[anarchist23]

Why is Australia Day an insult to many aboriginal people and is Australia still a racist state?

Opponents to Australia Day are invariably criticised in two ways. The first is a favoured manoeuvre for establishment media pundits: claim the focus on 26 January is trivial while more pressing Indigenous issues are neglected. This routine is considered most effective if an Indigenous representative can be recruited to do the sowing. It adds conflict and sells copy, and assuages white guilt, but inadvertently, it also reveals the decrepitude of white Australia’s hearing.

What our leaders say about Australia Day – and where did it start, anyway?

More tiresome are the establishment shills who claim that opposition to Australia Day is not supported by the majority of Aboriginal people. Played out, this farce is girded with a blood-quantum rationale that seeks to dichotomise First Nations people into “bush mob” and “city blacks”, with a persistent inference that the black urban voice is adulterated and therefore counterfeit, both politically and biologically. It particularly delights white Australia if one of our own can be coopted to spruik this view too.

There are a lot of good reasons why sensible Aboriginal people reject the perpetuation of this narrative: perhaps the most significant being the point of our ongoing resistance and rejection of the official White Australia policies that were in place throughout the bulk of last century.

During this period, the commonwealth perpetrated heinous cultural atrocities (to go with the actual human atrocities perpetrated across the colonies during the 18th and 19th centuries). A perfect example could be the abduction of “half-caste” Aboriginal children from their families and the attempt to convince them they were something else, often while gratuitously exploiting their bodies in some way, either as cheap or slave labour, and/or sexually. In today’s terms these assimilationist-era policies might be described as 90 years of state-sanctioned mass gaslighting.

These establishment pundits don’t have any empirical data to support their claims that the majority of Aboriginal people support Australia Day, of course, because that evidence is difficult to obtain empirically. We can take a look at the increasing numbers at the Invasion Day demonstrations each year though. Of course, these pundits then argue that the bulk of people attending the demonstrations are non-Indigenous. I covered the Melbourne Invasion Day rally last year, stood near the epicentre of the sit-down at the intersection of Swanston and Flinders. Surrounding me were the faces of passionate, engaged blackfellas.

In my role as an editor for IndigenousX, I engage daily with a wide cross-section of Indigenous communities and First Nations people across the continent. I communicate directly – either by phone, email or in person – with our Twitter account hosts and also with each contributor to the site. I read their copy carefully, for most often they are expressing their closest beliefs within it. I also monitor audience participation and engagement across our various social media channels, an audience demographic that consists of blackfellas from across the social and political spectrum.

In addition, I keep myself acquainted with the issues of interest and general sentiment of discussions being held in innumerable other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-related social media channels. I also regularly attend Indigenous-related conferences and events around the country. I travel to regional and remote communities in my work for Aboriginal-owned newspaper Koori Mail. Wherever I go and whoever I meet, I always listen. One ear tuned to the source and subject, the other to what is happening around us.

When it comes to the subject of 26 January, the overwhelming sentiment among First Nations people is an uneasy blend of melancholy approaching outright grief, of profound despair, of opposition and antipathy, and always of staunch defiance.

The day and date is steeped in the blood of violent dispossession, of attempted genocide, of enduring trauma. And there is a shared understanding that there has been no conclusion of the white colonial project when it comes to the commonwealth’s approach to Indigenous people. We need only express our sentiments regarding any issue that affects us to be quickly reminded of the contempt in which our continued presence and rising voices are held.

Nor is our sentiment in regards to 26 January a recent phenomenon. I have witnessed it throughout my life in varied intensities. Evidence of it is even present in the recorded histories of White Australia.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the 1988 March for Freedom, Hope and Justice, a rally attended by more than 40,000 supporters and led by a coalition of First Nations representatives through the streets of Sydney on 26 January as white Australia celebrated the bicentennial anniversary of the arrival of the British first fleet to our lands.

Nigel Scullion: No Indigenous person tells me they want Australia Day changed
Read more
It is also the year of the 80th anniversary of the Day of Mourning march. A movement led by black luminaries such as Doug Nicholls, Jack Patten, Bill Cooper, Pearl Gibbs and Margaret Tucker to contest Australia’s sesquicentenary in 1938. Fold the historical pages back another 50 years and you have Henry Parkes – the commonwealth’s “father of federation” – cautioning that 1888 centenary celebrations could remind the natives that they had been robbed.

The concerted attempts from the federal government and far-right radicals like Mark Latham to shore up 26 January as the national day is a desperate attempt to recover what strident white Australia perceives as lost ground in its great culture war. A sad scenario, as similarly to the white colonial project, there is no end point in terms of result for #ChangeTheDate. As Adam Briggs revealed in AB Original’s collaboration with Paul Kelly on the track Dumb Things: the date’s changin’. It’s happening right now and the momentum is too strong.

Guardian Australia is proud to partner with IndigenousX to showcase the diversity of Indigenous peoples and opinions from around the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... s-not-true

[Wellsy]

Australia is still pretty rough towards indigenous for sure and it certainly hasn't changed in it's interventionist paternalism based on inflated claims.
STILL PAYING THE PRICE FOR BENIGN INTENTIONS? CONTEXTUALISING CONTEMPORARY INTERVENTIONS IN THE LIVES OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLES

I can see Australia day as a rallying point for the important sociopolitical issues, though I don't have much opinion in regards to the change the date stuff. It seems insignificant, in that I think if one achieved such a symbolic gesture, it would lose its potency for the other issues and they would remain regardless of what day it was. So the framing of it being about change the date, perhaps is misplacing the discussion of the other things that are wanted to be discussed and addressed.
And it seems that in regards to the day, some perhaps want a transformation of it's significance rather than displacement. Where I imagine one need not lose the BBQs, the drinking and all that fun, but they perhaps wish to emphasize a cultural aspect that acknowledges Australia's history.
No doubt, be a repeat of the history wars, the tension to glorify a national past for nationalism or one which is critical of the British colonial project.
Which by it's own standards of it's day, did wrong, because of course such a project wasn't about living up to it's own standards.

The question of who owns Australia has been an Issue for Australians since shortly after first settlement. The legal issues have never been resolved, nor have the moral dilemmas. Henry Reynolds, the historian, traces the debate over this question. Legal opinion, he indicates, has been divided in Australia - some have argued that the Crown gained possession of Australia with no regard to Aboriginal peoples' clear presence and occupancy of the land. Others have argued that the Crown can only acquire property through negotiated agreement. This position was debated thoroughly during the first half of the nineteenth century, and many conservative and respected people of the day contended that the Crown had never acquired legal title to the whole of Australia. Their argument, Reynolds says, emerged from their commitment to private property. Take, for example, Reynold's discussion of Thomas Buxton, one of the most influential of British parliamentarians during the successful anti-slavery movement:

"The problem which Buxton presents to the contemporary conservatives is that he was not radical even by the standards of the early nineteenth century. Like so many of his close supporters he was a prominent businessman, the epitome of bourgeois respectability. He was not attacking private property. He was defending it. It was just that he believed that Aborigines had a form of property. That being so it could either be bought or stolen. There was no other way to transfer ownership. ... Buxton was advocating the normal procedure of a mature capitalist economy. The colonists wished to continue in the ways of the frontiers of Empire, to perpetuate the methods and the morality of the buccaneer and the conquistadore. Buxton and those like him believed that to sanction the dispossession of native people was to call into question the sanctity of private property itself.4"

A tension that exists in the history of the Batman treaty, founding of what is today Melbourne. Recognizing indigenous as land owners, brings into question the validity of legal ownership of all sorts of things.
To which there has been political tensions with certain interests in regards to historical land rights when it comes to things like mining companies and what constitutes evidence of historical ownership.

Regardless, the tension reflects an open wound on the collective conscious of Australia that it keeps trying to forget, but the past is relational and it echoes in the present. This rings true with my own primary school education, Australian history seemed to start at 1788 with settlers.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/23/gareth-liddiard-of-the-drones-its-time-leftwingers-grew-some-balls

The reason people don’t like to look back in Australian history is sooner or later you get back to the bit with the Aboriginal people.

[ThirdTerm]

Australia Day is the official National Day of Australia which marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales. The First Fleet of 11 ships left Portsmouth on 13 May in 1787 and arrived at Botany Bay on 24 January 1788. The Fleet consisted of two Royal Navy vessels and six convict transports, carrying between 1,000 and 1,500 convicts. I think Australia Day is an insult to white Australians who are celebrating the arrival of the first group of British convicts who were shipped to the first penal colony founded in Australia. Coincidentally, the Mayflower also departed Plymouth, England, on 6 September 1620 and arrived at Cape Cod on 9 November 1620. The main difference is that the Mayflower transported the first English Puritans, known today as the Pilgrims. Most Aussies don't even know the basic facts about the nation's founding because they are deliberately whitewashed. For instance, Tony Abbott believes the First Fleet brought Western civilisation to this country and the c-word is replaced with civilisation.

Tony Abbott believes the arrival of the First Fleet was a good thing for Indigenous Australians.

The former prime minister was throwing his support behind keeping the existing date of Australia Day, in a chat with 2GB's Ray Hadley.

The former PM supports Australia Day remaining on January 26 and says the arrival of the First Fleet was good for everyone, including Indigenous people.

"Australia Day is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate all of the things we've achieved," he said.

"What happened on the 26th of January 1788 was on balance, for everyone - Aboriginal people included - a good thing because it brought Western civilisation to this country, it brought Australia into the modern world.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ ... 0lyzc.html

[anarchist23]

Let's not beat around the bush. Australia is a racist country and there is no getting away from it. We have aborigines in Australia segregated and living in abject poverty. In a way Australia is an apartheid state but the ordinary white Australian just doesn't get it.

Sydney, Australia - For many Australians the national Australia Day holiday is a chance to celebrate their country with a day off from work and a drink. For Indigenous Australians, it is a day of protest and mourning.

Several thousand Indigenous Australians and their supporters marched through the streets of Sydney to protest at what they have renamed 'Invasion Day', which marks the 1788 establishment of the first British penal colony.

For them, the fact that the country continues to celebrate its national holiday on January 26 is deeply offensive and, in response, rallies were held in major cities across the country.

"Today is a day for protest. It is not a day for singing and dancing," Aboriginal poet and Bidjara elder Ken Canning told a gathered crowd.

The holiday links to 'whiteness, colonialism and perpetuating the myth that Aboriginal people don't belong in this country,' says Jack Gibson of the Wiradjuri nation

Carrying signs reading: 'National Day of Mourning', 'Invasion Day is not a Holiday', and 'No Pride in Genocide', protesters made their way through Sydney's central business district chanting and blocking traffic.

"I'm sorry if we are inconveniencing you, but we have been inconvenienced for 228 years," Canning told police officers who tried to direct the protesters away from major roads.

As the rallying group weaved its way past pubs, restaurants and shops, onlookers, many of whom were in the city celebrating the holiday in Australian flag-themed attire, took photos.

"Australia Day is a date linked to whiteness, colonialism and perpetuating the myth that Aboriginal people don't belong in this country, so it is important that we always resist that," Jack Gibson, of the Wiradjuri nation, told Al Jazeera.

The high levels of poverty, land-rights abuses and the disproportional imprisonment rate among Aboriginals were some of the many concerns raised by activists.

"A lot of blood has been spilled on this land, and it still hasn't been recognised, even to this day. It's important for them to know that their people died fighting for this land, and we are still fighting today for our rights," said Caine Carrol, a public servant who was joined by his children at the protest.

The land that belongs to no one
Invasion Day protests are nothing new, and the issue continues to gain the national spotlight in as non-indigenous Australians increasingly shun traditional Australia Day barbecues and events to join the protests.

Mark Humphry is one such protester. "I'm proud of many things about my country, but the way we continue to treat Aboriginal Australians is certainly not one of them," the 52-year-old teacher told Al Jazeera.

When Australia was colonised, the British used the doctrine of Terra Nullius, a Latin term meaning "land that belongs to no one". The British have never signed a treaty with any indigenous tribes, and Indigenous Australians were not included in the census until 1967.

The way the government and non-indigenous Australians celebrate Australia Day has also changed significantly over the years. Mark McKenna, a history professor at Sydney University, said that the kind of national flag-waving patriotism that is a common sight on Australia Day would have been unthinkable before the 1990s.

Non-indigenous Australians increasingly shun traditional celebratory barbeques and events of Australia Day to join the protests [Jarni Blakkarly/Al Jazeera]
"In the 1960s and 70s, as the country was moving away from Britain, the Australian government consciously set up January 26 as a 'celebration' and tried to whip up nationalism," he told Al Jazeera. "We were looking for a story that was our own."

"There is hardly any discussion about Australia's convict history and what it means. It has somehow been severed from its origins as a date and turned into a feelgood, flag-waving thing. We don't reflect much," McKenna said.

History wars
The 1990s in Australia are often referred to culturally as the " history wars" because of the academic debates surrounding Australia's colonial history, particularly the violence inflicted upon Indigenous Australians.

It wasn't until 2008 that the Australian government apologised to the Stolen Generations' of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families and placed in missions and with white families by the government.

In the past several years, official celebrations of Australia Day have also changed to incorporate Australia's multiculturalism, for instance, in naturalisation ceremonies, where migrants are officially granted citizenship are commonly held on the day.

" We can look at our past with great pride and with some regret, but we are not defined, let alone trapped by our history, as many other nations are," said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at one such citizenship ceremony on Tuesday, after acknowledging Indigenous Australians' long history on the continent.

Nakkiah Lui, an actress and playwright who has a Gamilaroi-Torres Strait Islander heritage, rejects the idea that Indigenous Australians could ever feel included in the national holiday. Along with many others, she wants the celebration date to be changed.

Many protesters reject the idea that Indigenous Australians could ever feel included in the national holiday [Jarni Blakkarly/Al Jazeera]
"While we are a multicultural and fairly cohesive society, it still means Aboriginal identity isn't included in this idea of what Australia Day is," Lui told Al Jazeera.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ... 32312.html

[Tainari88]

Rabbit Proof Fence:

[anarchist23]

@Tainari88

A brilliant film.

I spent my formative years in Australia and left in late 1967 at the age of seventeen.
When I was twelve years old I saw my first aborigine. In fact I saw my first black African at the age of sixteen.
It seems not much has changed. Apartheid comes to mind.

[Tainari88]

@Tainari88

A brilliant film.

I spent my formative years in Australia and left in late 1967 at the age of seventeen.
When I was twelve years old I saw my first aborigine. In fact I saw my first black African at the age of sixteen.
It seems not much has changed. Apartheid comes to mind.

The most common issues I get by my being Puerto Rican Anarchist23? It is always the people who tell me sheer shit comments about race. They are always saying shit that is just DUMB.

I thought Puerto Ricans were all black.

I thought Puerto Ricans were different.

What are you? You are not Mexican.

How come you speak English without an accent? You know like Ricky Ricardo.....

Are you sure you are Puerto Rican? You don't look like it.

I even had my boss....a Chicana who did not speak Spanish and a flaming liberal sit me down one day and ask me to do a documentary on how my husband and I came to the USA as immigrants and the struggle we had getting a green card.

I had to tell my boss:

"We don't qualify. My husband and I were born in Puerto Rico true. We speak Spanish as a first language. True. But we are officially USA citizens and don't need green cards."

Her reply,
"But culturally I have seen on Netflix a series about Celia Cruz. Your culture is similar to Cuban culture."


My reply:

"Yes it is. But the USA invaded us in 1898 and in 1917 in order to recruit more soldiers for WWI an secure their control over our land and society they passed without our consent the Jones Act and made us all USA citizens, even though we did not want that. They forced the citizenship on us. They put a military appointee in charge and like a dictator he put out decrees in English. Though none of the people spoke English at the time."

Her answer:

"But that is undemocratic and un-American."

My reply:

"Yes it is. That is why I think the USA government is full of lying, hypocritical, racist pig actions, thoughts and laws. I have no belief in American democracy. It is all a joke and an invention to justify their crap."

Her answer:

"Oh, so you can't participate in the immigrant experience panel?"

My reply:

"No, but when you get a colonial experience and hypocrisy of the USA government experience panel I can participate. But the immigrant experience is for the people who chose to be here and to integrate into this society. Not us. We just like Malcolm X stated about African slaves who were brought here in chains and without a choice....Plymouth Rock landed on us. We did not land on Plymouth Rock. That is my situation. Plymouth Rock landed on Puerto Rico and the Puerto Ricans have to deal with their limbo status, and their lack of political rights and their sick and unbalanced power relationship with the USA. But it is not about immigration. It is about lying to the world about being a democracy respecting other nations rights to self determination. That is totally false, boss."

End of conversation.....she had to search for some Nepalese immigrant families on refugee visas.

[anarchist23]

Watch this and the racism of the Australians is plain to see.

[Tainari88]

Watch this and the racism of the Australians is plain to see.

Anarchist23 those Aussie racist neighbors are nice guys.....my fear in the past was my son leaving the house and getting shot by a racist guy on a scooter. I had in real life a dude on a scooter who thought my son and my husband were thieves because everyone knows those Latino immigrants and black teen men are THIEVES. And without any evidence, and who knows who said what to that asshole on a scooter, he came by and said to my husband, "I got a fucking problem with you and your black son. I will shoot him or you."

He drove away in the scooter. I had to send my son to Michigan to study his senior year in high school. Because I wasn't going to be one of the many mother with Black teen boys in the USA who are shot to death for being black on the way to school. Either by the cops or racist neighbors. No. Worked too hard on that kid to have some fucking racist white assholes kill my kid like a dog because of lies and fears that are unfounded. They don't even wait for any form of evidence. It is all an excuse to let out some racist shit they have in their heads.

Look:

I had to deal with issues of raising a black son in the USA in an urban environment. My neighborhood has changed Anarchist23.....from a Latino neighborhood to a hipster increasingly gentrified more white neighborhood.

[colliric]

Rabbit Proof Fence:

My Dad entered a radio competition for that film and won a ton of Merchandise.

Can't remember what the question he got asked was, I think it was simply classic film related...But we won T-shirts(and similar stuff), a VHS copy of the movie, the soundtrack on CD and the original Novel(film tie-in edition).

But yeah, the Book is significantly different from the film version of it and is much more accurate although is also heavily fictionalised. The film takes an already fictionalised portrayal of the escape and adds an extra topping of fiction to extra dramatization it.

There was a long train journey the children took which was removed from the film to make it look as if they walked the entire way along the massive fence(when they didn't walk all of it, they walked maybe a third or just over half the way). The scene where the kids were removed in the presence of their mother was also further fictionalised for dramatic purposes. I think they were actually removed during a health check-up when the mother wasn't present. Also they were convinced to leave, not forced to leave. They were "forced to leave" from the POV that their mother wasn't there to stop them being manipulated to want to leave, but yeah, they were not dragged away kicking and screaming while their mother was crying and chasing them. That was deliberately inaccurate.

So the film was not accurate to the book, which was itself removed from the real events, in much the same manner as the later Australian film Red Dog, which was also loosely based on a book loosely based on real events concerning the Pilbara Wanderer.

The film's are both classic Aussie films, but they are also not exactly true to the events they claim to be about.

A brilliant film.

But also a very unfaithful adaptation. Large chunks of the novel are just plain ignored. As usual the original Book is much better than it's truncated film adaptation.

[Tainari88]

I wonder why there aren't more Australian films distributed in the USA? Australia has extremely great dramatic arts programs and they should have a more prolific film industry. I have always wondered why there weren't more Australian mini series and films and TV shows on the air in the USA? I think it is they don't want competition.

Anyway, even though the events were changed the topic is important @colliric . Nothing more insensitive than telling a parent they are unfit to raise their own children due to their 'culture' or their heritage. That is racist in the extreme. It is also common for Natives in many continents not just Australia. That happened in Canada, the USA, including in the Hawaiian islands and Alaska, American Samoa, etc and many places with colonial historical pasts. The Spaniards would send Indians to missions and Roman Catholic ejidos to work for the Roman Catholic church. I think the Pope had to apologize over that as well recently.

It is a very bad history. Anyway, if anyone tried to take my child away over my not being good enough because I spoke Spanish or was this or that? That is racist in the extreme. Bad.

You get some of that in the public school system. But it is due to not having really educated educators and you get people who never got taught to deal with different cultures in the classroom well. It is very bad. Multicultural education is needed more today than ever before. The world is becoming needful of handling different cultural paradigms with finesse instead of with intolerance @colliric.

[colliric]

Anyway, even though the events were changed the topic is important @colliric . Nothing more insensitive than telling a parent they are unfit to raise their own children due to their 'culture' or their heritage.

I agree, although I think it actually might have served the film better to show how the kids were manipulated like the Pied Piper to leave without mum knowing thinking they were going to a lush green cool paradise(which funny enough they kinda were, Australia is friggen HOT up there), rather than what the film version did have them be literally snatched kicking and screaming.

It's the usual case of the book being much more complex than the film. 2010's Red Dog, also a great "True Story" film is the same.

[anarchist23]

I had to deal with issues of raising a black son in the USA in an urban environment..

That must of been a challenge.
It's a fucked up world and the only way I keep my sanity is by living in the countryside away from the crap that is at the top of our lane.
When I was one years old I emigrated to Sydney with my folks. I was still treated as an immigrant Brit till I left at seventeen. lol
When I came back to England I had a broad Aussie accent and I was treated by many as an immigrant again. Picked on by the police, unable to get accommodation and generally marginalised.

[Tainari88]

That must of been a challenge.
It's a fucked up world and the only way I keep my sanity is by living in the countryside away from the crap that is at the top of our lane.
When I was one years old I emigrated to Sydney with my folks. I was still treated as an immigrant Brit till I left at seventeen. lol
When I came back to England I had a broad Aussie accent and I was treated by many as an immigrant again. Picked on by the police, unable to get accommodation and generally marginalised.

I am always struck by how many people feel they have been mistreated in life. Too many by far.

I think the greatest weapon one has in being happy is being loved well by your family. Having great communication with your family and having support emotionally. Something simple like always being validated and listened to as a child, teen and adult. If you get that early in life Anarchist? You will have a very large reserve of tolerance for all the other stuff that is negative that life throws at you. For me? Most people's issues is a lack of love and nurturing early on. Also making sure you are not entitled and spoiled in the wrong way. Teaching kids that they have to consider others. Always. Small but very important lessons.

Australia was founded as a penal colony wasn't it?

[colliric]

Australia was founded as a penal colony wasn't it?

Yes it was, and that is what Australia Day is part memorializing. The plight of the convicts that came here, who were bounded in chains and crushed in the brig for months, some for stealing as little as a loaf of bread, as they sailed here.

Personally I think Aus Day should have been the date that Captain James Cook sighted Australia and traditionally "discovered it" on April 20th(the year was 1770). But celebrating the arrival of the first European settlers is adequate. It would still be controversial, but yeah I think it's a better date.

[Wellsy]

@Tainari88
As someone who is into history and I presume primary documents, I recommend having a gander at A Letter From Sydney - E.G. Wakefield.
He is interesting in regards to the economics of colonization, worthy of consideration by Marx.

And though I haven't read it, seems interesting, Patrick Wolfe's Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology seems interesting in colonization generally.
Where he poses a model of 1) confrontation, 2) Carceration 3) Assimilation.
So what folks aren't killed by disease are hunted and killed off, then to make room for settlers to use their land, apply the rule of law upon them and incarcerate them (Australia had many little islands used for such) and then erase their culture by trying to force another upon them.
Sure you're familiar with all this stuff in your education and interests, but though I'd mention regardless ^_^
There's a political tension over Rottness Island which was an overcrowded prison of indigenous which has now been turned into a resort. The comparison made is that it'd be like turning Auswitchz into a resort.
In it's day there was a report into the mistreatment of the prisoners.

[Tainari88]

Yes it was, and that is what Australia Day is part memorializing. The plight of the convicts that came here, who were bounded in chains and crushed in the brig for months, some for stealing as little as a loaf of bread, as they sailed here.

Personally I think Aus Day should have been the date that Captain James Cook sighted Australia and traditionally "discovered it" on April 20th(the year was 1770). But celebrating the arrival of the first European settlers is adequate. It would still be controversial, but yeah I think it's a better date.

I have heard controversy about how Australia was populated by the English, Irish, etc settlers. I studied a bit of the history of Tasmania. It made me so angry. I don't like so many horrible stories of woe and injustice. The aboriginal people are very interesting. Why did they have such strong segregation?

I even heard that in Australian law there was a period where immigration from Chinese people was prohibited? I wonder about that. I know in the USA the Chinese railroad workers were not allowed to own land in many Western states.

Queensland, in pictures? Looks so beautiful @colliric !

I have read about Aboriginal concepts about the Earth, God and where they came from...histories of the many people who were inhabiting Australia for millenia.

Latin America is interesting, in that most Spaniards had children with the native peoples of the Americas and baptized their children, called mestizos (mixed). The vast majority of the Spaniards married or had common law relationships with the Indian women and established long term family ties. The kids were mostly not allowed to remain slaves for any period of time. Over time? Most Latin Americans are mixed people. In Australia I am sure there were mixed people between the Aboriginals and the Australian settlers from England, Ireland, etc but was it the norm over centures for mixture to happen to the point of both races mixing were the majority of the Australian people? I am curious....

Different histories. I happen to think the Dutch and the English crown and etc were into segregation BIG TIME. Not so with the Spaniards. At all. Could be Roman Catholic stuff, and could be Spanish history. I think it was a complex thing.

[Tainari88]

@Tainari88
As someone who is into history and I presume primary documents, I recommend having a gander at A Letter From Sydney - E.G. Wakefield.
He is interesting in regards to the economics of colonization, worthy of consideration by Marx.

And though I haven't read it, seems interesting, Patrick Wolfe's Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology seems interesting in colonization generally.
Where he poses a model of 1) confrontation, 2) Carceration 3) Assimilation.
So what folks aren't killed by disease are hunted and killed off, then to make room for settlers to use their land, apply the rule of law upon them and incarcerate them (Australia had many little islands used for such) and then erase their culture by trying to force another upon them.
Sure you're familiar with all this stuff in your education and interests, but though I'd mention regardless ^_^
There's a political tension over Rottness Island which was an overcrowded prison of indigenous which has now been turned into a resort. The comparison made is that it'd be like turning Auswitchz into a resort.
In it's day there was a report into the mistreatment of the prisoners.

I am familiar with many of the tactics Wellsy. I have a very deep rooted dislike for English, Dutch and British racist colonialistic tactics. The Spaniards were bad and have a well deserved 'leyenda negra' for how they were with the Indigenous. But they never were 'purists' of any sort. The English were purists. Racist and very ugly with their tactics. Cold. And about materialism too.

All conquest of lands by the Europeans with money on the brain? Very bad histories. I think Australia though, had a lot of people who were struggling in England. I remember reading riots about the Royal Navy knocking young unsuspecting men on the head and waking up on a Royal Naval ship bound for the Caribbean or Australia or Africa....conscription. It got so bad that many an English family near the port cities and London would get into rioting and physical altercations with people who lost their kids to all that crap. History.

[colliric]

I have heard controversy about how Australia was populated by the English, Irish, etc settlers. I studied a bit of the history of Tasmania. It made me so angry. I don't like so many horrible stories of woe and injustice. The aboriginal people are very interesting. Why did they have such strong segregation?

I've been to Port Arthur, Tasmania which is the location of Australia's most infamous and brutal convict prison, the one featured in the classic novel "For The Term Of His Natural Life". It was also in modern times given extra infamy for being the location of Australia's worse murder spree(the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, and at the time it was the World's worse massacre committed by a single gunman with an automatic weapon). I went in 1998 just under the two year anniversary of the shooting.

It was a surprisingly serene and peaceful place to visit. Yet a tour of the prison makes you wonder if evil places like that should be torn down because just maby the 1996 event occurred because that madman was drawn there. Literally Australia's worst murder spree happened in the Parking Lot and at the onsite Cafe of the Port Arthur Convict Prison.

The feeling of isolation inside the prison cells and even in the Chapel. That chapel was anything but a communal spiritual place, the prisoners are seperated from each other by cubical walls, to the point where they can't see each other and placed in what can only be described as Toilet style "Religious cells". You could barely see over the top of the front side(designed so the only individual you could see was the Priest when in the pulpit).

The experience of standing on the concrete slab that was left of the Broad Arrow Cafe and looking across the way to see a massive Convict prison where people were tortured and whipped, was a spiritual experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life. The entire grounds while peaceful, felt cursed with violence.

Rottnest has nothing on Port Arthur...

Port Arthur deserves it's title as "our Auschwitz".... What other convict Prison in Australia has Australia worst gun massacre also tied intricately into it's history now.

I even heard that in Australian law there was a period where immigration from Chinese people was prohibited? I wonder about that. I know in the USA the Chinese railroad workers were not allowed to own land in many Western states.

Just like in the USA with your Gold Rush it was tied to problems surrounding to comparatively large for it's time Chinese Immigration during the Australian Gold Rush, which highly centred on my particular state. Chinese immigrants were coming to Victoria in massive numbers. They were landing by ship in other states like WA, but travelling all the way to Bendigo and Ballarat. There were other Goldfields, but Victoria's was the most important. The other states basically didn't like acting as "pass throughs" and basically conspired to stop it.

They mostly spoke Mandarin.

Ironically when the laws were relaxed it was during the Cultural Revolution and Cantonese immigration to Australia skyrocketed, partly because of the ease of immigration from British Ruled Hong Kong to Australia. It was highly dominant. The trend has continued to this day. Most Chinese in Australia are of Cantonese descent.

[anarchist23]

On January 26, 1938, as the first rally against Australia Day was held, 25 Indigenous men were told if they did not perform the role of 'retreating Aborigines' in a re-enactment of the First Fleet, their families would starve.

Government officials had selected the best dancers and singers from Menindee mission in far-west New South Wales and told them they were required to perform cultural dances in Sydney.

WARNING: This story contains images of deceased Indigenous people.
What they were sent to take part in was a re-enactment of the landing and proclamation of Captain Arthur Phillip at the 150th Australia Day celebrations.

Ngiyaampaa elder Dr Beryl (Yunghadhu) Philp Carmichael, born and raised on the mission, was only three at the time, but her memory of the fear in the community never left her.

My grandfather protested Australia Day in 1938

Protesters on Australia Day 1938
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"All I can remember is the crying, all the women were crying," she said.
"Whether they were taking them away to be massacred or what, no-one knew.

"The community went into mourning once they were put on the mission truck."

The men returned a week later, but Dr Carmichael said it was many years until they would talk about their experience.

'They came back very quiet," she said.

"It was only in the late 70s they started saying something about what it was like down there.

"We knew whatever happened down there really hurt them and we didn't question them."

Hidden from friends and family

It is speculated that part of the reason for bringing Indigenous people all the way from Menindee was because those in Sydney refused to take part.

In Sydney plans were afoot to hold a rally on Australia Day; the Aborigines Progressive Association would declare it a 'day of mourning'.

Aboriginal rights leaders William Ferguson and John Patten published the Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights! pamphlet on January 12, 1938.

In it they declared, "We do not ask you to study us as scientific freaks … the superstition that we are a naturally backward and low race … shows a jaundiced view of anthropologists' motives".

Those in power at the time seemed eager to keep the Menindee men well away from activists, keeping them locked away in police barracks.

Black and white image of a group of aboriginal men wearing tradition dress, dancing in a circle.
PHOTO: Aboriginal men perform a dance at a 1938 re-enactment of the landing and proclamation of Captain Arthur Phillip at the 150th Australia Day celebrations. (Supplied: State Library of New South Wales)
The incident was detailed in a biography on William Ferguson, written by Jack B Horner in 1974.

"The Secretary of the Protection Board had a shrewd idea that Ferguson would try to prevent the Menindee men from taking part in this re-enactment. The Board was taking no chances. Nobody could meet the Aborigines in the coming week in Sydney, without … obtaining personal permission." — from Vote Ferguson for Aboriginal freedom: a biography by Jack B Horner
Dr Carmichael said there had been whisperings of the movement on the mission, and a direct link to Mr Ferguson.

"Most people on missions couldn't read and write; that made it really hard for them to understand the government documents they were throwing around," she said.

"Old Bill [Ferguson], because he knew his brother Duncan was back on the mission, he used to send messages back to him.

"But in the end the mission manager found that out, picked the old fella [Duncan] up in a truck and dumped him over the hill [outside the mission boundary]."

Mr Ferguson attempted to get word to the Menindee men while they were in Sydney but, as elaborate as they were, his efforts were unsuccessful.

"Then followed in the week before the celebrations an amusing battle of tactics between the Protection Board officers and the executive of the Aborigines' Progressive Association … Some Sydney relatives of a Peter Johnson from Menindee tried to see him at the barracks … The relatives had been sent by Ferguson, of course, in order to pass to Hero Black (the leader of the Menindee party) a message not to take part in the mortifying 'retreat' from the 'first party of Englishmen'." — from Vote Ferguson for Aboriginal freedom: a biography by Jack B Horner
They were eventually allowed a closely supervised visit from two female relatives.

An older Aboriginal woman holds a staff and looks past the camera.
PHOTO: Ngiyaampaa elder Beryl (Yunghadhu) Philp Carmichael was born and raised on Menindee mission. (ABC Broken Hill: Aimee Volkofsky)
Threatened with ration cuts

The men soon discovered their duties would include playing the part of Aboriginal people fleeing British soldiers.

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While the activists may have gotten their message through to the performers, discouraging them from taking part in the re-enactment, the men were left with little choice.

Dr Carmichael said when it came to performing traditional dance, the men were troubled to find they would be led by an Aboriginal actor who did not speak their language or know their culture.

"The government unknowingly or knowingly put up a big Aboriginal, good looking fella as the leader of the dancers and they didn't even know him. He wasn't from Ngiyaempaa," she said.

"That really devastated the people and they refused to dance.

"[The government] threatened them and threatened them; if they didn't perform they'd cut off the rations to their people on the mission.
"It was the toughest time of their lives, I think."

'I'm just happy we survived'

Eighty years on, as debate continues around whether January 26 is celebrated or mourned, Dr Carmichael said she was happy to have survived, even though she was sad about the past.

"We were brought up to tolerate a lot of things and to give thanks for being alive," she said.

"I'm just glad I survived with my culture intact and am alive to teach and pass it on.

'We should strive for peace, between all nations. We need to come together as people."

Topics: aboriginal, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, national-days, history, dance, menindee-2879, sydney-2000

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-25/e ... nt/9358854