said of the Americans during the war that there were three problems with them: over-sexed, over-paid and over here,”

“Well, this little bloke, Macklemore, or whatever his name is, is coming over here. Well mate, go home, we don’t want you here.

ARL Entertainment Sub-committee vetting half-time entertainers.

“The people that will be there at this game don’t want you.”

Meatloaf. Knew nothing of AFL, Footy, Australia. Half Time GOLD!

And we agree. Who is this Macklemore? He aint Meatloaf, or Rick Astley, or any other past their prime b-grade American performer. That’s why we’re hopping mad. The most important criteria for any Grand Final is to find soemone, who MUST BE FOREIGN, who is perhaps eaking out their post-stardom lifestyle with odd joints at nightclubs and cruise ships and offer them millions to sing at a grand final. That’s the implict rule in Grand Finals, whether it be AFL or ARL. The half-time entertainment must be by a singer no one has ever heard of. The singer must be past their prime, and they must be FOREIGN. This is an undisputed fact, the singer must, (and there will be a test more stringent than the famous dictation test), the singer, must have no knowledge of Australian sport whatsoever. And uphold the principle of the CULTURAL CRINGE.

And that trust between the AFL, the ARL and the public has been broken. Apparently this bloke Macklemore is known by young people. That is just not on. It must cease.

Perhaps in disgust at our treatment of foreign singers who know nothing about aussie sport, the U.S government has retaliated by refusing to send an ambassador. It’s tit for tat politics, and the yanks are very unhappy. They’re being lobbied by out of work actors and singers. And we choose someone who is current and possibly even sings something politically and socially relevant. This experimentation with half time entertainment must cease.

May we suggest a solution.

Find an entertainer with massive cross-cultural appeal, who can bridge the cultural divide. Someone who is a testament of our struggle to realease ourselves from colonialism and the shackles that incarcerate the soul.

Anyone for Rolf Harris?

Malcolm Roberts. Deriding “fake Science”

We wish to apologise for the tendency to exaggerate. Indeed in this era of ‘fake news’, there is an unquestionable tendency for hyperbolic exaggeration. And sadly, with the iminent demise of Malcolm Roberts, the fiery climate denier antagonist, we’re worried we wont have anyone left to do the heavy lifting on climate change denial. We are encouraged though that Matt Canavan may escape the consequences of his mummy’s misadventure, and plead, “I didn’t know” as proposed by the Attorney General George Brandis. The way George sees it, Matt, Barnaby, and even Larissa should be excused cos they didn’t know they were non- Australians.

God, who created life, so that Queenslanders could believe in COAL

Coal, Un- elected and about to address the floor of Parliament.

Whereas, Malcolm clearly did know, and even though he sent furious emails to a site that never existed, (but it clearly and palpably existed in his mind) and pretended he didn’t know his dad was a pom and he was born in India, it was all a bit climate change. Malcolm has a way with facts. And if you disagree with him, he’ll tell you that the science is wrong, and suggest the reason why it’s wrong is because of a huge cover-up. A conspiracy to divert the tapayers finds away from rent seeking corporations into worthwhile emergent industries, like renewables. Malcolm is inistent on this, that fake science is ruining Australia. And like Larry Marshall CEO of the greatly depleted CSIRO, they are in lock step agreement. Anyone who disagrees with their view of things should go. The last thing they want is impartial scientific research. That’s why they’ve set up their own institute within the institute, the Carboniferous Oils and Lignite Institute, (COAL).

That’s why Malcolm, and Matt, and Barnaby all agree that the best thing the taxpayers can do is to fund the worlds biggest coal fired power station in, (you guessed it) Queensland. Queensland is good for people like Matt and Malcolm and Barnaby. For a start most Queenslanders eschew climate science for bibilical science. It’s way easier to understand. The earth is six thousand years old. Because god, a bearded, irascible old man, says so.

Liddell Power Station is to be closed. But the good news is the Federal Government wants to buiild the worlds biggest in Queensland.

That’s the kinda science we like. A big power station will be funded one hundred percent by the taxpayers. No energy company will go near it, cos they say coal is so yesterday. But to the Minerals Council and other shareholders linked to coal thing it’s a fabulous idea. And for a short time, it may even employ some people. That’s a bonus. But most emphatically, beyond the few jobs and bonuses it will tell the world, that Queenslanders Don’t believe in climate change.

And that’s reassuring.

Because just the other day parts of Queensland hit 45 degrees in September. What was that? Forty five degrees in September? Yes indeed, the hottest September EVER. Still, Malcolm, Barbany and George, Larry, et al question the science of weather records. ‘Close the Bureau of Meterology’ they say. And whilst we’re at it, ‘close down the ABC’.

God also invented Cricket.

Close down anyone who says that the planet is hotting up, and we’re all stuffed. We don’t want to hear that sort of news, it’s depressing, and effects the bottom line for shareholders.

And good news is what the public wants. And what do the public want now. Gay marriage? Cheaper energy? Equitable taxes? A clean environment? Access to good education?

Nup, none of the above.

The public wants a competitive Grand Final.

And, If Richmond doesn’t win, we’re all stuffed.

God, as a younger man, played for Richmond.

It’s un-deniable.

Lew Skannen. Photographed between speaking engagements.

Hmm, for those of us yet not mired in the complexities of the non binding, non compulsory marriage debate, comes this scintillating piece from the luminary of the lumosphere, Lew Skannen. We don’t know much about Lew, cept to say he’s really on the mark about pedantry. And we’re glad to say his type are not quite yet extinct. He’s got something to say on that, and like an honest man in parliament, is a rare thing indeed.  His piece is titled:

In Defence of a Language under Siege from Pedantry.

Things have changed, changed utterly.

In the old days if people died, they became, in reality, dead.

Lew’s mascot, A Dodo he calls “strewth”

Milleniums (sick) hurtled by and old 18th century fossickers began to find and record the existence of squillion year old, ludicrously large, huge things wot used to wander about among us (or not). Time passed and other feathered huge things were discovered as well. It then became a paleontological bawling match amongst the dig-up-the-past experts as to whether the first discovered huge things had had feathers of their own or whether the feathers had come later.

“Trumpish”, comes in three flavours and an additional flavour we call Abbott.

In any event, one way or the other, all of these Pay Leo chaps made a daycent living out of contradicting each other. digging up stuff, and writing about the distant past as if they really, really knew how things had been back a few million years ago. All sorts of weird discoveries arrived, were cataloged, marvelled over and eventually declared extinct. I personally myself have found these arguments, theories and contradictory ideas of the greatest interest and have attempted, as a lay man, to follow all this huge stuff as it has developed.
Wot I dont understand is why a certain descriptive term, a term used by all sorts of Attenborough-ish commentators for as long as I can remember is nowadays, in a shameful, parochially narrow-minded Trumpish way, nowadays wholly  unacceptable.  I refer, of course, to the much favoured, much used and easily understood term; ‘…become extinct…’
Huge, ungainly, dirty great animals and birds, it would seem, in the long time ago, were surprised by a cosmic thunderbolt and, as a consequence, became extinct. This I understand. Something unmerciful apparently fell out of the sky and made shite of all and (almost) sundry.
To suggest that they had ‘…gone extinct…’  seems to me to suggest that the fauna of the time had a choice in the matter, that they had ‘…gone…’ , on observing the thunderbolt, like the legendary lemmings and flung themselves off the edge of the world. (You will, doubtless, of course, remember too that the Earth was flat at the time….)

Attenborough. Of derring-do and the paleo-diet fame.

I would like to take it upon myself, in this instance, to volunteer to break the nose of the pedantically tedious bore who had influence enough, in the circle in which he inhabits, to foist this witless change upon the groves of academe and  sadly too on the most parrot-like of our less academically clad commentators. The term can be heard nowadays in the most common of paleontological circles as if it had always existed, as if it had always been so. It has not, so stick it, if I may make so bold, up your logically disastrous jumper!  I refuse, absolutely to use the term lest this bastard ‘creation’ stick in my craw!

Also too, the argument in favour of this change, the ‘…Gone Extinct-ers…’ would appear to make the point that you cannot ‘become’ extinct because to ‘become’ suggests that creativity is in progress, whereas ‘…extinction…’ suggests nothingness.  In my opinion,for the ‘…Gone Extinct..’ camp to attempt this argument is, in the world we live in, the most exquisite bollox. This argument would only work if we were all of  Mr Spock’s disposition and logic ruled our language and our world. Our language is, au contraire, wonderfully chock-full of ludicrous grammatical contradictions, of demented illogicalities and superbly maniacal convolutions so complex that it is a miracle any of us can speak the language at all, let alone write the bloody thing down!

Dear reader, we apologise for the above image as it contained the wrong Attenborough. This is an image of the “correct one” in the process of describing the lesser known Abotto-phyte. The Crown of thorns starfish of reason.

SO THERE!

Glad I got that off my chest…

Lew Skannen

Today a couple of new poem from Windham Campbell prize winning poet and pcbycp regular Ali Cabby Eckermann

Alone

I pine the absence 
of my inner child
she ran away
to fulfil her dreams

my dreams shattered 
I remain in the shards
alone I call out to her
there is no echo of response

stolen generations

the sound of the earth
dropping down, thrown
onto the lid of his coffin
is dreadful, and raw
his coffin lying atop
of hers, his mother
he met when he died

was there a sliver of a welcome
a return to her embrace
any forgiveness in this attempt
to right this wrong?

from The Aura of Loss, a limited edition print run by little windows 2017.

This Dispatch was originally distributed 25 January 2013.  The post has been edited.

In David Hill’s book ‘The Great Race’ (The Race Between the English and the French to Complete the Map of Australia), the French explorer Baudin is quoted in a letter to his friend Governor Phillip (who apparently was fluent in French) as follows:

“…I have never been able to conceive that there was justice or even fairness on the part of Europeans in seizing, in the name of their governments, a land seen for the first time, when it is inhabited by men who have not always deserved the title of savages or cannibals that has freely been given them; whereas they were still only children of nature and just as your Scotch Highlanders or our Breton peasants, etc. who, if they do not eat their fellow men, are just as objectionable.

From this it appears to me that it would be infinitely more glorious for your nation, as for mine, to mould for society the inhabitants of its own country over whom it has rights, rather than wishing to occupy itself with the improvement of those who are far removed from it (my emphasis) by beginning with seizing the soil which belongs to them and which saw their birth…” (Nov. 1802)

Two hundred and ten years later Dr. Gary Johns, former president of the now defunct Bennelong Society (a right wing assimilationist think tank) wrote an article in which he seeks to occupy himself with the improvement of those who are far removed from him.

Things can only get better….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIj-6fr2SlI

Dr. Johns’ article reviews Stephanie Jarrett’s soon to be released book ‘Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence’. Some shocking statistics are presented which lead Ms. Jarrett to the conclusion that the best option for Australian Aborigines to avoid or reduce violence is to move to the metropolitan areas and join the mainstream.

Living in the mainstream…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jwxy4Z27-U

Using the same logic … non sequitur cause and effect… I conclude from the statistics presented in the article that non Indigenous Australians would also improve their safety by returning to the cities. Remote Australia would once again become ‘Terra Nullius’.

I furthermore conclude that an even better option for Indigenous Australians is to all move to Afghanistan where to the best of my knowledge not a single Australian Aborigine has been hospitalised as a result of violence.

All of this of course is nonsense. I don’t know what Gary Johns’ doctorate is in (basket weaving?) but statistics and logic certainly seem to have been lacking in his education. Both Gary & Stephanie appear to have a poor grasp of the principles of… cause and effect… and of justice and fairness.

Blind eyes of justice,
Deaf ears of power
Dumb moves of money
Left us in a desperate hour
Is this the final solution?

Revolution by Dr. John….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TW-nECJYqQ

Oops wrong Doctor!

European ‘culture’ in fairly recent times gave us the Holocaust, two world wars and many other calamities. It will be a sad day when the multi-faceted European Culture that gave us so many wonders, is judged solely by its abominations.

Equally sad is the day when remote Aboriginal Australia is judged solely on stereotypes and stigmatisation derived from politically opportunistic spin and the dishonest or incompetent use of statistics and from general ignorance.

That day is already here.

As observed by us in Yuendumu, most of the lateral violence, hospitalisations, homicides etc. occur in places like Alice Springs. Attention is focused on the violence per se; not enough serious effort goes into researching the causes of violence. I suspect that disempowerment and dispossession has a fair bit to do with it. Pushing people away from the bush is definitely not the answer, the reverse is probably true. Blaming all anti-social behaviour to alleged inherent violence in an unchanging 40,000 year old culture is simplistic and false. As  Baudin said all that time ago  “…I have never been able to conceive that there was justice or even fairness on the part Europeans…” about the then land grab. His words are applicable to the treatment of Aborigines today. We are seeing the final stages of the land grab.

As Rosalie Kunoth-Monks said: “There is no Aboriginal Problem in Australia, only a ‘white-fellow’ problem”

A good friend of mine sends me books by Eduardo Galeano, who has become my favourite Latin-American writer. He specializes in vignettes.

One such has a small list of graffiti:

The words of the prophets are written on the subway wall…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VflKiZzb4h4 

“ ¡ Basta de hechos! … ¡ Queremos promesas ! “
(No more deeds!, we want promises!)

A bientot!

François