haggis supper

I've watched with interest at many of the recent posts re "sorry". Having spent 3 days on an "indigenous awareness" project last year down in Warnambool, Victoria through an employer sponsored initiative perhaps I can offer what I hope is a balanced viewpoint. Sorry for the long post.

Prior to this I had bugger all knowledge of the aborginal way of life, indeed my exposure was limited to Crocodile Dundee and brief news reports on black fellas up in the Northern Territories sniffing petrol and living in squalor.

However these few days offered a completely different and balanced perspective.

Whilst many of the true atrocities were perpetrated about 100 years ago, the impact of actions as recently as the 70's have had a devastating effect. I spent a lot of time with a very decent bloke, Lenny, who had his son, Brandon, forcibly removed from him in 1974, when the boy was 4 - and not because they lived in squalor or were being abused. The boy was placed with a white family (english) in Sydney. Brandon was taken to england when he was about 10 when the foster father died and the foster mother could no longer cope in Australia. Brandon grew up in Hampshire.

Lenny made many attempts to contact Brandon/foster family and finally tracked them down about 3 years ago. When he was able to contact the foster mother he was told that Brandon died the year before in a motobike accident in Basingstoke. Lenny never got to meet up with his son again.

Bizarrely, Brandon was born in the same year as me and is buried in Basingstoke - the town that I spent my last 7 years before coming to Australia. His foster mother still lives there. I spoke with her recently and she confirmed that Brandon gave no indication of being abused or living in squalor.

When Lenny described this and his experiences of growing up as a black fella he was clearly angry, bitter and resentful. He maintains that he was constantly victimised and arrested for no reason. However he, and the others that I met do not want to dwell on the past. "Sorry" is important but doesn't change anything. They do not want compensation. They do not want favours.

What they want is to be understood. They have been forced to change their cultures and experiences dramatically in such a short period of time. Many aborigines are not comfortable with this. One guy that I met said that he has a wonderful new flat but cannot live in it. He needs to be out and closer to the land. I can't relate to that but respect his view.

The folks I met were open and honest about the problems they experience - some of it directed at them (e.g. racial abuse) and others of their own making. They recognise that there is a drug, drink and crime problem. The realise that a minority amongst them give them a very bad name. However given that the vast majority are living in poverty their problems are no different to the problems experienced in every deprived inner city in any country.

They do not deny this, but need help that also recognises the reality of the problem. I spent an afternoon with a community project who receive government funding. They readily accept that the aborigine community lack many basic skills and therefore find it hard to comply with the strict government requirements. For example to continue to receive funding and support they need to provide the government with a detailed and structured 15 year plan. That is beyond the capabilities of most of the folk involved - hence they have asked my employers (NAB) if we can assist. Not financial help but expertise in planning and writing, using computers etc. If they fail to comply they lose funding.

Giving houses and money alone is not the solution. I'm not sure what is, and I don't think they do either.

There were 12 of us on this course, 10 were australian. It was incredible the level of ignorance and the views that had been formed. 9 of the 10 felt completely different having spent 3 days getting a different perspective. Its easy to say that they are a bunch of petrol sniffing criminals who abuse their familes and take money for nothing.

Anyway, I now have a more balanced view. It's pointless apportioning blame for things that happened many years ago. However it is important to recognise the devastating effect this has had and the depth of the problems and that there is no easy solution, especially with people who have a culture that is so different to ours.

esperanza

That sounds like it was a really valuable experience for you. At the risk of sounding like some trashy daytime tv show, thank you for sharing it!

Bordy

Good post HS.

chrispy

Great Post.. as you say a vast majority of Australians and Immigrants are ignorant of what many Aboriginal people have gone through. There is a good short film done sometime in the 1980s i think called Barbequearea which reverses the situation.. blunt but effective.

spartacus

Excellent post Haggis.

Prompted I had a read of :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_generations

'In Western Australia, the Aborigines Act 1905 removed the legal guardianship of Aboriginal parents and made their children all legal wards of the state, so no parental permission was required.'

Sobering stuff indeed.

haggis supper

Thanks to you all for the comments. I've found an article in The Age that talks about Lennie and mentions his son (embarrassingly I got his name wrong - Lyndon, not Brandon) and a couple my dates/facts were wrong.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...?from=storyrhs

Hutch

Awaiting Quoll's response ....

Nu-Shooz

When i did my citizen test, i read a book all about OZ and the Aboriginals. It was intriguing. I never knew anything about them and how they were treated. I am so glad i read the book and understood all about the history of OZ.

asprilla

Great post, and hopefully some food for thought for those that maintain that only abused kids were removed.

asprilla

One way to empathise here, is to consider the following...

We have been brought up living in houses. So have our parents, and many generations before them.

Imagine that another race were to come along one day, and insist that they knew of a "better way of living". They made us all live outside, on the land. We would find it very hard to adapt and would most probably just end up going back to living in our houses, no matter what we were told.


I'm not saying that I can relate to, or understand, the choices that aboriginals make...but I do think we can try and understand.

chrispy

That was one of the premises in the film babakiueria.. the white family finally gets removed from their home and dumped in the desert. It is a great film and won an award or two
http://dvd.bigpondmovies.com/dvd/297...Barbeque_Area_

hitchcock71

brilliant post

hopefully will give food for thought for others

augigi

The problem is, as you've admitted yourself, you don't think what the government is doing or has done are the things the Aborigines need. But you don't know what they DO need to do.

Until someone offers a better solution, I can't fault people with good intentions.

TheCrone

My experiences with Aboriginal people come from living and working in the Kimberley between 1969 and 1972, when I was manageress of a hostel for Aboriginal school children in Halls Creek. I have watched with horror the recent media portrayal of a society given over to child and substance abuse; it wasn't like that in my day!
Time and distance have, I think, given me a certain amount of perspective and allowed me to reach certain conclusions. Please understand that I speak of the indiginous population in rural and remote areas, not city dwellers.
In retrospect, I date the start of the slide into the current degredation to the granting of full citizenship in July, 1971. Not that this was a bad step in itself - indeed, it was granted (belatedly) with the best possible motives by the Government of the day. Unfortunately, white politicians and bureaucrats in Canberra were unable to foresee the long-term effects this would have on people who were still living in a predominantly pre-literate and tribal society.
In Halls Creek at that time, the majority of Aboriginal people lived and worked on huge cattle stations. Most of these were owned by international companies and were run by managers; few were in private hands or run by local people. The local Aboriginals were given a small wage if they were workers and all were given basic rations but supplemented this by foods gained or gathered in te traditional ways, by hunting and gathering.
It was customary for all the station people, white as well as black, to come into Halls Creek for Race Week which was then held in the first week in September. In 1971, they were advised of their rights under the new legislation, which included the right to vote and the right to purchase and consume alcohol, neither of which they had previously been allowed to do. They were also given cheques for backdated allowances and pensions - more money than most of them were able to comprehend. They were also advised that cheques would be forthcoming on a fortnightly basis. Sadly, the majority didn't understand the importance of being given the right to vote; they did see and understand the immediate impact of having the right to drink alcohol and the money to do so. They did not call the legislation Citizenship Rights, but rather Drinking Rights; some even thought that they HAD to consume alcohol.
These two factors - the right to drink and the money to do so - meant that the majority of indiginous people didn't return to their station homes at the end of Race Week. One station that had brought 59 Aboriginal people returned with just three. And the township of Halls Creek was not prepared for such an influx. There were no sanitary or cooking facilities, no housing. Furthermore, the children who had lived in the hostel during term time, with two showers a day, three meals and and clean clothing on a daily basis, now had to live with their parents (usually their mother) if she was resident within two kilometers of the school. Yet these parents, for the most part, had no idea how to purchase or prepare commercially available foods; they were not only pre-literate, but pre-numerate. They didn't understand that a portion of their Welfare money was to provide for their children in an acceptably "European" way. And the downward cycle began.
I think that only when Aboriginal people are able to build commercially-viable industries, which they control, will the situation really change - and heaven alone knows what those industries could be in places which have few or no resources.

asprilla

will have to keep an eye out for that film, cheers!