In 2020, we’ve had bushfires that have destroyed our old growth forests, driven rural communities to the brink of collapse, and killed over a billion native animals.
We’ve had a global pandemic that has infected over six million people. We’ve had lockdown and closed borders that have bankrupted businesses and basically put folks under house arrest. I’ve had three friends lose a parent during this time and not be able to attend their funerals. I’ve got friends with relationships at breaking point, know of at least one suicide, and don’t know a single person who isn’t stressed.
Then last week in America, land of the free, a white police officer, sworn to protect citizens, killed a black man by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes. For having a counterfeit $20 note. Have you ever seen American currency? It ALL looks fake. I thought I had a counterfeit $20 note once. It came out of a Bank of America ATM cash machine and the supermarket took it without question. Does that make me a criminal?
The very many really good people of America were filled with entirely appropriate rage and anger at the complete betrayal of everything they put their hand over their heart for whenever the anthem plays. And we sit here and watch in horror as, in the midst of a highly contagious pandemic, they don ineffective cloth masks and gather in huge numbers to protest this horrific gross injustice. But what else could they do? Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
And even as the rest of the world watches in surreal disbelief, we here in Australia have been forced to turn our eyes to the inhumane and callous way we treat so many of our indigenous communities. Since the release of the royal commission into black deaths in custody in 1991, more than 400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander have died in custody. The Australian press has (finally) begun to draw attention to how similar incidents to the George Floyd death have occurred here, but with little or no media attention at the time.
May 26 is National Sorry Day in Australia. You can read about it here – it is a day that remembers and acknowledges the irreparable harm caused to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities who had their children forcibly removed from them – “The Stolen Generations” as they are now known. 26 years after the report which highlighted this incredible injustice, and 12 years after a national apology was made by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are still ten times more likely to be removed from their families than non-indigenous children.
This year, two days before National Sorry Day, Rio Tinto destroyed – legally – a site sacred to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura People, two caves that showed 46,000 years of continuous occupation, including an artifact that proved a genetic link between the traditional owners and their ancestors of 4,000 years ago. This was not only a huge blow to the PKKP People, but to every single Australian. It was mindless destruction of our country’s history in the pursuit of expansion and wealth, and yet another example, in a long line of many, of the truly appalling disrespect with which Australia treats its First Nations peoples.
I’m honestly not sure how much more my heart can take this year. And it’s only June. 💔
. . . . .
Diane commented recently that my posts were never negative. I try very hard to keep it that way, but this week I’ve felt overwhelmed, and the words needed to come out. I hope though that you will take something positive from this. The only long term way to change societal bigotry and racism – especially the subtle forms that we’re not even aware we all have – is education. If you’re Australian and like me, your knowledge of indigenous history is limited, then make it your job to find out. Read the Uluru Statement From The Heart. Celebrate our First Nations cultures without appropriating them. Read books written by authors like Stan Grant and Bruce Pascoe. Watch Vernon Ah Kee’s Tall Man art installation, but be prepared to weep, as I did both times that I viewed it at the MCA.
It won’t be a comfortable learning curve, but nothing can change until we acknowledge that a problem exists in the first place. ♥
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 