Antinuclear

The first OCCUPY movement – Australia’s Aboriginal tent embassy

Next week Aborigines from all over will converge on Canberra to commemorate and celebrate 40 years of the embassy.

It is white Australian history, and it is general history too. It ought not be only for Aborigines to use the occasion to ponder black-white relationships, and what is happening now.

Time for return diplomacy, Canberra Times, BY JACK WATERFORD 18 Jan, 2012  “….They were the spearhead of a new and angry generation of Aboriginal activists. There’s only one survivor – Anderson – of the original four, but there are many others who served at the embassy and helped change the face of Aboriginal affairs. Forty years on, however, not only are the survivors still angry and bitter, but many wonder whether all the efforts of the past two generations since have
amounted to much. Few have any faith whatever in the directions taken by the present Government. There’s triumph – if in sheer survival – but little hope, and less love…. the embassy belongs not only to Aboriginal history…..

The Aboriginal embassy was not a casual confrontation with black
disadvantage, of the sort that might have been glimpsed from a Redfern
cab window on the way (past the tanneries) to Mascot. It was in front
of one of the most recognisable symbols in the nation.The camp, and
its inhabitants, and its studied untidiness, confronted every visitor
who came to Canberra. Even international visitors, and the
international press, whose comments were embarrassing to national
complacency.

It caused offence. In some cases splenetic offence, particularly to
white men and women who thought that there was nothing about the
situation of Aborigines for which they should apologise. Nothing.
Dispossession. Loss of sovereignty. Murder, disease, concentration,
resettlement, institutionalisation, chronic poverty, discrimination,
and continual evidence of fundamental disadvantage. Annoyance to some
who felt a measure of shame and pity, but who thought that there was
only limited time for anything and that Aborigines, having made their
point, should go back into the shadows.

Next week Aborigines from all over will converge on Canberra to
commemorate and celebrate 40 years of the embassy.

It is white Australian history, and it is general history too. It
ought not be only for Aborigines to use the occasion to ponder
black-white relationships, and what is happening now.

To contemplate the certainty that nothing much has improved in 40
years, and that current policies, far from closing the gap, are
widening the chasm.

Nor can the conversation be based on the comfortable premise – now
effectively a federal and state premise – that the problem is
Aborigines themselves. It’s time white Australia sent envoys back.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/time-for-return-diplomacy/2423486.aspx

January 18, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized