First Australians vodcasts from SBS
Right, let me state right up front this isn’t a WoW post, it’s a post about hatred and my hatred of people that are depicted in this series that were in the best cases misguided to the point of hatred, but in the worst were hatred incarnate.
If you thought Australia’s history was about convicts, the poor deported, you are wrong. the history is about the disposed.
To think that I was proud that my great-grandmother went and marked out a selection for my grandfather.
I know the truth now.
It wasn’t his land.
When I was in South Africa I visited the Apartheid Museum and was disgusted, yet, I had no understanding of the atrocities committed in my “own” land.
Unhealthy government experiment
I think this series is the 1st time I have seen Godwin’s law invoked and it mean something, the argument isn’t lost, it just strengthens the hypocrisy of the Australian people.
I was born in the year that the First Australians were first given some initial recognition, the right to be counted in a census. No I am not old, but it appears I live in a country that is still backward. (At the time, students from Sydney were fighting for the rights of American Blacks, until it was suggested they look closer to home)
There is no other law
Coming from an English/Irish ancestry, I struggle after watching the videos I link below, to honor the white fella blood in my son. It feels much better to honor the Indian blood, the Indian culture.
The stories are not pretty, they discuss the fate of the traditional owners of the land I call home, owners for some 40,000+ years that were disposed by people that have been here for little over 200 years. They discuss the stories of people, that for all that things have changed, really aren’t in a significantly better position than they were 43 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago.
The history depicted in these stories is not the history that I was taught at school and to be honest, I doubt it is taught now. Considering it took until 2 years ago for the Australian government to utter one simple word…
Sorry
I doubt that even this current government has changed the “noble” white fella history taught in schools, to reveal the brutal black fella history.
First Australians from SBS
The 3rd episode, Freedom for our lifetime, is set primarily in my state, and my city, in the very suburbs that I have lived in for all of my life. My land, My house, My home, is on their land. Taken long ago to be sure, yet still their land. To think we reduced the black fella’s numbers in Victoria from 60,000+ to 300. Thank god they survived, against the odds, against the white fella’s wishes.
Too many words of my own, when they can tell their tale better than I ever will.
Each episode is about an hour – so…
7 hours worth of hard viewing.
They can be downloaded onto you iPhones, iPods your whatevers.
I don’t recommend them if you are in a poor emotional state.
I do recommend it if you are Australian, or care about atrocities that humans can commit in the name of civilization.
You can get the vodcasts by clicking on any of the images in this post:
First Australians vodcasts
Gnomer and Out!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/07/23/im-sorry/
I read a news article recently on the BBC news site about when English settlers first moved over to Australia. There was an Aborigine warrior, he killed many white men to protect his people, but eventually they killed him, decapitated him and stuck his head in a British museum.. It was removed from the museum in the 60s or 70s and buried in England. Only very recently has the head finally been returned to his people. I thought that story was quite disgusting.. to disrespect somebody THAT much.
It’s very sad what people have had to go through all over the world, and even worse that most of the shit can be pinned down to caucasian people.
He is discussed in one of the episodes. He is a great hero of the First Australians – one who, once again I had never heard of before this story.
Unfortunately he is one of many whose heads were pickled and sent back to the UK… of course at that stage, they were heading the way of the Dodo… extinction.
Ironically, apparently Darwin had a hand in this, though indirectly, as he saw this as an example of natural selection and the Australian Invaders took that as a license to kill.
Thanks for writing this. I’ll be sharing it with my wife who is getting her PhD. in African-American history.
It really is something that much of the same horrors repeat themselves all over the world.
It’s amazing that at the same time as South Africa introduced identification papers for their blacks, so did Australia (and this after the 2nd world war and the outrage at tagging Jews for easier identification). We also had segregation and white only zones.
Likewise the freedom movements in S.A, U.S.A and Oz all occurred at about the same time.
It’s a shameful truth that there are probably many more stories like this from around the globe that will never bear witness, for the simple fact that it is the victor who writes (or re-writes) the history books.
So true and Australia came so close to completely rewriting the history. There is still opposition from the government to telling these tale in schools, as it would diminish the good deeds by good people (cough bullshit cough).
It took a little Midnight Oil for me to learn about this with a bit of fictitious Quigley to hammer it home.
There’s no easy way to look at European histories without finding attrocities by the boatload. True, some of the worst have been against “distant folks” in “distant lands”, but a lot has been done to our/themselves.
Learn it.
Understand it (as much as you can)
Do what can be done
Make sure it never happens again.
Never forget.
What happened here in the states with the Native Americans is a tragedy and a travesty, in addition to the whoole slavery issue.
I don’t know what else we can do other than to be vigilant, compassionate and humble.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102744/
I wont mention that Peter Garrett (from Midnight Oil, now Government Minister) is more associated with burning houses than burning beds…. whoops, I just did.
Of course, this popular culture is often our only window into the lives of the 1st Australians here as well… well that and the newspaper articles and prime time exposes on how they are the drunken rabble fringe dwellers… at least I now know why.
I’d heard he (Garrett) has “strayed a bit” from his youtful (pretend?) values, but haven’t heard much of anything since. I can at least say that it was what prompted me to learn a little.
I know we’ve had more than our fair share of brutality to the original native populations here in the states.
Many people were a bit chilled by this quest in Dragonblight where you “rescue” feral wolvars and take them to the Tuskarr.
http://www.wowhead.com/quest=11960
It reminds me a bit too much of the Stolen generation.
This was one of the many quests that disturbed me. Not so much for it’s content, but for the lack of alternatives.
Or as you have put so well, the lack of consequences for our actions.
The Stolen Wolvar Generation
Thanks for inspiring the post!
Having grown up in NT I can say things have only changed because of legality.
I’m not sure if you catched 4 courners show this week. If not it’s up on iview (abc’s streemable sight).
I don’t want to be a spoiler so I’ll let you watch it first. A recent story about 5 northern territorian young adults. The go driving through bush camps firing blanks and almost running over elderly people who can hardly move before killing one the next day.
But the comment from the dad ” It wasn’t racially motivated, it was only a couple of mates going for a drive” made me sneeze out my mouthful of red.
I wish I could say i was proud to be Australian, because I love this country and the people. but the way our current government is treating people who were here first and people fleeing persecution just for political points makes me question the country i live in
I remember when I was about 12 going to Darwin with my folks. When I went to the hotel pool there were 1/2 dozen Aboriginal kids in the pool.
The hotel owner came and shooed them away, until it became apparent that we had no issue with their presence (in fact, as a young kid traveling Oz with his geriatric parents it was a slice of heaven).
But then, being unprejudiced, I didn’t even know there was an issue.. if didn’t occur to me.
There is a large part of me that doesn’t want to watch it, but I I’ve tracked it down and watch it.
A Dog Act
Unfortunately school curriculum hasn’t quite caught up, but I do think “Australian History” is being taught a little more accurately than in previous decades.
I was fortunate in that one of my high school English teachers was a strong believer in teaching the “real” Australian History and actually was one of the first teachers I think to ever address Aboriginal history as a class topic.
But 10 years later my best friend is a teacher and I know it’s part of her English lessons.
Give it time. I like to believe that we won’t rewrite history. Although I think it’s likely that some of the horrible things done to the native Australian people at time of “discovery” will always be glossed over.
Just watched the 5th episode (unhealthy govt. exp.)…very moving, and I can’t wait to watch the other episodes. Thank you so much for posting them! I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the Rudd “We’re sorry” speech, and the “Apology Bill” that was signed concerning Hawai’i.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_Resolution
The problem though, at least in Hawai’i, is even though they apologized, little has changed in the the ten years since. Here’s a link to a good documentary covering that issue:
It’s always interesting to me to see what happens when Society knows what’s best, and doesn’t mind stepping on those who disagree.
Interesting, and sad. Thanks for mentioning this, Gnomer.
It is remarkable that it wasn’t until 1967 that Aborigines were counted in the census, and that it took until 2008 to apologise for the Stolen Generations. Writers like Carmel Bird aren’t far wrong when they call what we did to the Aborigines genocide.
In fact, the UN defines genocide (taken from the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
[...]
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The history of Aboriginal lands rights in Australia is fascinating (and heavy) stuff. Certainly a part of our history that has been generally overlooked. And even though it arguably began with the Woodward Royal Commission in 1972, it took until 1992 and the Mabo decision to recognise native title in Australia, and overturn the centuries old legal doctrine of terra nullius (meaning, literally, empty land – the legal concept used by Britain when colonising Australia to disenfranchise the Aborigines).