Nuclear Families.

“A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family.  It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit.” (From “A Man Without a Country” Kurt Vonnegut 2005)

The United Kingdom conducted 12 major nuclear weapons tests in Australia between 1952 and 1957. These explosions occurred at the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga.

The testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s by the British government in territory which sustained Indigenous culture had the effect of aiding the policy of ‘assimilation’. It did this by denying the safe use of land.

In “Fallout – Hedley Marston and the British Bomb Tests in Australia” (Wakefield Press, 2001, p.32), Dr. Roger Cross writes: “Little mention was made of course about the effects the bomb tests might have on the Indigenous Australian inhabitants of the Maralinga area, a community that had experienced little contact with white Australia. In 1985 the McClelland Royal Commission would report how Alan Butement, Chief Scientist for the Department of Supply wrote to the native patrol officer for the area, rebuking him for the concerns he had expressed about the situation and chastising him for “apparently placing the affairs of a handful of natives above those of the British Commonwealth of Nations”. When a member of staff at Hedley Marston’s division queried the British Scientist Scott Russell on the fate of the Aborigines at Maralinga, the response was that they were a dying race and therefore dispensable.”

The British nuclear testing program was carried out with the full support of the Australian government. Nine nuclear weapon tests were carried out at Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia, and three tests were carried out on the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia.

Permission was not sought for the tests from affected Aboriginal groups such as the Pitjantjatjara, Tjarutja and Kokatha. (From this link

Sherman Alexie

Go, Ghost, Go

At this university upon a hill
I meet a tenured professor
who’s strangely thrilled
to list all of the oppressors –
Past, present and future – who have killed,
Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.
O, he names the standard suspects –
Rich, white and unjust –
And I, a red man, think he is correct,
But why does he have to be so humorless?

And how can he, a white man, fondly speak
Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and true
ceremony
That, if performed well, would have doomed
All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies
And brought every dead Indian back to life?
The Professor says “Brown people
From all brown tribes
Will burn skyscrapers and steeples
They’ll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.

Sherman, can’t you see that immigration
is the new and improved Ghost Dance?
All I can do is laugh and laugh
And say “Damn, you’ve got some imagination,
You should write a screenplay about this shit –
About some fictional city,
Grown fat and pale and pretty,
That’s destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse.

The Professor doesn’t speak.  He shakes his head
And assaults me with his pity.
I wonder how he can believe
In a ceremony that requires his death.
I think that he thinks he’s the new Jesus.
He’s eager to get on that cross
And pay the ultimate cost
Because he’s addicted to the indigenous.

Check this in today’s Age here.   “Brands cash in on NAPLAN test fear.  Stuffed toys that help children deal with ”difficult emotions” are being spruiked as a way of assisting ”with the stress of NAPLAN”, as companies cash in on the emphasis placed on next week’s national literacy and numeracy tests.

I am speechless.

To wrap our week of Education we bring you this extract from the Musical Dispatch from the Front of 3rd October 2011.

This Dispatch is dedicated to Saraswathi the Hindu goddess of learning, music and wisdom.

I also dedicate it to my Warlpiri friends and neighbours that are the ‘clients’ of ‘service delivery’. They are being ‘serviced’ with the delivery of a boiling frog cultural genocide.
Death by a thousand cuts…..
http://youtu.be/JpXwpzHWBHM

Saraswathi, the goddess of music, was very much in evidence when we drove across to Papunya to see the Black Arm Band. I saw them perform for the second time in as many months.
Without being overtly political or confrontational, their message is very much about Aboriginal suffering, rights and dignity and a celebration of Aboriginal resilience and survival. Their message is also about hope. The children came back…..
http://youtu.be/rpNSrqsU1eI
Worthy disciples of Saraswathi, the Black Arm Band are.

The Papunya concert was concluded by two Papunya Bands. At the end nearly everyone got up and danced, even old codgers like me. Worthy disciples of Saraswathi are we.

Saraswathi, the goddess of wisdom, was very much in evidence at Yuendumu half a century ago, when then Superintendent Ted Egan turned back a couple of large truck bringing with them kit houses. Ted was in the process of organising local people to erect buildings using local materials.

A quarter of a century ago the Yuendumu Housing Association with its modest budget and a 4:1 ratio of Warlpiri to European workforce, was the first Yuendumu organisation to have a Warlpiri person take long service leave (for non-Australians: to earn LSL In Australia you have to be employed by the same employer continuously for ten years). The Yuendumu Housing Association ceased to exist many years ago.

Saraswathi, the goddess of learning, briefly came to Yuendumu last week. Minister for Aboriginal Health Warren Snowdon, flew in (and out) to officially open a residence for visiting medical students. The residence is one of five (so far) erected on Aboriginal communities as part of a joint teaching initiative between ANU (Australian National University) and the Commonwealth (Federal Government).

The residence was delivered on the back of trucks.

I found out about the opening when I was asked to fill an LP-gas cylinder “for the barbeque”, so I went.

Thirty-three people, including one Warlpiri adult, listened to Warren’s speech about the “importance of training future doctors on these places” so they may be inspired to come back to ‘service’ their Warlpiri ‘clients’. Pina-yarntani Yurntumu-kurra …come back to Yuendumu.

Five large trucks travelled all the way from Bendigo in Victoria to deliver Yuendumu’s new Centrelink building. Just what Yuendumu needed …Just when I needed you most….

http://youtu.be/XeeMDGq1FMI

Saraswathi, the goddess of wisdom, has forsaken Yuendumu.

Publisher’s note: Part two of this dispatch will be published next Saturday.

Earlier in the week we mused about the origin of NAPLAN, while Mine Tinkit gave his opinion (here).

In fact this is what we said: We are unsure of what NAPLAN stands for.  Is it “Never Arrest Priests Looking at Nubiles”? Please help us.  Send your suggestions to pcbycp.com.  Great prizes for nearest correct answer
Answers published Friday

Ever true to our word here is a selection from the voluminous response”.  Some contributers requested anonymity.  We of course ignored their request.

Numbskulls Are Pollies Liberally Addicted (to) Nonentity….

Numberlesss Aboriginals Particularly Loathe Abbot’s Natzi-ism.
Eric Butler

Nimble Aunty Patricia leaps about negligently…
Cardinal G Pell

Nudists Are Persistently Leaving About Nickers! (artist’s licence.)
Elizabeth R

Napthine’s Arrival Presages Liberal Ascendancy Nationwide.
Ted Baillieu

Never Advertise Posterior Led Anarchic Nuances!!!!
Sarah Palin

Niall’s Arse, Perfectly Lit, Advertises Noodles.
Niall’s Aunt Maeuvre

Nascent Archetypal Posturing, Leaching Adolescent Naivety
Essendon Football Club

Nuturing Adolescent Pupils Lacking Academic Nimbleness
J Macklin

Nominally Altruistic Prelates Lusting After Nomads
Attributed   to the  Missions to Inland Seamen ?”

AND
THE WINNER IS 

Negating Academic Principles Lowering All Norms
with best wishes from our  PM.

Is education about the getting of wisdom?  Ira Maine asks the question.  But firstly, for those who want a different approach we offer a link to a TED talk in which Ken Robinson postulates that “Schools kill creativity”.  Find it on this site.

Wisdom

Should I be wise?
Take on the lineaments of age,
Adopt, by the simple virtue of time
A grace, a style, avuncular,
Tolerant, I think, warm and merry,
And concede to others
Those pleasures more suited to wild youth?.

A smart Panama perhaps,and a cane,
A modest style, a little elegance
As amused concession to past riot?.
But essentially dignified, calm,
Carrying the years well…
I will be wise.

I will be wise, because no man now
Needs wisdom more than I,
Since late I looked into her eyes
And looked away, lest I should look again
And blindfold wisdom with a second glance,
Will I be wise…?

IRA MAINE. May 2013

Cockburn and Poole have great pleasure in bringing you this weeks wrap.

But first a word from Errol: “I know that there are two men inside me.  One wants to ramble around the globe more than once, in the sky and below water.  The other man is a settled fellow, who thinks sometimes he is or should be a husband-man, and that he should sit settled in a house by the side of the road or by the side of the sea.  Both are inside me.  Each is true.”  From My Wicked Wicked Ways, by Errol Flynn 1959.

Design Doctor continued on his way watching his boss Claude make management sense with a Conference titled Talking Urban and Regional Design. Insightful stuff, even if we do say so ourselves.  It can be seen here, here and here

The Musical Dispatch from the Front related oil and mineral exploration to medical procedures and to the NT intervention.

On Poetry Sunday our acting Poet Laureate Ira Maine gave us “A Fowl Education”, introducing us to the ways of Geese and certain women called Miranda.  A bonza start to Education Week, C & P thought.

Monday brought the brilliant Naplan Mine Tinkit.  Of course this opened the way for our monster competition – to suggest the origin of the acronym NAPLAN.  Entries are flooding in and will be published on Friday.  Make sure yours is in too, for the chance to win!

And Tuesday saw Tarquin O’Flaherty elucidate education in his inimitable style in his piece titled “The Imperial Need”.

Happy reading from Q Cockburn and C Poole.

Tarquin O’Flaherty 

Education, like youth, is wasted on the young.

Oh, dear me, no, not at all.  In the golden olden days, when the Empire stretched ‘from sea to shining sea’ it became more and more apparent, and more and more urgent that the business of business be recorded. In the vast stretch and sway of commerce within the British Empire, every jot and tittle was required to be noted down, set out in sensible fashion in properly ordered books, tomes and ledgers.  This could not be done, could not be achieved by any slap-dash or lackadaisical approach.  Things had to be done properly.  This need for uniformity demanded ledgers in Louisiana which could be read in a trice by a pox doctor’s clerk in the Punjab.  Clerks, appropriately educated, were de rigueur, so that in any profession  essentials might be anticipated and kept in good supply.  It is after all, impossible to beat beri-beri in Bangalore or keep the louse rate low in Louisiana without good lines of communication.  Every step, every branch of the bureaucracy demanded education.  Life and death could hang on a chap’s capacity to read and interpret messages so the quality of a chap’s schooling mattered greatly.  Without proper medical supply, without up-to-date records, without reliable information on train and troop movements, trials and tests to cut down the possibility of us all being murdered in our beds, any Empire would undoubtedly collapse.  This is why a competent, efficient bureaucracy was vital.

As can be seen from the foregoing, the Empire’s bureaucracy demanded its people be educated.  To provide for this need, schools sprang up all over Britain whose whole function was to provide cogs for the bureaucratic machinery of Empire.  On leaving school or university, people entered the Civil Service and were ‘posted’ to Hong Kong, Burma, New Delhi, or wherever there was a hole to fill, and from whence, with a little diligence, a young man could make his way in the world.

There was an inexhaustible need for educated foot-soldiers.  There were no calculators, no computers and no cars.  The Biro hadn’t been invented.  Message storage was on paper and in filing cabinets.  Everything depended on people, and a good memory could make you a fortune.

This, as we all know, is no longer the case.  The Civil Service has been revolutionised by technology, the Empire has withered away and as a consequence, a once mighty bureaucracy has folded it’s shrunk and shrivelled tents and slipped off into the night,but yet…

But yet, and I consider it a very good thing, we continue to educate people to within an inch of their lives.  What worries me about this is that one day, in the featureless expanse of the Conservative mind, someone of that stripe is going to notice.  It’ll take a while.  After all it’s been only been about sixty years since the decisions of the above and departing bureaucracy killed a million people in India.

One day they’ll ask what all this education is for, and why we spend so much money on it, why we bother… We’d better have answers…

We are unsure of what NAPLAN stands for.  Is it “Never Arrest Priests Looking at Nubiles”? Please help us.  Send your suggestions to pcbycp.com.  Great prizes for nearest correct answer
Answers published Friday.