Help

Growing up in Ballarat and living in Melbourne I live in a fairytale where I can easily convince myself that Australia is a first world country. Yet here in a country that regularly reports budget surplus’s in the billion dollar category we have our indigenous peoples still living in some areas in abject poverty. There’s so much I don’t understand about the issue of reconciliation, I signed a partition on National Sorry Day and my comment was ‘what’s stopping us?’ I guess I didn’t realise how much land and money has been denied A&TSI over the years since we colonised. I still don’t understand but an apology should be affordable and I know can make all the difference. I guess I don’t know enough because in highschool we spent more time looking at overland explorers (who once you disregard terra nullis for the bullshit that was where in effect guys who didn’t explore anything new just went walking in the bush) than on indigenous studies. In SOSE and RE we spent more time on Islam than the mythology and religions of the many and varied cultures of indigenous Australians.
So many beautiful languages, really cool dreamtime stories and a nomadic population that was living sustainably off the land has a lot to offer the general population and of course will be impossible to totally assimilate nor should we want assimilation. I know my Grandma loves the Queen and the Anzacs and stuff but she’ll be dead some day and I wouldn’t mind living in a republic who’s national identity takes into account the truly unique cultures that can’t be found anywhere else in the world. When my host mother from Japan came out I tried to explain that outside of the Sydney opera house Australia had no historical shrines or monuments ‘just rocks and parks’ which are actually really great national monuments, there’s no way to replicate them.
Unfortunately the white colonies from which I (assume) I’m decended did a very thorough job of removing me from any exposure to the original inhabitants of the land in which I now reside. It is a poor person who sends aid to devastated trading partners and can’t look after the malnourished, dispossessed and abused in their own family. Out of site out of mind. Passive resistence techniques probably won’t even work (though like the British in India we do claim moral superiority) because it wouldn’t even cause a stir in the media these days. I don’t know what to do, I’m not a Marxist either that gets a hard on for revolution either. Listening seems most likely to me, because I don’t know shit yet I feel so strongly about the disparity between white and black Australia. I don’t get how I had to sit through RE in primary school which was someone from the local church talking hell and brimstone and singing songs about father Abraham. What the hell does that have to do with education? Kids aren’t old enough to understand religion till their like 16 at least if we’re going to sing songs about world wide floods and learn about the afterlife we may aswell learn about the dreaming.
I just can’t think of an indigenous body that has fared well against a colonial governments the few exceptions are where they’ve been the democratic majority eg India and South Africa that I know of and Ghandi was involved in both. Indigenous minorities like the Native Americans, the Aztecs and Maya, the Ainu in Japan and Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders seem to just get buried and forgotten. What would Marcos do? He’d listen and write and set up independent communities having been afforded the luxury of the Lacandon jungle for shelter. I’d like to know more but bodies like ATSIC seem alienating more than informative to me. Litarature on the dreaming is poor at the libraries I have easy access too. I’d just like to see Land entitlement reports and feasibility studies to create self governing communities where the indigenous can get justice that isn’t dispensed by the commonwealth. A genuine process of reform that isn’t just an arbitrary jail sentence or fine that doesn’t have any impact on the situational and structural factors that contribute to the disproportionate incidents of crime. The white justice system I don’t think is that good at handing oout justice for whites or reform for that matter. No matter what a persons motivations or specific circumstances we treat them the same and effectively remove them from the community rather than making them a functioning part. Read Shantaram (or don’t) it does have some good points about the cut and dry justice system.
As for land title there must be opportunities for land to be better utilised that can be utilised by dispossessed populations. I’ve seen really good projects covered like Cattle Drives, Community magistrates, Arts & Culture festivals and of course those gods of AFL Gavin Wanganeen, the upcoming Eddie Bets, Michael Long, Kickett, Craker and my current favourite player Wirrpundah {I can’t spell his name} mind you I haven’t checked out if there’s significant pay disparities and all that.
I guess I’m one of those dangerously ignorant individuals who wants to help has no idea how ‘Philosophy without action is worthless, Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon’ to quote Soichiro Honda. If anyone knows good places for me to learn stuff, good informative bodies or just ways someone stuck in an office most of their life can help please post links, recommend book titles or just tell me what to do in the comments section. Otherwise we’ll just be reading a headline one day that says ‘well meaning idiot kills millions’ or some such.