Online Resources: Spring 2007
To recommend online resources (links)
please write to web editor Dennis Argall.
Please add NBT to subject line of email.
For all other NBT matters,
please write to the NBT editor
Pat Thompson.Resources listed here at closure of copy for this issue 16 August 2007.
The issue of Federal intervention in indigenous communities.
Dennis Argall
and then there's dying slowly...
From Bruce Chatwin's
The Songlines, London 1987, page 21:"The Pintupi were the last 'wild tribe' to be brought in out of the Western Desert and introduced to white civilisation. Until the late 1950s, they had continued to hunt and forage, naked in the sandhills, as they had hunted for at least 10,000 years.
"They were a carefree and open-minded people, not given to the harsher initiation rites of more sedentary tribes. The men hunted kangaroo and emu. The women gathered seeds and roots and edible grubs. In winter, they sheltered behind windbreaks of spinifex; and even in the searing heat they seldom went without water. They valued a pair of strong legs above everything, and they were always laughing. The few whites who travelled among them were amazed to find ther babies fat and healthy.
"The government, however, took the view that Men of the Stone Age must be saved – for Christ if need be. Besides, the Western Desert was needed for mining operations, possibly for nuclear tests. An order went out to round up the Pintupi in army trucks and settle them on government stations. Many were sent to Popanji, a settlement west of Alice Springs, where they died of epidemics, squabbled with men of other tribes, took to the bottle and knifed each other."
[1] ABORIGINAL MASSACRE SITES:
In her letter to the Prime Minister, Bindi Isis wrote:
"We must be open to the full process of grieving, we can't bury hurt, pain and memories any longer. The nation needs to place memorials where massacres took place. We must hear an empathetic and resounding apology from our leaders before we move on."
Comment: We need in the first instance to document the places of massacre. Ordinary people must help Aboriginal people to do this, as evidence of integrity of intent. We need a people's movement for governments to take notice.
The Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History has placed a document at its web site regarding the Waterloo Creek massacre in northern New South Wales. Look for the paper here under the title "Aboriginal Colonists and the Law, 1838". The paper discusses the killing by troopers of "[a]n unknown number of Aborigines, possibly as many as 200-300."
We need to get the facts about past events in our own part of NSW. We need the nuggets, not the gravel, of information from people who know where things happened. We need to publish such information. We can publish real research on this. Please write.
Massacres in New South Wales were perhaps less frequent, but they are in living memory in many places.
My grandfather lost two brothers in World War I, on the Western Front in 1916 and 1917. Preston, who died in 1917, has not been found. We show as a nation increasing grief and respect for these losses. And considerable government effort and expense goes into the processes of respect for war dead. This is not a call for loss of that respect, but an appeal for people to find it in their hearts and minds to match that with respect and troubled reflection over the terrible lossed among indigenous people. The legal history document above refers to the 'cycle of violence' between settlers and Aborigines. It does not go into the core issue of presumption of terra nullius in the wholesale European clearing of the land of its Aboriginal owners.
We know better now, we need to act better. And with a sense of history.
A comparison: there is an enormous risk to international security in the lack of real content, warmth, substance in the Japan-China relationship. At the core of their problem is the way Japanese history textbooks gloss over the Japanese invasion of China over half a century and atrocities (example) then. How can you have a reconciliation, a proper putting behind of the past, without acknowledging reality.
Non-Aboriginal Australians have no right to expect any reconciliation with Aboriginal Australia without acknowledging our atrocious history and without the 'empathetic and resounding apology' for which Bindi asks.
Aboriginal Australians cannot be 'healed' without such process; interventions for whatever imposed cause will fail without such process and comprehension of reality.
[2] WHAT HAS THE GOVERNMENT ACTUALLY DONE
The legislation put before the federal parliament in a great rush in August was a package of five 'Bills'.
A 'Bill' is a draft of a piece of law. When it has been passed successfully through both houses of the parliament (House of Representatives and Senate), with any agreed amendments, this Bill goes to the Governor-General for 'royal assent'.
When the Governor-General has given assent ( the constitution states that the Governor-General must act on the advice of his ministers, that is, on the advice of the government of the day, holding the majority in the House of Representatives) the Bill has become an Act — it then becomes law.
Click on the following lines to see the Senate's information about each of the five bills, including text, commentary and how the bill was dealt with in the Senate:
• Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007
• Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Bill 2007
• Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Other Legislation Amendment (Northern Territory National Emergency Response and Other Measures) Bill 2007
• Appropriation (Northern Territory National Emergency Response) Bill (No. 1) 2007-2008
• Appropriation (Northern Territory National Emergency Response) Bill (No. 2) 2007-2008On of the links out from those Senate information pages is to the 'Bills Digest'. This is a document prepared by research staff in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library on every bill that comes before the parliament.
That research team is one of the parliament's great 'secrets.' In recent years, aided by the internet, many have worked to make this information more visible. You won't read about it in news reports, journalists are too busy using the material themselves.
These days, you can see a gigantic amount of “worlds's best” information on national issues here.
Wreck Bay
The ABC's Stateline story 27 July 2007
This page provides the perspective of the Aboriginal custodians on Booderee's Joint Management
Noel Pearson's plan
Noel Pearson's plan for 'hand-up' rather than 'hand-out' attracted attention and provided something of a hand-up to the Government whose initiative followed swiftly. There are great merits in the Cape York experiment, discussed on Four Corners 16 July. The Resources Page contains the full text of the recommendations of the Cape York Institute as well as the Little Children are Sacred report. If you have broadband and 15 minutes, do listen to Pearson's speech in Hopevale, linking from this page. You cannot see in that film clip that before it traditional owners were distant and cool; afterwards warmly embracing.
Compare Pearson's style in that with this extraordinary essay.
