HONORING ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA

We live on an ancient continent, in so far as time is guaged by geological measures, that has given birth to long established indigenous cultures.

I suppose that all our human ancestors originated in Africa, perhaps in the Rift Valley, but from there we have found ourselves by different paths and by the pressure of differing historical winds, have found living sometimes with differing cultural baggage. Even cultural traditions allow, or at least should recognize diversity and the contribution that difference can make.

ABC News Online reports:

As debate rages over whether January 26 should be Australia Day, some Indigenous leaders are protesting against what they call ‘invasion day’.

The new Australian of the Year, Mick Dodson, says the use of January 26 as Australia Day alienates Indigenous Australians because it commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet, and he has urged national debate on whether or not to change the date.

. . .  the organiser of an Indigenous rally in Brisbane, Aboriginal activist Sam Watson, says Australia Day should be moved to another date if Indigenous Australians are to deal with the emotional turmoil that the day represents.

Mr Watson was speaking prior to leading a march from State Parliament to Musgrave Park in inner Brisbane, in protest over Queensland’s long-running stolen wages dispute, and the Northern Territory intervention.

“January 26 is only the day in 1788 when the First Fleet arrived to set up the colony of New South Wales,” he said.

“It’s got nothing to do with Aboriginal people, it’s got nothing to do with the nation of Australia as it stands today.

“If they want to have a true national day, it should be June 3, for example, which was the day the Mabo decision was handed down in 1992.”

. . . However a South Australian Aboriginal elder says the Federal Government should not change the date of Australia Day, but rather introduce a new day that enables Aboriginal people to celebrate being the first Australians.

A procession of more than 2,000 Adelaide residents marched down North Terrace to Elder Park before being welcomed onto the traditional land of the Kaurna people by Aunty Josi Agius.

Aunty Josi said Australia Day was a great day for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to celebrate being Australian.

“Let’s not dwell on bad things in the past but we should never forget,” she said.

“Australia Day is good for non-Aboriginal people and for us it’s our survival day.”

“Another day for Aboriginal people should be brought in, or the Government should do something to recognise us.

“I mean, we don’t need a certificate like the new citizens but some sort of recognition would be nice.”

About 100 members of Tasmania’s Aboriginal community also marched today, carrying flags, placards and wreaths as well as a mock coffin, which they say symbolised what happened when Europeans arrived in Australia more than 200 years ago.

The group walked through Hobart to Parliament House chanting, “You stole our land, you stole our rights and we won’t celebrate invasion day”.

A spokeswoman for the group, Nala Mansell McKenna, says the point of the march was to educate the wider public.

“I think most Australians don’t realise how racist it is to celebrate January 26,” she said.

She says now that Professor Dodson has been made Australian of the Year, the Prime Minister should listen to his views on changing the date of Australian Day celebrations.

There has been some support from other areas of the Indigenous community as well, with former federal Labor Party president Warren Mundine saying a new date would help reconcile the country.

“It’s a unifying day that brings us all together and looks at the achievements of the nation and looks at the hard work we have to do in the future and how we can make this country a better place,” he said.

“So we need to differentiate that from the actual date of the 26th of January.”

Western Australian Indigenous leader Peter Yu, who chaired a review of the Northern Territory intervention, says perhaps the title of Australia Day could be changed rather than the date.

“Maybe the whole emphasis of it should be a change. Rather than the particular date itself so that in fact it could really embrace the whole theme of reconciliation so something like the Reconciliation Australia Day,” he said.

Sometimes history is just bad luck. Terra Australis Incognita was claimed as an action of historical grandiosity by a British explorer who raised a flag of empire over a land imagined to be empty of human inhabitants, but who made their presence felt. Cook was more decent toward the Tahitians than to the Aborigines or the Maori. And it is possible that the French rivals might have had other ideas developed from the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, but in truth “empire”, then as now, was a terrible scourge, as much as the social milieu that made a penal colony on the opposite side of the world necessary in the face of The Declaration of Independence.

Do symbols matter? Yes, in so far, as they are part, as in this case, a national narrative of inclusion or exclusion. In Australia, we have not done enough to broaden our horizons to identify our place in history, and make space in our story for indigenous history.

For example, as far as I can tell, my maternal forebears perhaps in some ways understandably sought to live in racially exclusive conclave in Perth, which just happened to exclude the original inhabitants, nor as far as I can tell did they think to extend their hand to them. Perhaps, I should be capable of a deeper sympathy for them, if only for the pain of separation that they experienced. If this account has any truth, there was a parallel, if not similar, experience by the indigenous people. Fortunately each generation experiences the world differently, and sometimes for the better. Other than in cold stone, the suffering of the First World War was lied away into the night.

The deeper problem, it seems to me (and what do I know?) is that culture by definition was always about setting one group off from another, and not surprisingly was project that lent itself to arrogance, conscious and unconscious. The serious problem is that we cannot live peacefully, and constructively in a world like that anymore. We will live and survive together if we are to live and survive at all.

(As you can see, and as is my habit, I felt compelled to honour here Australia Day, or as in India, Republic Day -we’ll get there!)

ELSEWHERE:

If we face the past and the present, and seek to do better, we might imagine the future, and thereby make it possible. However imperfect that makes us feel it is far better than been trapped by the past. Uri Avnery observes:

Israel is the product of the narrow nationalism of the 19th century, a nationalism that was closed and exclusive, based on race and ethnic origin, blood and earth. Israel is a “Jewish State,” and a Jew is a person born Jewish or converted according to Jewish religious law (Halakha). Like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, it is a state whose mental world is to a large extent conditioned by religion, race, and ethnic origin.

Perhaps we can say that we were like that too, but through the genius of the best among us with the good will and good sense of the overwhelming majority, a factor that should not be underestimated, we have somehow got ourselves out of that place, and so it is possible for others to do so as well. It is a little as I remember Martin Luther KIng saying on radio, repeating the words of an old preacher, [“We ain’t going to be what we are going to be, but thank God, we aren’t what we used to be”], or something like that.

Postscript:

Nobody, as far as I know, reflects on our current economic dependence on China while remembering the cruelty issued to the Chinese on the goldfields, the formative economic development of these parts. The wheel turns. History is a good place for forgetting, as much as remembering. Naturally, fear, stupidity and prejudice are among the qualities of mind we wish to cherish or remember. The lesson, I think is, that the conditions of a decent life make human decency possible, and so the economic struggle transplanted to this continent is a central part of the story, even in the face of global capitalism that would create an Orwellian one party state, if left to its’ own devices.

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