In Australia the mining industries are intrinsic to racism and Aboriginal disadvantage

Utopia: An Aboriginal perspective, Black Feminist Blogspot, BY TRACKER, JANUARY 7, 2014 “………There are two huge points Pilger investigates through this section of the film. One is that the greater Australian public has been more than happy to accept the intervention because they readily accept horrible and racist stereotypes of Aboriginal people as fact.

Another is that when it comes to a country generating billions of dollars worth of income through the mining of

its mineral resources, the demonisation of Indigenous Australia is a small price to pay. It’s almost completely impossible to deny the truth of Pilger’s assertions here. Pilger has already so poignantly highlighted many layers of Australian racism by this point, and has juxtaposed this racism with wealth generation repeatedly.

Indeed, the continual spectre of the mining industry looms throughout the film.

The diminishing of land rights by governments and the fear campaigns that have been run by the media are highlighted.

Taxes upon mining and the resources that these funds could have injected into severely disadvantaged Indigenous communities are shown as being vehemently opposed by some of the wealthiest and powerful mining magnates in the country.

Mining interests have continually been at loggerheads with the interests of traditional owners, and at the end of the day, the magnates have almost always won.

Most Australians have remained apathetic to the reality that whilst Gina Rinehart earns almost $1 million every 30 minutes on natural resources in this land, Australia remains the only first world nation to not have eradicated trachoma.

Indeed, the minority government formed in 2010 by the ALP following the toppling of Kevin Rudd from leadership suggests that, in part, Australians felt taxing mining companies was actually a bad thing. That the media continually pumped this information through to the voting public is undeniable. When it boils down to it, a fairer distribution of wealth, particularly for Indigenous Australia, is not a consideration for a population who are conditioned to think that black Australia already get too much…… .http://blackfeministranter.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/utopia-aboriginal-perspective.html