World's oldest indiginous peoples under threat

I saw a movie last week that both shocked and surprised me. It's called Our Generation and catalogues  the Australian government's ongoing effort to extinguish the last remnants of the 60,000 year old culture of Australia's first peoples. It is a shocking tale of racist suppression that is taking place here and now in cool, laid-back Australia. Many will remember Kevin Rudd's moving apology to the aborigines back in 2008. Well, it's since become worse and the world stands by, ignorant of blatant land-seizure for mining interests and removals to concentrated housing. While white Australians wantonly rape the land, it is stolen from its rightful owners under falsely righteous accusations of pedophilia.

Surely we should not be playing cricket in such places, nor traveling to holiday while this iniquity continues.

OUR GENERATION - revealing new documentary on Aboriginal rights in Australia

Comments

[masterymistery]

I agree that were it true, it would be one of the most egregious cases of cultural genocide imaginable. Problem is, it's not entirely true.

This is a complex story with good and bad on all sides, and must be seen within its historical context, and in the context of the motivations of the perpetrators.

I think for example of several European countries such as France which recently made it against the law for anyone to wear a head-scarf to school.

What are the motivations of the French in the above respect?

I think also, for example, of the "stolen generation" that somehow became "the stolen generations" probably because the self flagellation hurts more if more than one generation is perceived to have been "stolen".

It's what ex Prime Minster John Howard referred to as "...the black armband school of history".

Of course, a goodly number of the white anglo celtic migrants to Australia themselves were "stolen" (or "given up"?) or transported to the colonies for stealing a slice of bread.

Nor is the history of any nation pure in the current context. The facts of European invasion/colonisation are too well known to bear repeating. It is worth noting though that the cause of many of the territory-related problems and civil wars experienced in recent decades can be traced directly back to the imposing by the colonial British of boundaries and markers cutting directly across tribal lands, thus sparking the next round of civil war.

I think, for example, of Palestine, Zimbabwe, India/Pakistan, to highlight just a small part of the made-in-Britain mess that the world is still cleaning up.

masterymistery at
cosmic rapture

[masterymistery]

sorry for two comments when one would have done. Just wanted to remark on the "falsely righteous accusations of pedophilia":

The accusations in fact are not false, but sadly too true. The alarmingly high incidence of child rape and violence against women and children in indigenous communities is well-established and well-documented and acknowledged to be true by pretty much everyone of whatever political leanings.

The current federal labor government is continuing the initiative established by the previous liberal government of "intervention" in those commmunities where the rate of offending is the highest,.

The intervention most usually takes the form of controlling how welfare benefits are paid, with the aim being to limit the money spent on alcohol.

Now, it's certainly true that the poor state of Australian indigenous communities is a reflection of a culture in terminal decline --- and the decline has been driven to a large extent by the process which saw indigenous people robbed and cheated and abused on a grand scale.

But more than enough crimes have been committed against indigenous peoples without having to invent or repurpose any.