Gustave Dore was a great artist. But a terrible bore at parties.

It’s been ten years since the intervention. Here’s a fragment from our esteemed correspondent up north. It was read at the recent, (Last Thursdays) event held at RMIT to celebrate this milestone in orchestrated bludgeoning stupidity. It begins on a reflective note.

‘There is a bit of the Ancient Mariner in me:
He holds him with his glittering eye
The Wedding guest stood still….

Those who know me are aware that I’m forever, as they say in Dutch ‘van de hak op de tak springen’- digressing until the wedding guest’s eyes glaze over and he starts looking at his watch, or these days at his mobile phone.
This is why I’m taking refuge in reading from my notes.

Rule 1 pre intervention. ‘If you’ve got a gun, use it’!

When Jakamarra first asked me to come along to this event, I declined. I have no intention of being yet one more opinionated white fellow pontificating about what Aborigines should or shouldn’t do, I said to Harry.
No, he said, you have to come, you’re my cultural advisor!
The delicious irony of this, is not lost on either of us, but if you think about it, that this is ironic illustrates the power imbalance that exists.
Aboriginal Australia is severely hampered in its efforts to withstand the ethnocentric assimilationist interventionist assault which started in 1788.
The vast resources, cultural advisors, legal, sociological, education and fiscal experts and a well oiled propaganda machine and a not so well oiled bureaucracy which are available to the authorities are denied Aboriginal Australia, except to Intervention fellow travellers and quislings.

When you search the internet, that adage ‘A lie told often enough becomes the truth’ is attributed to both Vladimir Lenin and to Joseph Goebbels. No need to go back as far in history on the other side of the world, to see this in action. The Intervention and its euphemistically named sequel Stronger Futures are based on oft repeated lies.

Bruce Pascoe, in his brilliant book ‘Dark Emu’ wrote “then all of us must be alert to that greatest of all limitations to wisdom: The Assumption…”
That is what drives the assimilationist imperative- lies and assumptions.

Clearing the land for Development. Another Government policy initiative.

I’d now like to read out a quote from a speech Patrick Dodson made at University of New South Wales:
“The strategy for assimilation of our peoples is not a mistake made by low-level bureaucrats on behalf of successive governments who didn’t know better. It was and continues to be a deliberate act orchestrated at the highest levels in our society, and no amount of moral posturing can hide that reality. This Assimilation I talk of has not been evidenced by equality, but by further control, incarceration and subjugation to norms and values without our consent.”

The longer I live at the present day front-line of the assimilationist assault the more convinced I’ve become that Patrick Dodson has hit the nail squarely on the head. It very neatly dovetails with what Mahatma Ghandi said when talking about the British Raj in India:
“ …a subtle but effective system of terrorism, together with an organized display of force on the one hand, and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation or self-defence on the other, has emasculated the people…”
I’d now like to speak about what my wife calls the ‘Massacre Mentality’

John Howard 2007. Master strategist. Invading Iraq and Australia all at the same time.

In 1928 a mere 50 Km from Yuendumu at a place called Yurrkuru, Fred Brookes was sprung sleeping with Bullfrog’s wife. Bullfrog with some help killed Fred Brookes. The murder triggered a series of punitive raids led by Gallipoli veteran Constable Murray. The raids became known as the Coniston Massacre in which around one hundred or so men women and children were killed. The exact number of people killed is unknown, nor are the victims dignified by having their names recorded in history.
Constable Murray was subsequently exonerated in an enquiry which found that the “killing of blacks” had been justified.
Bullfrog lived to a ripe old age and died in Yuendumu.

In 2007 the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ report included allegations of sexual abuse of children. This was then seized on to justify punishment of the residents of most remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory by the imposition of the Intervention.

The Massacre Mentality in action’.