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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