E gudde Dag fir jiddereen (Google Translate- Luxembourgish),
A decade ago I wrote up my dad’s anecdotes. An excerpt from the Chapter titled ‘Ante-bellum- Amsterdam/Haarlem 1932-1940’ :
A highlight appears to have been a bicycle camping trip to mountainous Luxembourg. On this trip, dad told me, he found out he was acrophobic, a condition I have inherited. Each generation has trouble imagining their parents as ever having been young and in love. The photo album is right there with the evidence: athletic, good looking, sun-tanned young men and women having fun at the beach. Dad with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, whilst playing the banjo-mandolin. A group of youths forming a human pyramid, showing off to the girls. Young leggy ladies posing for the camera in their bathing suits (no bikinis back then).
In a recent phone conversation with my brother, who like myself, dredges the shallows of miscellaneous information for (what in our student days were) mark producing pearls of wisdom, he mentioned Luxembourg’s motto: “Mir wëllen bleiwen wat mir sinn” (We want to remain what we are). Regular readers of these Dispatches, will not be surprised when I tell them that this motto immediately resonated with me.
From a Eurocentric perspective the Luxembourgers have good reason to want to remain what they are. According to that modern oracle, Wikipedia, the 600K population of the tiny country of Luxembourg (2.5K square kilometres) has the highest GDP per capita in the world. A mere $US105K per annum. I’m not aware of the Luxembourgers being pressured by anyone to change being what they are. No forced assimilation, no stolen children, no Closing the Gap initiatives for them.
The Intervention (the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response) yielded some nice witticisms for our enjoyment (to keep us laughing to keep from crying) such as labelling the GBMs (Government Business Managers) the Ginger Bread Men. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ganA1AiYyO0
Gary Foley calling Warren Mundine the “white sheep of the family”.
Another was “They think that if you squeeze a black-fellow hard enough a white-fellow pops out “ which when I told Jakamarra about this, he retorted “It won’t work, you’ll end up with a squashed black-fellow”
Metaphorically that is what the Intervention did, it resulted in many squashed black-fellows.
On our kitchen table, there landed the March 2017 Quarterly Essay (‘The White Queen-one Nation and the politics of race’ by David Marr), at the rear there is the “correspondence” on the previous issue. The previous essay was ‘The Australian Dream’ by Stan Grant, which unfortunately I didn’t get to read. One of the “correspondents” was Kim Mahood the author of that seminal cross-cultural masterpiece ‘Position Doubtful”. Like the Luxembourg motto, Kim’s contribution immediately resonated with me. In it she quotes Stan Grant “I am who and where I am in spite of the past….” Which Google Translate renders as: “Ech sinn wien a wou ech sinn trotz der Vergaangenheet…” in Luxembourgish. Kim also invokes the squeezed black fellow, albeit a slightly different version. Apparently Stan took issue with Jon Altman’s statement “ I fail to see how standard education will assist those who live fundamentally non-standard lives.”. Kim springs to Jon’s defence- “… includes an understanding, difficult to articulate, that there is something of fundamental value in the evolving culture of remote Australia” and to “ …aim for a kind of excellence that bridges different knowledge systems… “ Hear, Hear!
From past Dispatches:
Missy Higgins… The Biggest Disappointment’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I51ImqkOAM
And the biggest disappointment in the family was me
The only twisted branch upon that good old family tree
I just couldn’t be the person they expected me to be….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl0C4Zkpv1M Maggie’s Farm…. Bob Dylan
Well, I try my best to be just like I am,
But everybody wants you to be just like them
From the Scottish Clearances: The Landlords carried out “Improvements” to their estates. The improvers said the eradication of the Gaelic way of life, with its antiquated Clan loyalties and low rates of return, was necessary to bring the Highlands into the modern era-
Squeeze a Scottish Highlander or Islander hard enough and an Englishman pops out.
Bob Marley’s Babylon System:
We refuse to be
What you wanted us to be;
We are what we are:
That’s the way it’s going to be. If you don’t know!
You can’t educate us
For no equal opportunity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5EoiQX7u5k
So once again I get to repeat what Gough Whitlam’s Education Minister said half a century ago:
“In Australia, our ways have mostly produced disaster for the Aboriginal people. I suspect that only when their right to be distinctive is accepted, will policy become creative”… Kim Beazley Sr.
To be or not to be, that is the question. Ser o estar.
Anyway you get my drift.
Seems to be, paradoxically, that remote Aboriginal Australia will only be allowed to remain what they are if like the Luxembourgers they become filthy rich.
Dat ass gutt fir si. Bis zur nächster Zäit
Frank