MDFF 28 June

This post was first published on 21 November 2010.  The racist Intervention continues with white Australia’s complicity.

Góðan daginn vinir mínir

Pat DodsonOn May 28, 2000 more than 300,000 people walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in support of Indigenous Australians and reconciliation. More than a decade later, Patrick Dodson, one of Aboriginal Australia’s better known deep thinkers made a speech at UNSW entitled: “Can Australia Afford Not to be Reconciled?”.

The speech included:

“The strategy for assimilation of our peoples is not a mistake made by low-level bureaucrats on behalf of successive governments who didn’t know better. It was and continues to be a deliberate act orchestrated at the highest levels in our society, and no amount of moral posturing can hide that reality. This Assimilation I talk of has not been evidenced by equality, but by further control, incarceration and subjugation to norms and values without our consent.” and,

“Think about it. Right now, today, some of our greatest living artists, philosophers, spiritual leaders and their families remain subject to the racially inspired Northern Territory National Emergency Response – The Intervention. Against that backdrop, any notion of reconciled peoples is a farcical concept.”

For those that can spare the time and effort, I attach (a link to) Patrick Dodson’s whole speech – Click Here

The Aboriginal owned Yuendumu Mining Co has set up accommodation facilities (we call it the “Yuendumu two-star”) and a few days ago a group of contractors moved in. I showed them the ablution block and kitchen and their rooms. One of the men asked me “Do coons walk around here?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nucSvl7VXVM

I thought I’d misheard so I got him to ask again : ”Do coons walk around here?” “We don’t call them that here, maybe they do in Alice Springs, and yes they do walk around here, this happens to be their home”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5tngHfemWc

Is that what it’s come to? There have always been and always will be racists, far more than I like to imagine, but at least I thought that “multi-cultural” Australia had driven them into the closet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIggbPjdzmg

Many disagree when I blame the likes of John Howard for destroying what those people crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge dared to dream. A decade of dog-whistling politics, when such as “political correctness” became a dirty word, as “socialism” did under the Global Economy/”Privatisation” onslaught. Have you stopped to ponder what the opposite of “political correctness” is? Or “socialism” for that matter? Yes folks: “political wrongness” and “anti-socialism” …. so there!

Now they’re coming out of the woodwork. “Do coons walk around here?” It’s not so much that he said it that is the problem, it’s that he saw nothing wrong in saying it.

So just as Australia is again seriously considering legalising euthanasia and gay marriage and paid maternal leave and releasing asylum seekers’ children out of detention. Just as we once again strive to justify that self congratulating label we’ve given ourselves “the land of the Fair Go”, the politics of empathy and compassion, it’s suddenly OK again to ask “Do coons walk around here?”

Libertad o Muerte! Venceremos! A luta continua!
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE_XSfjSFTw

Nokkur góð tónlist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xmYkjesR5k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8iZ8jIqrQo 

þar til við hittumst aftur

Frank Marinussen
(Decode: Google translate Icelandic to whatever language you fancy)