by mick lambe
Friday January 26, 2007
| People who show respect for 'the peoples' and the lands, need never embrace denial, to prevent guilt |
Changing attitudes means taking risks
The Kwinana Hotel, Western Australia (circa 1970's) - bikers, BLF militants, Medina boys
We get some horrific news - a child boy murdered in the nearby Bush
Much anger fueled by alcohol - the Blacks get the blame somehow and the threats of retribution (when the Black killer is found) remind me of the racist punitive mentality that saw whole family groups wiped out in WA
I'm copping angry glances - a well-known race-traitor even then - so I keep my mouth shut
We are in the pub a few days later (working class drug addiction has always been rife) when we hear the latest news - the killer - some White sad sack - has been caught
And then I'm up on my feet and yelling out loud enough to silence everyone in the bar - 'Come on - Let's go - Let's sort those murdering White bastards out'
I make my point and it is accepted - even the crew with the White Power T-shirts accept the rebuke peaceably - then we all get drunker
That's always been the obvious task to me - to challenge racist attitudes in the White Community as Malcolm X suggested
It just seems natural to expose such dangerous delusions in the community that harbours them...
...and Aboriginal people already know they are considered third rate citizens in their own country - without my prompting
Racism is illogical
Pt Keats (Wadeye, NT) and the White Police Officer welcomes us like long lost brothers - about 2000 people there at the time - so it was not loneliness that inspired this unexpected camaraderie
Big house - 2 of them for two Police and their partners - all mod cons - high security fence
Lavish indeed in this grossly overcrowded town
The cop tells us the dogs only bite blackfellas
My mate has a Larrakia (Aboriginal) partner - my views on 'race' are already clear
We are used to biting our tongues
Cop-to-feral he shares his philosophy on 'race' - I always feel privileged during such frank exchanges
The 'problem' (obviously a given amongst us White folk) - is the mob with White-blood in them - the 'Full-Bloods' are OK
So following his 'logic' - If the mob with a bit of White blood are bad bastards?
You wonder how bad - Whites tanked up with the stuff must be?
Surviving genocide
Up here - Aboriginal people are well networked
When we needed 2 witnesses for Letty Scott's trial - an Aboriginal widow whose husband was murdered in Berrimah Prison (an event that took place 20 years ago) David Timber - Community Leader at One Mile Dam Aboriginal community - had them located and their testimony faxed out - that day
Communal action and networking is something very natural to oppressed people - budding activists should learn from them
Love of country - sans lizard brain Nationalism
My belief - is that if you truly want to express love for 'your' country - the place to start is with its people
Not a 'nationalism' of the type that our constant companion the lizard brain - would approve of - but a logical one - as Indigenous people were formed by this country we profess to love
And yet the evidence I have seen...
- black prisons - black illness - black concentration camps - black educational
inequality - black living (dying) conditions - black overcrowding - all
black arm-banded by bigots, tells me...
...We hate this country
The evidence I have seen, just riding up and down the coastal roads of
Western Australia over a couple of decades...
...the salt-invaded farmlands and waterways - the vanished forests - the flora and fauna extinctions - the sand-dunes creeping across the roads - the damaged sacred sites, tells me
...We hate this country
White guilt
I talk to people about Aboriginal issues and hear common refrains - "I do not want to feel guilty" - Why should I feel guilty?"
Always 'guilt' - defined as, "...a remorseful awareness of having done something wrong"
People seem prepared to accept the reality of our negative impact on Aboriginal people through invasive genocide - they just do not want to feel bad about it
Enter Windschuttle and Howard with their 'genocide wasn't so bad' pap for non-Aboriginal consumption
I never understood the point of the 'history wars' as a means of absolving White guilt...
...the reality of contemporary Aboriginal life, is proof enough of generations of oppression - neglect - rape - murder
At least we seem to know collectively that we have done wrong to 'the people' - regardless of our dominant White power structure's historical revisionism...
...we just do not want to feel guilty or responsible - hence that strangest of White Australian traits - denial
As my history would suggest I've studied the phenomenon of White Australian denial closely - know it and its manifestations of violence and censorship too well
To me, such denial is important to combat
I wrote about this need - while ridiculing the Nationalistic tendencies of supposed progressives...
"...we are writing the new 'history' - Aboriginal women notably for the same reasons Howard/Windschuttle are
It's an info war - see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, et al
Not wars - people militating against our bloody genocidal past would embark upon
The 'left' have moderated their views to suit the Howard/WindSchuttle revisionist model
www.brisinst.org.au/resources/brisbane_institute_crotty_history.html
Disregarding a brutal racist historical and contemporary reality, so that new atrocities can be committed in our name (Iraq, Afghanistan) is the lowest form of 'pragmatism'"
http://p a r i a h n t. o r g / O z - indymedia/pages/Melbourne-indymedia-Eureka.htm
http://pariahnt.org/Oz-indymedia/pages/Melbourne-indymedia-Eureka.htm
****Spaced because the 'supposed
progressives' that run these sites use word filters (and IP blockers)
to censor my very strong views on their denial, hypocrisy, autocracy and
racist paternalism****
Combating 'White Australian' attitudes is important, wherever they manifest themselves
As far as I'm concerned - anyone compounding the 'National' denial that sees us engaged as mercenaries for the USA (again) and playing White imperialist in our region (unless we are desperately needed, as in East Timor - in which case we just sit on our hands for 24 years) - is engaging in criminally neglectful behaviour
Yet that is what a recent 'progressive' tract 'Who Owns Land In An Anarchist Society?' - does in fine style
Nowhere in this 'land ownership piece' do Aboriginal people get a mention - Every other group - the State - even the neo-nazis in Perth (WA) managed some awareness of Aboriginal rights to land
"Under Asianisation there will no Aboriginal land rights" A slogan on a poster by the Eureka Flag-loving neo-nazi Australian Nationalist Movement (1980's Perth WA)
I was moved to comment on this exclusion of Aboriginal people from the land rights debate by so-called progressives...
"Too bad if you're a traditional blackfella ...
Or will they be shunted into re-education camps?"
I was informed that Anarchists would create a non-hierarchical and non-racist society
Using a blueprint for action that Fairyland would reject as implausible?
My next comment was a dig at the Stalinism of these supposedly autonomous networks and their complete contempt for Aboriginal inclusion and land rights
Re: "The anarchist revolution (a bit of an unexplained given) - will I be shot or garroted?
I do not recognize land rights that exclude justice for Aboriginal people and we know how you people abuse power"
Combating 'White Australian' attitudes is important, wherever they manifest themselves - although these attitudes do not always denote White skin and not all non-Aboriginal people share them
The truth is plain - White Australians love the affluence and stability that comes from killing this country's people and exploiting and destroying its lands
'White Australians' hate this country
mick lambe - survivor of the English genocide in Ireland
p a r i a h