A.C. Flory's Blog, page 19

The Stolen Generations: Canada

My thanks to rawgod for making me see just how widespread and…systemic…this colonial mindset was. There is no way to describe what happened to all these children without coming right out and saying that it was racist to the core. Please read about the Canadian experience:

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WITNESSBLANKET.CA

It does not matter if the intentions of the white authorities were ‘good’ – at least according to their own beliefs – the reason for the forced assimilation of Indigenous children was, in every case, white superiority. Arrogance.

It does not matter that this all happened in the past. The effects are still reverberating in the present, and they will keep on spreading their poison into the future.

It does not matter that we did not personally carry out these atrocities. So long as we are enjoying the benefits that flowed from them – to white settlers – we cannot wash our hands of the responsibility.

Please, understand that the past is not dead. It lives on, not only in the misery of Indigenous people all over the world, but in us. There are neo nazis right here in Australia who seize on every opportunity to sow hatred and discord in our lives. The authorities have not yet said that neo nazis gate crashed the Pro Palestinian protest in Sydney yesterday, but ask yourself: who else can it be?

And let’s not forget that the perpetrator of the Mosque Massacre in New Zealand is one of ours too.

A few bad apples? Or the inevitable culmination of racist attitudes egged on by international racists thanks to the internet?

Racism is an insidious cancer that eats away at the fabric of society, and not being racist yourself is not enough. We have to actively call it out for the ugliness that it is. And just at this moment in time, we have an opportunity to do something good, something that will tell our Indigenous People that they matter, that we care.

For all our sakes, please vote YES.

Meeks

The Stolen Generations – post script

In my previous post I provided a trailer for The Rabbit-Proof Fence. My friend, and Canadian fellow traveller, rawgod, has given us the whole movie:

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/191222580/posts/2107

This is something so special.

Meeks

The Stolen Generations

As a white Australian living in 2023, I cannot imagine what mixed blood Aboriginal children must have suffered when they were forcibly removed ‘from their families under government policy and direction.‘ As a mother, I cannot imagine what their mothers must have suffered as they watched their children being taken away.

That is the real life story of the Rabbit-Proof Fence:

The movie was adapted from the book: ‘Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence’ by Doris Pilkington Garimara. The author is the real life daughter of Molly, the oldest girl in the story.

‘The removal of Indigenous children was rationalised by various [Australian] governments by claiming that it was for their protection and would save them from a life of neglect. A further justification used by the government of the day was that it was believed that “Pure Blood” Aboriginal people would die out and that the “Mixed Blood” children would be able to assimilate into society much easier, this being based on the premise that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were racially inferior to people with Caucasian background.’

https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/stolen-generation/

The Rabbit Proof Fence came out in 2002, and it was the first time this white mother learned about the Stolen Generations. It made me cry then. It makes me angry now because 93 years after the time of that story [1931], White people and their White governments are still dictating how Indigenous people should live.

Something else I’ve only recently learned is that the experience of Indigenous Peoples here in Australia is not unique. Wherever White colonists went, they took their arrogance and unshakeable sense of superiority with them.

In Canada, children taken from Indigenous families were placed in ‘residential schools’ where the first thing they experienced was to have their hair cut off. To understand why the cutting of hair was so devastating, you have to know that in Canadian Indigenous culture, hair is braided and only cut as a sign of grief. The Witness Blanket website was set up to allow survivors to tell their stories.

For me, the worst part of this colonial mindset is that it isn’t part of some awful, distant past:

This was active policy during the period from the 1910s into the 1970s’.

That may sound like a long time ago to people born since the year 2000, but for people like me, it means that the Rabbit Proof Fence was still being enacted while I was growing up as a much loved, privileged white child.

We cannot undo the past, but we can stop repeating it. That is what the Voice referendum is all about. I intend to vote YES.

hugs,
Meeks

Plotting…kinda sorta

There is a story in my head, but the words won’t come, so I’ve been groping for them via a series of images. If, and when, the words finally do come, this is what the cover may look like:

I created the graphic with Corel Draw X8, using a combination of vector and bitmap images.

The two Tukti are made up of 38 bits and pieces snipped from whole images that I’ve then manipulated to create a composite image. The Six is a pure vector image made up of 15 pieces. Layers and transparencies help to create the illusion of depth.

In a way, I’m doing what graphical AI do…except that I only use royalty free and creative commons images. Some day very soon, the people behind the generative AI currently in use will get hit with either massive lawsuits – for breach of copyright – or criminal proceedings for what amounts to theft.

Unfortunately, lawmakers the world over have not yet caught on to the scale of the problem. But they will. Can’t come soon enough.

cheers,
Meeks

New York City under water

Australians are no strangers to floods and bushfires, but this video of New York City shocked me:

Some of the aerial shots remind me of footage taken of the Fukushima tsunami, just not as deep. I really think it’s time that we, the people, took climate change a little bit more seriously. Better to give up a little than be forced to give up a lot.

Meeks

‘We are already living the No vote. Give us a chance to try the Yes, or even a Maybe.’

This is the explanation I’ve been groping for since I started posting about The Voice and the upcoming referendum.

From about the 1:00 minute mark.

Huge thanks to Bone&Silver who brought this to my attention. This is what it’s all about. No is the status quo. Yes means hope.

love,
Meeks

I’m alright, Jack

In a recent address to the Press Club, Warren Mundine, a prominent First Nations man, said that The Voice was a symbolic ‘declaration of war’, and that voting ‘Yes’ for The Voice would enshrine racism in the Constitution. It would divide Australia…

The thing is, Australia has always been divided, and racism was enshrined in our Constitution from day one:

1901: Commonwealth of Australia formed. Indigenous Australians are excluded from the census and the lawmaking powers of the Commonwealth Parliament.

White Australia Policy. Indigenous people are excluded from the vote, pensions, employment in post offices, enlistment in Armed Forces, maternity allowance.’ [Highlights are mine]

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/timeline-indigenous-rights-movement/fb5nvvsdu

Immigrants my age or older will still remember the White Australia policy. For those who don’t:

‘In the 1800s the majority of the white population of the Australian colonies shared attitudes towards people of different races that by today’s standards were openly racist.

Criticisms of non-white groups were based on the idea that they were less advanced than white people in all ways, especially morally and intellectually.

In Australia, this idea focused particularly on people of Asian descent but applied to all non-whites, including Indigenous Australians, who were considered a ‘dying race’.’ [Underline is mine].

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/white-australia-policy

If you look closely, the caption reads : ‘The Mongolian Octopus – His Grip on Australia’.

When my small family arrived in Australia in 1957 [as refugees], we were treated with respect and kindness in Wagga Wagga [a country town in NSW], but when we moved to Melbourne [capital city of Victoria], we were treated as ‘New Australians’. And the title was a perjorative.

Because I’m Hungarian by birth, and have a slight Asian appearance thanks to my Magyar ancestry, my first year in a Melbourne public school was characterised by racist bullying. I remember one incident when a large group of kids circled me in the playground and chanted ‘Chink, Chink, bloody Chink’ in chorus. This would have been around about 1958-ish.

The White Australia policy that encouraged that kind of racism was not formally dismantled until 1966, and it was not until 1975 that the Racial Discrimination Act ensured it could not return:

‘It is unlawful for a person to do any act involving a distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of any human right or fundamental freedom in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.’

https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2014C00014

Unfortunately, simply decreeing that racial discrimination is illegal does not change entrenched attitudes. People of European and Asian ancestry may no longer be excluded, but First Nations people are still being treated like children who need White administrators to decide what is and is not good for them…

And Warren Mundine grew up in the shadow of that protectionist system. But he did have some advantages not enjoyed by most First Nations kids. He went to a Catholic school and he had a lot of ambition. He would probably agree with the saying that he ‘pulled himself up by his boot straps’.

So why is Warren Mundine so vehemently opposed to The Voice?

Why does he say The Voice will be divisive when he knows, better than you or me, just how deeply, horribly, divisive Australian culture always has been, especially towards First Nations people?

Why does he think that doing the same thing over and over again will achieve a different result?

I don’t have any answers to those questions, but a look at Mundine’s bio makes for interesting reading. He used to be with Labor and rose quite high in those political circles, but ‘After the selection of former Premier of New South Wales Bob Carr to replace Arbib, Mundine left the Labor Party.’ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Mundine].

Then Mundine did a complete about face and joined the Liberals:

‘On 22 January 2019, at the behest of the prime minister, Scott Morrison, the New South Wales state executive of the Liberal Party installed Mundine as candidate for the seat of Gilmore in the 2019 federal election, although he had only joined the party that week. The state executive waived the usual waiting period for new party members, and withdrew the endorsement of Grant Schultz, who had been preselected as the party’s candidate eight months previously.[13][14][15][16] Mundine failed to be elected, and Gilmore was the only seat won by the Labor Party at the election.[17]‘

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Mundine

My parents always voted Liberal because they hated anything that even hinted at Communism. I’ve always voted Labor because my Catholic school upbringing instilled in me the need for a social conscience. I can sort of understand why Warren Mundine might get jack of being overlooked by the Labor power brokers, but then why didn’t he go to the Greens? Or why didn’t he try to get elected as an Independent?

Why did he throw in his lot with a political party that has done more to infantilize First Nations people than any other?

I simply don’t know, but I will vote ‘Yes’ to The Voice so we can make peace with the past.

Meeks

*”I’m alright, Jack” is a British expression used to describe people who act only in their own best interests, even if providing assistance to others would take minimal to no effort on their behalf.[1][2] It carries a negative connotation, and is rarely used to describe the person saying it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_alright,_Jack

The Voice – Lean a little on the side of love

That lovely song was written and performed by Leanne Murphy, partner to poet Frank Prem. I’ve been singing along with it ever since I heard it. Yet as much as I love the melody and the gorgeous harmonies, it’s the lyrics that bring me out in goosebumps:

It doesn’t take much to show we care

It doesn’t take much to show we hear

It doesn’t take much to make a start

It doesn’t take much to hear the heart

For those not in Australia, ‘the heart’ is the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’ in which our First Nations people got together and asked us, the people [not the bloody politicians] to listen so we can all heal from the ravages of the past.

But we can’t listen if our First Nations People don’t have a Voice. Yes, there are lots of small voices, desperately trying to be heard, but they get lost in the noise. One Voice, that cannot be silenced by either political party, would finally give the First Nations Peoples of Australia a say in what happens to them. Not us. Them.

I was born in Hungary and came to Australia in 1957, just after the Hungarian Revolution in which people like my Dad chose to fight back against the Russian occupiers. Imagine if we’d been told, ‘yes, you can come to Australia, but you have to give up everything that makes you who you are – language, history, culture, cuisine, pride – because they’re no good. And after all that, we will decide what help you need. And when. And how.

There is a world of difference between choosing to learn a second language, choosing to learn a second history, choosing to become part of a new culture versus being forced into it.

Yet choice is exactly what Australian governments have always taken away from our First Nations People.

Yes, a lot of money has been spent on the ‘Aboriginal problem’, but where did most of that money end up? Are First Nations People living in McMansions with swimming pools and three car garages?

Excuse me while I laugh.

The truth is that most of that money ended up in the pockets of white contractors, white businesses, white people living a long, long way away from First Nations communities.

Was this just the result of blind paternalism? As in…’Daddy knows best’?

Or were successive governments trying to do something about the appalling life expectancy of First Nations people while at the same time stimulating our economy? Money, money, money…

The trouble with all the interventions we have made in First Nations Peoples’ lives is that they simply didn’t work. And they didn’t work because no one in power ever bothered to listen to what First Nations People were trying to tell them.

“Daddy, my feet are bleeding. I need new shoes.”

“No you don’t, you need this nifty toy truck.”

We haven’t made things better. Instead, we’ve done the same things, in the same ways, over and over and over again. And then we’re surprised when we keep getting the same poor result. Duh…

Isn’t it time to try something different? Isn’t it time to finally listen?

Voting ‘Yes’ in the Voice referendum will not hurt White Australia one little bit.

We won’t lose anything.

Instead, we’ll finally have a way of making Daddy listen. We will finally have a way to give our First Nations people what they need instead of what we think they need.

All we have to do is give First Nations People a Voice.

One small ‘Yes’ can do so much.

By contrast, what will a ‘No’ accomplish?

How is business as usual going to make anything better?

Surely a small start is better than no start at all?

Meeks

Biko and the Voice

‘Stephen Bantu Biko, sometimes written Bantu Stephen Biko, was born during the time of apartheid in South Africa…[under apartheid]…white people held all the power and all non-whites were either half-human (these were the brownish-coloured people from India who had won some concessions from the Nationalist Party years earlier under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi) or not human at all (these were black-skinned people from Africa).’

Rawgod: https://ideasfromoutsidetheboxes.wordpress.com/

‘Not human at all’…

That phrase has a terrible resonance here in Australia because in 1835, 47 years after settlement, Governor Bourke of New South Wales declared the land to be Terra Nullius – i.e. a ‘land belonging to no one’.

‘Terra nullius is today used as a catch-all phrase to explain how Australia was founded; to justify and legitimise the dispossession, dispersal, and inhumane treatment of First Nations peoples. This Latin term means “land belonging to no one”, which has been interpreted as a complete absence of people and additionally the absence of “civilised” people capable of land ownership.’

Australian Museum .

The ‘complete absence of people’…

That convenient fiction was used as the justification for an attempt to help the people who-did-not-exist stop existing. But more about the Frontier Wars in my next post. It’s the mindset of British colonists that matters here. The less the native peoples looked like civilized [sic] white people, the less human they were thought to be: human-shaped animals.

In South Africa:

‘Black people were forced to live in areas of town with no electricity and barely any running water. Homes were built of whatever materials could be found: tin sheets, wooden sheets, cardboard, and even hanging blankets. There were no organized roads and no toilet facilities as such. Feces were tossed into ditches where hopefully they would be washed away when rains came.’

https://ideasfromoutsidetheboxes.wordpress.com/

In Australia:

Native stockmen were paid in ‘room and board’. Their women were…used. Eventually, mixed blood children were taken from their mothers and placed in missions where they were forbidden to speak their native languages and were forced to learn how to be ‘civilised’. The reasoning was that being part white, they could be trained to serve in white civilization. In other words, to be useful. By contrast, it was hoped that pure bloods would eventually just…die out.

Trouble makers in South Africa often died out too.

Stephen Biko worked to make black and brown South Africans believe in themselves again, believe that they were human, believe that they were as good as the whites.

‘Meanwhile, Biko himself was becoming a thorn in the sides of the white ruling classes. They fought back in many ways, including arresting leaders of various anti-apartheid groups and putting them on trial for various subversive charges.’

https://ideasfromoutsidetheboxes.wordpress.com/

During a famous trial, Biko ran rings around the white prosecutor, proving that Blacks were at least as intelligent as Whites.

‘But it [that victory] also led first to Biko’s banning (locked away in nis home, unable to travel, unable to have more than one visitor at a time amongst other things), and eventually to his death [September 12, 1977] at the hands of the South African Police.’

https://ideasfromoutsidetheboxes.wordpress.com/

Stephen Biko did not live to see the end of apartheid, but his work helped to lay the foundations for Black South Africans to regain their own sense of worth.

This is the timeline of change in Australia:

1967 – Citizenship in their own country

‘ON 27 MAY 1967, 90.77 per cent of Australians voted ‘yes’ in a constitutional referendum to improve indigenous rights and award citizenship to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.’

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/on-this-day/2013/11/on-this-day-indigenous-people-get-citizenship/

1992 – land rights in their own land

‘On 3 June 1992 the High Court of Australia recognised that a group of Torres Strait Islanders, led by Eddie Mabo, held ownership of Mer (Murray Island).

In acknowledging the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their land, the court also held that native title existed for all Indigenous people.

This landmark decision gave rise to important native title legislation the following year and rendered terra nullius a legal fiction.’

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/mabo-decision

2008 – an apology for the Stolen Generations

‘On 13 February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to ​Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, particularly to the Stolen Generations whose lives had been blighted by past government policies of forced child removal and assimilation.’

https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/national-apology

2023 – still no treaty

As at September 10, 2023, Australia is the only former colony that has never, ever, had a treaty of any sort with its First Nations People. Even when treaties are broken, and there are countless examples of that, the mere fact of having a treaty is a recognition of the basic humanity of both parties. In Australia we have never even done that.

My state – Victoria – has been laying the groundwork for a treaty with our First Nations People since 2018. This graphic shows the foundation stones that have needed to be laid before negotiations could even start:

https://www.firstpeoplesrelations.vic.gov.au/treaty-process

As you can see, establishing a [state] Voice has been the second most important step to accomplish in the pre-treaty process. Truth telling is the third.

In my next post about the Voice, I’m going to start digging up the truth of our history, a truth known and talked about by most people at the time, but a truth that successive governments have decided to suppress. This is the history I wish I had been taught in the 1960’s when I hated Australian history because…nothing happened. Hah.

Changing the hearts and minds of all Australians will take generations, but we have to make a start somewhere, and the Voice is what Indigenous people have asked for. If South Africa could find the courage and the will to stop apartheid, surely the least Australians can do is listen to the people our ancestors dispossessed?

Meeks

p.s. I’d like to thank Rawgod for introducing me to Stephen Biko and allowing me to see the parallels between South African history and our own. Australia’s history has remained hidden for too long.

A young man with a big heart

I came across this video on Youtube today. Peet is doing the singing, but not in the same physical space as the female singer. It’s clever editing. The music, however, is real and perfect:

I was so impressed, I followed Peet to his channel and discovered he’s the full sized son of a small family. That’s when I realised I’d seen his videos with his Mum before. They were sweet and funny, but his book, ‘Little Imperfections’ is a work of heart:

Happy Friday everyone,
Meeks