Heatho said:
I guess you can debate the semantics of being indiginous also, my family has been here since the second fleet, I don't see myself as british, I also don't see myself as Norman even though I can trace my family history back to and before the Norman invasion of Britain. I've never lived overseas and I have no other land that I consider as home, I feel a connection to the land of Australia.
I said this to an Aboriginal mate one time and after a good hard laugh he couldn't deny that I feel indiginous, he still had a good laugh though and errr umm I was cool withn that.... :lol:
You are discussing what you don't feel, whereas he would be talking about what he does feel. And a major point is that deprivation of land and other things may have started with the first fleet, but did not stop then. They were non-people in government eyes, who were a "dying race" and did not need to be informed of nuclear tests, and who were not much assisted during epidemics (50% of people in some settlements died of Spanish Flu, compared with less than 1% of the non-indigenous population). They lived in old car bodies and upturned water tanks on the edge of towns I worked in. I have seen aborigines assaulted, locked up for a week when the local cop needed firewood chopped, and moved on from towns without being allowed to turn off their ignition when they entered town - simply waved on and prevented from stopping. Police who beat up aborigines were not fired but simply moved to remote places where what they did to aborigines was out of sight out of mind. 15% of the stolen generation were taken away without any valid reason whatsoever (that is a lot of kids over time) often never to see their families again - it was hard to move around Australia when I was young, so once moved you tended to stay moved - if you even knew where you came from. Whites took temporary "wives" and then just left them with the kids, who used to be made to live in tin sheds without walls outside places like Alice Springs , exposed to the elements, riddled with STDs by abusive whites and dependant on hand-outs when their white dads dropped by. This is not something from ancient history, but things that I saw and experienced.
Noone is saying you and I should not feel Australian, but some are saying that people who consider themselves indigenous should not consider themselves as such. With land there is the criteria of being recognised by other aborigines as indigenous, and having a CONTINUOUS attachment to the land. Which excludes most aborigines, all those who are long-term urban. Skin colour is not culture, and I doubt that aborigines are champing at the bit to declare a whole lots of whites indigenous who are not indigenous - two children from one set of parents can vary significantly in skin colour, and it beats me why people consider that an important criterion. I lived in southern Africa where they had a "racial classification board", who checked your skin colour, curliness of your hair, stickiness of your ear wax etc. to make a decision designed to be to the advantage of the white population - you could easily be reclassified black if you requested it (some did, as it was a criminal offence to have a partner of a different race), but the reverse was impossible.
There are few other advantages in being considered indigenous in Australia (I find so many non-indigenous people here consider that aborigines get a whole lot of advantages that they do not actually get, receiving mostly the same benefits that are available to non-indigenous people). Advantages are mostly with things like education (which I would argue is important for all Australians, not just the recipients, benefit - the level of education can be appallingly low, as can be school attendance). Most supposedly contentious issues relate to those still living a fairly traditional lifestyle, and I sometimes wonder if those who propose objections have had much contact with them. It is still common to only speak an indigenous language or two in remote areas that is not spoken two settlements distant (e.g. Mardu, or among the Spinifex people, or the Pitjantjatjara), with little and often no English, to walk barefoot and have infected and parasitic feet, and to hunt lizards with a pointed stick for tucker (supplemented by shooting a roo or camel now and then). Most people over 35 in places like Purnunu were born out in the open in the gorges. However the elders commonly express a desire to have a better (which they recognise as more western) life for the children, despite bemoaning the lack of culture - children who have to usually be sent away to get more than a one-teacher primary education. And the youngsters commonly stay in the city, and want a typical Aussie lifestyle - or in the outback the young guys want a macho job like driving a huge ore truck, same as the non-indigenous guys. Aboriginal freehold land that I have worked on (cattle stations) are often being run successfully by young aboriginal managers. Sometimes cultural adjustments must be made (e.g. two week on, two week off can conflict with cultural needs, so Ranger uranium mine modified this with the Gagadju for longer leave). Station owners did not make adjustments when I was young, and called aboriginal workers unreliable because they "went walkabout". Many were never paid but were legally tied to their employer - when compulsory pay was introduced, governments as in Queensland sometimes kept half of it themselves, which they never saw a cent of. There is currently a debate about whether we had slavery, but it is all semantics - we did have in all except name (as the blackbirders did with the kanakas).
There are all sorts of negative issues I know, some inherited from traditional culture, many not and largely socio-economic. Crime, substance abuse, high child death rate, payback - I encounter it all the time. And yes, a number of these are blatantly misrepresented by aboriginal activists, and are taken up by the Virginia Triolli's of the media, and that annoys me. And sometimes giving access to aboriginal land is used to advantage (can't say that I greatly blame them even when I find it annoying for my work - although it is not as much of an issue that way as is sometimes claimed for those of us who work on aboriginal land). But that fact has nothing to do with recognition of a person as aboriginal - and different issues should not be confused with each other.
Culture and disadvantage did not tightly follow the shade of your skin - you had "a touch of the tarbrush" or not when it came to discrimination. And it was only yesterday, not at the time of the First Fleet - and even try getting a conviction today when a policeman kills an aborigine using so much force that it splits his liver in half. It would be interesting to see how angry many who criticise supposed "advantages" would be if put in the reverse situation. Sadly I know it is often lack of knowledge of situations, and assumptions, rather than any intent of harm, that is the issue (we are all racist around the world, regardless of shade Mr Gubba, but most is not intended to cause harm and disadvantage).
