Why I Threw My Golliwog In The Bin

 

As a white Australian and an old fart I can’t help but feel frustrated. I understand what some white Australians are thinking and why they resist changing their opinions about golliwogs or blackface – really I do.

But thinking about what seems* such an insignificant thing – dolls and facepaint – helped me work out something bigger; it helped me work out why it is that, as a nation, we don’t own our racism at all. If our heads are stuck up our arses when it comes to our history and if we are in denial when it comes to the present, we are not all bad – there is a perfectly simple explanation. Well, it’s a bit long winded, but it’s simple just the same.

Most white Australians do not own their racism because so many of us really did grow up in a white Australia. You can’t be a racist if there is no one to be racist against.#

Yep – the maps all show it – just lots of white folks huddled around the coastline of this big country [and some islands], with the Indigenous population mostly concentrated anywhere but where the white folks are.
In states like Qld where there were high numbers of Indigenous people near white centres, Joh kept Indigenous people on reserves. In states like Victoria, there were whole shires where Indigenous people had “disappeared” (coincidentally around the time my people arrived).
I grew up in the Western suburbs of Melbourne in an era when Greeks and Southern Italians were considered “dark” people. I saw some Aboriginal kids at the local pool when I was 7 years old because they had come for a holiday with the Harold Blair project (it must have been terrifying for them, being prodded and poked by swarms of curious white kids). I did not see another non-European until I was 19 years old^. But that was THEN.

The people selling Elka and similar modern Golliwogs today, and peddling imported stories explaining the meaning and history of golliwogs, are mostly talking shit. Golliwogs have bugger all to do with the origins of the word wog, and everything to do with Blackface and Jim Crow laws.

Yes, we once lived in a white world and we were exposed to imported images and stories of golliwogs and blackface, and these were largely imported into a cultural and racial vacuum – in our cosy white world, we once had no way to give these ideas the sinister meanings they had in the UK and the US. But that was THEN.

Let me expand, by starting with a brief history of Blackface in the US. This was the source of and the inspiration for the forms taken by Golliwogs and minstrelsy – later exported to the UK, and only reaching Australia indirectly.

We don’t have to be Marxists to understand that Race had a lot to do with economic class in the early years of settlement of the American colonies. Some US states legalised slavery, and some did not. Some allowed free black men to live freely within their borders, and some did not "encourage" it. And whether or not slavery was permitted, all American states benefitted from the availability of a pool of cheap white labour.

As in Europe, American leaders found that keeping a pool of cheap white labour on hand proved dangerous. If they all have jobs, white labourers start expecting decent pay and conditions. If they don’t all have jobs, they can become hungry, and hungry men can be restless. America solved its economic and social problems quite early by turning cheap workers against each other – by pitting poor white trash against blacks. Sure, white workers were entitled to a slightly higher rate of pay than emancipated black workers, but they were also entitled to cost free perks like being seen as more human than black workers; allowed to look someone in the eye, given separate park benches to sit on, separate taps to drink from and so on.
The Jim Crow laws and the Blackface routines of travelling carnivals and minstrel shows were an essential part of the early American economy, and of reconstruction after the Civil War. In their earliest and most extreme forms, these laws and Blackface itself were brutal, violent and dehumanising. It was vital that poor white people feel no sympathy for their black neighbours, and the easiest way to do this was to sell the idea that blacks were different; that they were sub-human, stupid, un-helpable, and to blame for their own problems. (A bit like what Australia’s politicians say to the unemployed or the aged in Australia today.)

 

These are the very same images adopted and sanitised into golliwogs and music hall routines; rendered friendly and harmless by Enid Blyton books, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musicals, or Al Jolson.

Some people have tried to make the point by suggesting an Adolf Hitler doll would be just as loveable – unfortunately the point is a little too subtle. We know Hitler is responsible for the murder of millions, and that his followers were creative about the way their victims were murdered.

When we look at a picture of a minstrel, we don’t associate it with a system as vile as Nazism; with a system that once encouraged people to throw large rocks at the head of a live black man at a carnival sideshow and not give a shit how long it took for him to die in agony.
(Well, perhaps in the 1890s, not so much in the 1930s when people were making "nice" movies that only joked about it.)

 

Let me digress for a minute, in support of my point. I was disappointed by Leunig’s cartoon about his tiny little dick. It’s just a piece of skin, why are women so offended by a little piece of skin, he wondered? What part of rape does he simply refuse to understand?
At some point, women are entitled to ask men who don't rape to acknowledge that some bad men do. No women are saying that all men are rapists. Some women have good reason to always be nervous around men, just like some men have good reason to always be nervous around priests.

Little bit of skin looks harmless, Leunig, but sometimes isn’t.

At some point, people of colour are entitled to ask decent people who aren't racists to acknowledge that racism exists. No black people are saying that all white people are arseholes. But some black people have good reason to always be nervous around white people. We are all a product of our experiences, and none of us ever knows everyone else's story.

Little bit of blackface paint looks harmless, but sometimes isn’t.

 

So there we were, back in the 1950s and 60s reading our Noddy books and singing along to the Black and White Minstrel Show on the telly. That was THEN. It was a world where everything was hand made unless we were upper class rich bastards, so along with knitting patterns for vests and cardies, came patterns for knitting things like these;

 

I desperately wanted one, because it looked so bright and colourful. My brother had one, but before it was my turn to take custody my mother threw it away – Tom had thrown it in the toilet one time too many and she was over it. I could be in therapy til I’m 90 and might never recover. Sigh.

I remember getting this book from the library when I was much younger and thicker than I am now and thinking the story was clever, but I was confused by two things: there were no dark people in the story at all, and I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would hang a golliwog.

 

It wasn’t til 2009 when Harry Connick Jr was a guest judge on New Faces that I finally understood the cover on the Agatha Christie book all those years ago. But first I had to try and work out the blackface thing. You see, I had grown up in a white world, and all those imported images and ideas about golliwogs and blackface had meant nothing to me. They did not teach me to be racist because they could not be processed in a vacuum. I had no context for them.

 

It's hard to feel guilty of anything without any mens rea – without any criminal intent. And I think that is why Australians of the "White Australia" variety, for the most part, struggle to own their racism. We never have felt guilty about the past, and there is no reason we should feel guilty about the past. Whether we should feel guilty or not should be just about what we do or fail to do today.
We certainly don’t see any leadership about taking responsibility for systemic racism from any major parties. Our government’s line (and Close the Gap) is still total BS - our official history is total fantasy and fabrication and denial. We don't believe we are racist because our parliament is still full of people who don't get it.

Time for another little digression - not all of us whitefullas who are still in denial are products of the 1950s or 1960s, but it can take a generation or two for these things to change. Whitlam's government didn't finally change our immigration laws until 1973.

The biggest, simplest and most straightforward lie is that we never had slavery here.

We did have slavery on stations, in the sugar cane industry, and in the exploitation of stolen children and other ripoffs of Indigenous Australians. Even if we did not use Blackface to turn white trash against Indigenous Australians, it’s time we stopped looking at Blackface as a reason to say “America Bad Australia Good”, because that is just crap. Our hands are not clean at all.

Bad stuff did happen and it does still happen, and we have to own it before we can seriously expect people to get over anything. Of course, owning it is not just about being politically correct – stopping un-necessary deaths in custody and fixing a whole heap of other problems are the reasons we should start thinking more correctly.

If we didn't have Blackface here in its American or UK forms, it's only because we had so many other ways of creating and maintaining white privilege - White Policies and laws, different economic systems, different demographics and so on. We whitefullas simply weren't threatened enough to need a sophisticated social system dedicated to making non-whites feel like shit - more traditional methods of discrimination were enough to take up the slack in White Australia.

If a golliwog didn’t offend anyone in 1950 that was because non-whites were locked up, or not allowed to say they were offended. The 1950s were like that. People were also expected to give away illegitimate children, or hide handicapped children as if they should be ashamed of them. Poofter bashing was a sport, and murders of gays were encouraged rather than investigated. Abortions were illegal and expensive and women died from them. The threat of rape was a constant for women, especially if they had a black face. The 1950s were like that. Small wonder golliwogs weren't offensive in a world as phuct as that.
But that was THEN.

This is 2017, heading for 2018. There are people here now from all over the world, and I have no idea what they have lived through or experienced. On the balance of probability, a golliwog in a shop window is more likely to hurt or offend someone than give pleasure, and there is no actor or role in any show that requires coloured face make-up. It’s time for us white people to just get over it.

A few years ago I told someone the story of how I never got a chance to own the colourful, hand knitted golliwog my brother used to shove down the toilet. Okay, I'm stuck in the anal stage of development and my focus was on the toilet aspect of the story, with a bit of sibling rivalry thrown in. It was the golliwog's pants that were colourful, not its face. My friend completely missed all these great points and, with the best of intentions, gave me one of those Elka golliwogs for a present.
At first I didn't see anything wrong with it, but when I thought it through decided I had to put it in the bin - Seriously, the last thing the world needs is another golliwog.

*Yes, I know it is not insignificant, but to some people who don’t know any better, it seems that way. Until they know better.

#Okay, a lot of white people think they never got a chance to be racist. And a lot of not-white people who read this line are probably thinking “Fuck me gently, every white &+$% I met treated me like shit!!!” but I’m talking about the larger numbers of white people who never had contact with non whites. I am not denying the reality of non-white readers. And I’m not talking about systemic racism or other equally important stuff… Roma wasn’t built in a day.

^Well, not that I was aware of. Who knows?

 

True Lies

One question which keeps coming up over and over is just what many of us actually learned in Australian schools about Australian/ or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history.

The answer is what we learned depends on where we went to school in Australia, and when we went to school. For those of us who are baby boomers, or our parents, the official line was that a) there was no one and nothing here before white people b) if we must think about "the blacks" let's forget them cos they achieved nothing and they are a dying race anyway. Today's examples show just how subtle that message was. [Trouble is they also prove just how boring school was back in the day!]
 
Primary and Secondary Education in Australia are, under the Constitution, State responsibilities. This means that for most of new Australia’s history there has been a different curriculum for each state. Different states have always had different Aboriginal Protection policies and agendas, so we might expect some differences in curriculum material, but it seems a lot of material was fairly standard from one state to another.

This post looks at what was current in Victoria in the 1960s.

I’ve a variety of stuff I’d like to share, but for now I’ll start with the State School Readers, and specifically the 8^th Grade Reader, because it goes straight to the question of whether or not we were lied to, or fed a distorted version of history. And also, the content was directed at an age group most likely to be soon leaving school and heading into the work force if they did not have a professional future or advanced education planned for them.

Victorian State School Readers

The particular set of readers I used at school were standard in Victoria between 1927 and 1968. This means I read pretty much the same poems, essays and stories at school that my mother’s generation read – stuff that might have influenced Victorians who voted in the 1967 referendum. [On the plus side, large families saved a heap of money by passing the same old text books from one kid to the next.]

 

While looking for hints for this post, I stumbled across an essay by Clare Bradford, which talks about the 8^th Grade Reader. Some of the articles she refers to were omitted from the second edition of the reader [which is the edition I have] but the most noteworthy article is called On Pyramid Hill, Victoria, 1836. [In the second edition the article appears on pages 2 and 3, as shown in my scans:]

 

 

 
In her essay, Clare provides 3 examples of an original account by explorer Thomas Mitchell, and how his text was edited for inclusion in the School Reader. [Edited versions of Charles Dickens or noted writers normally have “adapted from” or “abridged from” in the credits at the end of the article in Readers. At the end of the Pyramid Hill article, as you can see in the scans, there is no acknowledgment at all that the text has been edited.]

I.

As I stood, the first European intruder on the sublime solitude of these verdant plains, as yet untouched by flocks or herds; I felt conscious of being the harbinger of mighty changes ....
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (159)

As I stood, the first intruder in the sublime solitude of those verdant plains as yet untouched by flocks or herds, I felt certain of being the harbinger of mighty changes there....
Victorian Readers: Eighth Book (4)

II.

We had at length discovered a country ready for the immediate reception of civilized man; and destined perhaps to become eventually a portion of a great empire.
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (1839: 171)

We had at length discovered a country for the immediate reception of civilized man, and fit to become the abode of one of the great nations of the earth.
Victorian Readers: Eighth Book (4)

III.

Of this Eden I was the first European to explore its mountains and streams-to behold its scenery-to investigate its geological character-and, by my survey, to develope those natural advantages, certain to become, at no distant date, of vast importance to a new people.
Thomas Mitchell, Three Expeditions (171)

Of this Eden it seemed that I was the only Adam; and, indeed, it was a sort of paradise to me, permitted thus to be the first to explore its mountains and streams, to behold its scenery, to investigate its geological character, and, finally, by my survey to develop those natural advantages, all still unknown to the civilized world, but yet certain to become, at no distant date, of vast importance to a new people.
Victorian Readers:Eighth Book (4–5) 

Clare draws her own conclusions about the significance of these changes – it would be hard to look at them and not conclude something negative. But what I am keen to do here is look beyond those deliberate changes at the very question of “why this particular part of Mitchell’s work?”  
 
On page 21 of Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe quotes a passage from just a few pages further [p194] on in Mitchell’s Three Expeditions;

“…some huts… being large, circular; and made of straight rods meeting at an upright pole in the centre; the outside had first been covered with bark and grass, and the entirety coated over with clay. The fire appeared to have been made nearly in the centre; and a hole at the top had been left as a chimney.”

The Pyramid Hill article in the 8^th Reader provides an extreme example of pretending “no human being has ever been here before us great white bwanas”, completely ignoring the evidence Mitchell and others provide of pre-1788 agriculture, aquaculture, housing, villages and more. It’s as if saying the houses and the activities did not exist means the people did not exist either.
 
Until, in my fifties, I set out to answer questions about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Australia, I always assumed that if there had been any evidence of more than my poor “knowledge” and set of stereotypes allowed me to believe, I would have been told at school. Or heard about it from somewhere. I was wrong, and the information has been a long time emerging.

If you are in search of truth in Australian History, there is no better place to start than with a copy of Dark Emu. If you haven’t already, throw all of your old assumptions out the window, and prepare to re-visit Australia’s history starting from scratch.

 

If you are in search of more than what Dark Emu offers, explore the Sovereign Union website. If you want interesting discussion about relevant issues, follow the Blackfulla Revolution page on Facebook.

While I can hardly reproduce an entire 8^th Grade Reader here, there are a few more articles to share in this post which relate directly to what “we” learned in school about Indigenous Australia. It’s worth remembering that these are situated in a book of more than 200 pages; a book that uses words like “Australian” or “our” to refer to whitefullas – as in John Howard’s dreadful proposed Constitutional Preamble, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders are always “other”. I guess if any blackfulla kids going to school had to read this stuff “they” [sorry] were probably supposed to squirm, renounce their black heritage and identify exclusively with the white part of themselves, (assuming they were lucky enough to have some).

In the article The Old Inhabitants, CEW Bean has nothing complimentary to say about Australia’s FNPs. Even their ruins are not as good as the ruins in other countries. The people are spoken about in the past tense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nardoo is rubbished as “the blackfellow’s poor equivalent for flour”. The surviving members of the Burke & Wills expedition had been kept alive with gifts of fish and nardoo from the Yandruwandha people at Cooper’s Creek, but when the explorers tried to harvest nardoo for themselves they did not know how to process it properly, and it made them sick. I wonder if this coloured Bean’s assessment of the plant?

The doom and gloom continue for Indigenous Australia with The Last of His Tribe. Even more Eurocentric than average, and sexist claptrap to boot: - the poet was born in NSW and published 3 volumes of poetry – spare me days, there must have been slim pickings at the local library. The illustrator did not know about Aboriginal housing.

 

 

Finally – cos all the racist, imperialistic, sexist twaddle in this Reader is doing my head in – the first verse is more than enough of The Nation Builders, by George Essex Evans. If you are not beginning to see the party-line emerging from this book by now, you never will, i.e. it’s an anthem to white pride:

A handful of workers seeking the star of a strong intent -
A handful of heroes scattered to conquer a continent -
Thirst, and fever, and famine, drought, and ruin, and flood,
And the bones that bleach on the sandhill, and the spears that redden with blood;
And the pitiless might of the molten skies, at noon, on the sun-cracked plain,
And the walls of the northern jungles, shall front them ever in vain,
Till the land that lies like a giant asleep shall wake to the victory won,
And the hearts of the Nation Builders shall know that the work is done.

Next time: A bit more from other Grade readers, and an extract from The Victorian Education Department’s masterpiece Arithmetic for Grade V.






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An Open Plea to White Australia

Once a year I like to say why we should have Australia Day any day except January 26th.

But lately I don't just despair on behalf of Indigenous Australians: Australia is so unlike the country my (white) grandparents’ and parents’ generations fought so bloody hard to defend that the thought of celebrating anything Australian just makes me feel foolish. These days I imagine someone like my father, an enlisted soldier, thinking about fighting to save this country, and possibly deciding “nah, fuckit”.

If you haven't already seen it, here's the new “It’s not an Australia Day ad” ad. This lot deserve a free plug here just for ditching the original script they planned to use, which was unbelievably offensive.

Opinion about this ad is divided. At last someone’s taking a step towards truth in history; acknowledging the British were not the first to “discover” Australia, and that the country was already occupied when the British claimed it. And I kind of like the little digs about the boat people.

But is it promoting an ideal, or simply reinforcing mass delusion?

Of course, some pratt ruined it before even I had a chance to ruin it, complaining that the ad should mention Australia Day. His “reasoning” went like this;

The blacks would still be living under bark just surviving without the English. Now they have the rule of law.

This is such a common, negative opinion of Indigenous Australia that it proves the barbecue ad IS fantasy - too many Australians still believe that before the First Fleet arrived, Indigenous Australians couldn’t even organise a barbecue.

Okay. Not really his fault he is so ignorant

a) he might not have gone to school here or

b) he went to school here and he hasn't learnt anything in all the years since he left

Let's review all 3 of his key ideas

1) living under bark;

2) just surviving; and

3) the wonderful benefits of law.

History, Truth and Stereotypes

If those great twats Burke & Wills proved nothing else, they proved it takes something special to survive in Australia's harsh interior. (Burke shooting at the Aboriginal trying to help his dying arse was not the right sort of special).

Rob, you dickhead. What'll I do now?

Australia is vast and its ecosystems are varied; the native flora and fauna did not lend themselves to the development of western style agriculture. But just because there was no "western style" agriculture, this doesn’t mean all Indigenous Australians always lived on the edge of starvation or a purely hunter gatherer lifestyle – far from it.

1) Pre-invasion, the styles of Indigenous dwellings varied - people did not only live under simple bark humpies. There were stone dwellings in places like Dampier in WA, and at Lake Condah in Vic, and permanent dwellings elsewhere made of other materials.

Sometimes the crude bark slabs we see in pictures were the equivalent of a garden shed on an allotment – somewhere to stay out of the sun while gathering food until it was time to go back “home” to a more substantial dwelling.

Mr Australia Day's stereotype is of a stupid black man unable to do more than put one sheet of bark over his head after 60,000 years of trying. Like most lazy thinking, it’s just rude.

2) Aquaculture was practised in many places in Australia before elsewhere in the world, and agriculture too. Grains of local seeds rather than European grains were found stored, and stores of other foods were found by those who first arrived after 1788. All of this early food production and storage by Indigenous Australians was recorded by early explorers but NOT included in the history we were taught at school.

Instead we were given the "smooth the dying pillow" model of Indigenous Australia.

I used to wonder why the few Indigenous people I met never told me stuff but I realise now that the sheer volume of lies and the distortion I had been fed at school was so overwhelming; they would not have known where to begin, or how anyone could have believed them without the portable library the internet now makes possible.

How does a sketch of one tiny, quaint handwoven fish net in a schoolbook compare to a whole, re-designed river system that breeds fish?

As well as the extensive work involved in setting up aquaculture systems, firestick farming was used to sculpt the landscape – in the example below there was scrub providing cover to attract kangaroos, and once there they could be smoked out and herded into an open space where they were easily hunted down.

We came along and failed to recognise what was deliberately done over many years with careful planning and design, and we destroyed it. Funny no one told us this when we were at school. Funny most people still don't know.

Western culture is built around the Biblically entrenched assumption that mankind must actively manipulate and control the environment - almost demands, in fact, that we do it as destructively as possible. In contrast, we have been taught to think of Indigenous Australians as the passive victims of their environment. If we credit them with being in tune with the environment it almost seems a negative. Yet traditional land and resource management was both active and environmentally sensitive - it had to be to succeed, and it is something future generations will envy.

None of us like to be invisible, but I wonder how it feels to belong to such a demeaned race? To constantly be reminded you are not valued in the only country you have? How odd that we think of boomerangs as something only tourists buy, but we think dream catchers and items used by First Peoples from other countries are somehow more meaningful.

How odd that, to people like Mr Bark Huts on Australia Day and Proud of It, the First Peoples of almost any other continent are seen as Noble, but First Australians are viewed almost universally as losers, who were too useless to invent housing (untrue), did not trade (untrue), had no laws (untrue), could not navigate (untrue), didn't have alcohol or drugs (untrue), had no medicine (untrue), didn't resist invasion (untrue), had no religion (untrue), could not count (untrue) stood for nothing (untrue)... and when they ask only that the truth be told we tell them in return to "get over it".

The very idea that there was nothing of value before 1788

is the biggest insult of all

but that is exactly what our obsession with 26^th January implies

Other countries celebrate the day they became Independent, or achieved National Unity. Only in Australia would people seriously expect Indigenous Australians to celebrate being invaded - I mean, how stupid are we?

It fails the first rule of marketing - "what's in it for me?" - on Every Single Level.

3) Indigenous law might have seemed cruel, but it was never arbitrary. It was certain, predictable and swift – fair enough, there were no circuit courts with travelling magistrates. Indigenous Australia was not a single nation, it was - is - made up of many, many nations.

In any case, English law itself in 1788 was quite barbaric (don't start me!).

After years in which the replacement system of English law treated lower class whites with contempt, no surprise if we were desensitised to what it continued to do to Indigenous Australians - but what is our excuse now?

When will the Nazi Germany excuse - "we had no idea" - expire for Australia?

We cannot tell Indigenous Australians that they should get over the past, when the past is still happening.

This is footage of a young woman who was DYING in a local police station lock up. She was DYING and someone let her head fall back and slam against the concrete floor of the cell. She was DYING and they dragged her like she was a sack of shit, out into a corridor and picked her up and put her in the back of a wagon to take her to hospital. RELUCTANTLY.

Ms Dhu was dead before she got to hospital. Ms Dhu’s original crimes were swearing in public, and wagging her finger at a police officer, and she got the death penalty.

The Police Officers that treated her in this inhumane fashion were not charged with anything. That’s the way the law works in WA. These Police Officers have since been promoted. It’s a long and complicated story but I have read the coroner’s report and I promise you there is no “but” that makes it okay or understandable. It’s just a disgrace. (For more detail click here)

So much for celebrating Australia Day and the arrival of law. Under traditional law those Police Officers would have been speared or something two years ago, swiftly and quite reasonably. This happened two years ago but I say "now" because Ms Dhu’s family waited two years to learn no one will be charged, and since then, more people have died in custody. Indigenous people.

It happened to us

One of the most bizarre "get over it" arguments I keep hearing is "it happened to us". The "my ancestors were convicts" school of arguments include

·         Some of those whose families arrived here not long after the invasion are of convict stock, victims of a system that treated surplus labour like sub-human detritus.

·         Some are of Scottish descent, victims of the Highland clearances

·         Some are of Irish stock, victims of the unnecessary famines of the mid 19th Century and the evictions.

???Huh???

My ancestors were murdered/ tortured/ robbed/ etc and it didn't hurt them...???

This makes it okay to murder/ torture/ rob others?

This is a reason others should let us murder/ torture/ rob them without saying anything?

Are we to seriously believe that it's somehow more honourable to lose quietly than to go down fighting?

Is this some kind of "who suffered the most and is stupid enough to be chuffed about it" competition?

Yes, the methods of dispossession during the industrial revolution, plus the cultural genocide during the clearances and the evictions were brutal. My father's English ancestors did this to my mother's Irish ancestors eight generations ago. I get over it by blaming the policy makers, while remembering the benefits and costs of that theft flow on and multiply for many generations, remembering the people who suffered, and working hard to stop these things from ever happening again - to anyone.

Apart from costumes, the only differences are some people have forgotten how low humans can sink, and in the case of Indigenous Australia - IT IS STILL HAPPENING.

Guilt Shmilt

I am not proud of what happened for the first 200 years of occupation, but I do not feel guilty. No one is asking us to feel guilty about the past, we are just being asked to see what is happening now. Believe me, I know how lucky I was to be born in a country with plenty of food, water, and shelter, and not in the middle of some horrible war. And I also know how lucky I was to be born into the dominant race. I'm only beginning to feel guilty that I can't do anything much to stop what is still happening to Indigenous Australians NOW. Well, not on my own.

It is understandable that with a lack of information and communication, with a lack of education, with ignorance and deliberate lies, stuff happened in the past that people often had no idea about. Some whites did know and were complicit, others knew and fought it. (See, digging for the truth means you will find white heroes, too). But the more we knew, the more we fought the bad stuff.

And in 1967, for better or worse, 91% of white Australians - including my parents and grandparents - voted for the federal government to do something to make things better.

In the year 2000, many hundreds of thousands of Australians in large cities all around the country marched across bridges demanding our government apologise to the stolen generations. On balance, we are not evil people at heart.

But now, in the age of the internet, the time has come to move to the next stage. The next layer of truth is available and there is no excuse for ignorance, and ignorance is no longer an excuse. The law that once put chains around the necks of Indigenous Australians has been re-written, but shocking stuff is still happening. The chains have gone but the results are as bad. And the rot is spreading back from Indigenous Australia, with the potential to affect everyone who is standing around doing nothing.

If those of us who are non-Indigenous are so morally bankrupt we can't give a shit about Indigenous Australians, like Mr Bark Huts on Australia Day and Proud of It, must we be too lazy or stupid to care about the mess we are setting up for ourselves?

The country my parents fought for

My parents and my grandparents, were decent people

they would have been outraged by what happened to Ms Dhu

To suggest they fought for a country that thinks this is okay

would be to dishonour them

and the Indigenous Diggers who fought alongside them

The way Ms Dhu was treated was appalling, but the law in WA does not allow for anyone to be charged over what happened. That’s the same law that would apply if it happened to a white person. For some reason, this is just not happening to white people. Yes, whites die in custody, but not like this. For me this raises two important issues.

1) Until we abolish states, we will never have equal treatment before the law for all Australians, regardless of state of residence. (There are lots of reasons to get rid of states, this is just one of them).

Any state can currently pass its own law bringing back capital punishment, making "float people" criminals again, or abortion a crime and so on.
Or dismissing the importance of deaths in custody, like WA does.

2) Assuming a new constitution is too hard, we should call for a Federal Court of Natural Justice while states can still pass laws that allow them to get away with shit like this. When a Coroner is able to prove there has been blatantly inhumane and unprofessional conduct but state laws allow people to weasel out of responsibility, there must be some system to take up the slack.

No wonder Indigenous Australians are pissed off. Justice is never seen to be done.

Starting Over... Again

Democracy is about freedom of speech and opinion. It is about taking a place that is good and finding ways to make it better, not assuming it has always been great and always will be; that it never needs work, and letting it fall apart out of smug pride. Great democracy is not about saying if you don’t like the things that are not so great, you should rack off. Is this why we don't engage with Indigenous Australians? Cos we don't know where to tell them to rack off to?

And I think Australia won’t be the great democracy it could be, more open to truth and to embracing its Indigenous people and heritage, until it stops with the rack off attitude. And we will never have the best we can have until we do embrace our Indigenous brothers and sisters and the rich heritage we could share, including their constantly demonstrated willingness to do the right thing (like help that great berk Burke) despite the way we treat them.

When did we become so scared of hearing a difference of opinion or a new idea?
(The ones doing the silencing are the very people complaining about being silenced.)
Silence is not supposed to be our heritage. Our heritage could be so much more.

Aren’t we all sick of the same basic stuff?

Of politicians talking about us like we are something on the soles of their shoes? Having no one decent to vote for at election time? Travel rorts? The lack of accountability? Far from democratic laws making it illegal to tell the truth? The silence from opposition "leaders" on issues that matter? No one doing anything about increasing job losses, or the casualisation of labour?

Australia Day is a joke because

this country was not built on a dream

- it was hastily cobbled together out of a nightmare

Not only can I not understand how anyone seriously expects Indigenous Australians to celebrate Australia Day, I don't really understand why the rest of us are supposed to be celebrating. If we were celebrating an achievement it would make sense. Celebrating the day the British - after trying the Americas, various places in Africa and elsewhere - finally found somewhere at the opposite end of the world to dump their human rubbish? As silly as expecting Indigenous Australians to celebrate being invaded.

And I wonder if we don't want to acknowledge the lies we were told about Indigenous Australia because we can't bear to face the truth about our own beginnings; that white Australia too has been built on a lie; a myth that Australia stands for some great human ideal when in fact we have been drip fed just enough crumbs of democracy to hope we are not being conned but we know deep down it's not the real deal at all.

Our State Constitutions and our Federal Constitution were not written with any great ideals in mind. They are essentially administrative documents written for the benefit of those who had the most power in the 19th Century, before ordinary men get the vote, and long before women got the vote, and way before anyone Indigenous was guaranteed a vote. All the protections we rely on are "traditions" being overturned without us being consulted, and even the Federation itself no longer works the way it was originally intended. There is no "contract" between government and people, just good faith gone bad.

This rant opened with an ad that celebrates multiculturalism and diversity, but the truth is in Australia people are valued on a sliding scale:

Our governments believe those in government are more important than those being governed; corporations worth more than the workers, and workers more than those looking for work. We are told to value those in work more than those too old or sick to work. Politicians vilify workers who want tax benefits, yet coddle corporations that pay no tax at all. Whites are definitely worth more than blacks. Asylum seekers are almost sub-human on this warped scale, and it is not just plain wrong it is downright dangerous.

We are de-sensitised, and becoming more so, to the plight of those who are only the tiniest bit different from each of us, as if we are not all the same species. We don't have to want open borders to be concerned about how asylum seekers are treated. We don't have to want to pay massive amounts of welfare to the unemployed to demand governments do a better job of creating jobs.

The way governments are prepared to treat others

shows exactly how they are prepared to treat any of us

When did we stop dealing with people's actions and fall into the trap of judging people based on which group they belong to?

While we celebrate being Australian, while we congratulate ourselves for not being American or having Trump as President of our country, all of the justice and democratic and legal systems that once made us feel safe, that once protected us from being a country just like America, are being steadily eroded. All of the conditions including poor state constitutions that made Trump possible - and the nightmare that is yet to unfold in the U.S. - already exist here.

We can treat the new barbecue ad as a standard of behaviour to aspire to, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking it shows how our laws really see us now - or even how we really treat each other - when governments so often tell us to choose which of us is more important and we are more likely to say "okay" instead of asking "why?"

I hope you care about Ms Dhu as a human being; about the fact that she died an agonising death in jail for some really petty crimes, I hope you're outraged the police officers who treated her so inhumanely were promoted, that it was all legal in a country everybody likes to believe is great, and that nobody "important" seemed to give a shit. Because I need to believe you are the sort of people who would care, if only you knew...

It’s not that the snags are burning on the barbie, mate, the house is burning. This is not the country anybody I ever cared about fought to defend. I probably won't feel like celebrating just because a politician or a TV ad tells me to. I'll feel more like celebrating when - well - when all Australians realise Australia is not its government or symbols of government, but its people; ALL its people. That Australia is really no more or less than what we do for ourselves, and for each other. Not just when we are threatened from outside, but also when we are threatened from within. We are all in this together.

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