Love thy neighbor as thyself. That's what we need to do to heal and it's hard to do. By showing empathy for others, we heal some of the ugliness carried out by our ancestors.
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I think this article reflects a profound truth about those who are unable to face a story that might make them question their own part in the culpability of today. It's not like anything has changed in the Australian nation. First Nations peoples in Australia are the most incarcerated peoples in the world today per capita. The past is present, so when white Australians engage in this kind of wilful denial and stage protests to silence Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who want to recognise and honour those who died in the service of white settler colonialism and yes, an invasion that resulted in genocide, it reminds me that small acts of solidarity make a big difference in the lived world, which the picture of the Wirangu Elder Uncle Jack Johncock and Mr Callaghan perfectly captures.
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A map of the US showing "Aboriginal (Native) People Massacred"
would have multiples of 250 incidents!
15
From the article: "The vitriol and raw feelings reflect the grip Australia's past still holds on this country, which has yet to fully grapple with its often ugly colonial history."
This is no longer a "dispatch" or "news" but simply pure editorial.
Australia is grappling, wholeheartedly, with its history, warts and all. And better yet, it is having this discussion, this reconciliation, in public. In schools, churches, and in every general election for a hundred years these issues have been raised and debated.
There ARE countries involved in the wholesale whitewashing of their own history. There ARE countries yet to "fully grapple" with with the ugly legacy of colonialism.
How many American children know, for example, that a key cause of the Revolutionary War was a desire to dispossess, even more rapidly, the land of indigenous peoples the British had made treaties with?
But I'll bet every Australian schoolchild knows about the Stolen Generations, among other crimes.
This is very far from saying there aren't a variety of views, many of them retrograde, in Australia.
But "not fully grapple"?! Sorry. That's insulting to the very people this article is about. They are "fully grappling" in a very real and tangible and public way.
6
@John Killian, Damien Cave is actually right. We are still grappling with the complex legacy of colonial occupation of this country and the realities of frontier conflict. The community of Elliston is to be commended for erecting this monument, but there is still widespread denial and a white washing of history, especially among the conservative political class. Here it is referred to as the culture wars. The Uluru Statement from the Heart issued by a large gathering of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander delegates May last year, and widely endorsed by communities, called for a process of truth telling as integral to reconciliation and recognition of First Nations. Our Government has rejected this and other recommendations from the First Nations National Constitutional Convention. We have a long way to go. Unlike the USA, Canada and New Zealand, Indigenous Australians have never had treaty. As the article points out, it is progress, but we need more of this, everywhere.
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@Kate Everything you write is correct. That's exactly what I'm talking about -- Australia is grappling, painfully sometimes, with its history.
When will Cave's state of "full grapple" be reached? The article doesn't say. But I maintain it's a false distinction, and worse, as I said, insults those people "grappling" at the heart of this issue (the Wirangu people among them) with all their might.
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Same stories, different continent. Aboriginal peoples have paid a heavy price around the world. And still are paying. Welcome the challenge to move past this to mutual respect.
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Massacres are the indiscriminate and brutal killing of people. Why does the body count matter? The Boston Massacre had 5 deaths. We live in a time in this country with too many massacres from synagogues and churches to schools and concerts. If we don’t acknowledge truth and use language that illustrates the violence and atrocities, then we’re just erasing history and doomed to keep repeating it.
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Today there is another massacre. By the richest nations against the poorest nations. By the richest people against the poorest people. It isn't with guns (and sometimes it is yes), but with the economic power. The powerty people are against a black man in a University, agaist a woman with a good salary, against a poor with dignities. They want more, more and more money in their bank acount. But complain of this ones without give them oportunities. I have a hope that in the heaven, God is seeing everthing, and of the God's justice nobody can scape.
4
Yes - these were common occurrences, and the article reflects prejudices alive even today. However some positive changes are now taking place, in particular moves toward local and a nation-wide Treaty. See websites of the Yothu Yindi Foundation and the Garma Festival for more - for adventurous travellers, Arnhem Land and Nhulunbuy are calling!
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Decades of genocides and brutal responses by “un-settlers” to tribal members who fought back against resource grabs in 19th century California have resulted in parallel debates/controversies over the wording on official monuments.
Historical distortions, usually based on the biased accounts of literate “victors,” rather than the oral histories of the victims, have contributed to solidifying erroneous accounts. Yet when Native/Aboriginal/indigenous descendants persist in righting historical wrongs, the narrative changes.
Case in point: The Bloody Island State Historical Marker In Lake County installed by the (ironically named) Native Sons in 1942, referring to the wholesale slaughter of an entire lakeside Pomo community by a U.S. regiment in May 1850 as a “battle,” was superseded in 2005 by California Historical Marker #427, installed through the efforts of the grandchildren of one of the sole survivors.
It took a century and a half to acknowledge the genocide; sixty-three years to spell out the word m-a-s-s-a-c-r-e instead of b-a-t-t-l-e. And for the past fifteen years, Pomo descendants hold a Bloody Island sunrise memorial ceremony, an event serving to educate increasing numbers of previously clueless Lake County residents.
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This is a large issue in Australia and resistance to recognition of documented monstrous white behaviour is entrenched in conservative minds.
Years ago I found myself at Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the centre of Australia, looking at the sign placed by indigenous owners asking people not to climb the rock because it’s dangerous and sacred. A white haired white Australian beside me declared “of course we’ll climb it, it’s ours.” Which is, not least, contrary to the legal situation.
In my country which ranks second on the UN’s Human Development Index there is a perverse level of anxiety about so many little things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
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First of all, I am tired of white Europeans being called “settlers.” Call them “invaders,” “occupiers,” or what they actually were, “murderers,” but settlers is far too benign a term to describe them. Secondly, the mindless cruelty, horrific tortures, and unimaginable violence visited by white Europeans from multiple nations (as well as white Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans) upon indigenous peoples for five hundred years is so enormous that the very idea of any “debate” concerning the term “massacre” is disgusting. Worldwide, the numbers are probably between 100 - 200 million indigenous peoples murdered by the purveyors of colonialism on half a dozen continents. It’s time to just shut up and admit culpability.
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@Jason Shapiro
Let us not forget the Belgian Congo, where the greed of King Leopold led to to the literal working to death of thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of Africans, as well as their enslavement, murder and severe abuse, including chopping off the hands and/or feet of children to punish their parents.
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@Jason Shapiro
Not sure what to make of this demand to "shut up and admit culpability." Am I supposed to admit culpability for something I didn't do? If my ancestors were involved does that make me culpable? If not, am I culpable by racial, ethnic, or cultural identity? Are all people of European descent culpable for the 100-200 million murders of indigenous peoples? If so, how should they be punished? Culpability for genocide should not be taken lightly.
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@Jason Shapiro Correct. Here in Australia. Call it an invasion and surprise, surprise you get shouted down for being politically correct. I handed someone a dictionary and said look up the definition of invasion and tell me how it wasn't an invasion. She read it and said I just think the word is a bit harsh for what happened. I responded with "And you call me politically correct"
18
I love the assertion by the opponents of this monument, that "Well, our ancestors didn't write down the exact number of people that they murdered, so obviously there's no proof that it even happened at all."
The mental contortions that these people will twist themselves into, in order to avoid facing reality, is staggering.
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@Sam Rosenberg
The Nazis DID record many of the names of the people they murdered. Nevertheless, Holocaust deniers say, in the face of that evidence and much more, that the Holocaust did not happen.
People who have twisted and biased minds are not a good source of factual information.
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@Sam Rosenberg The thing is. When "modern people" Have pass on oral not written account of things they turn into Chinese whispers. When people who have thousands of years of passing oral history on to others. It will be accurate as that's nearly all they have. About 250 years ago Captain Cook landed not all that far from where I live. For most of that time the "official" history said he encountered no animosity. I grew up knowing local indigenous people (aboriginals) who had an oral history saying they threw spears at the landing party. With research. This history is starting to be accepted as fact.
9
These stories are always the same. Human animals are divided by tribe and fight for resources. And each side narrates a tale of “good and evil”: neither of which exists outside of culture. They are culturally specific productions. We have heard these stories so many times and they tell the same tale: we’re just animals. We should not be ashamed of this, though it does cause much grief.
3
I have to say, “I’m with Chuffy.” Horrific as our past has been and as awful as many aspects of our lives may be going forward, the notion that an entire portion of humanity is stinking rotten and the rest all poor victims is too simplistic to contemplate. But the price of social admission these days means demonstrating via signs subtle and overt one’s fealty to that deficient doctrine.
1
@Jeffrey Cosloy The problem here in Australia is there are a lot of people in politics who won't accept our history. If we say this happened or that happened they are saying we are proponents of a "black armband" history. The problem with that attitude is it white washes our history to the point our history curriculum is full of lies about what actually happened. My point is how can we move on when that is the case.
12