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Sat 26 May, 2007 10:18 am
Aborigines mark the day they became 'humans'
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 26 May 2007
Independent UK
Extraordinary though it seems, it was not until 1967 that Australian Aborigines were recognised as citizens of their own country. Before that they were classified as native wildlife, along with kangaroos and koalas.
This weekend Aborigines are converging on Canberra, the national capital, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a referendum that led to the constitution being amended. More than 90 per cent of white Australians voted in favour of including indigenous people in the national census. But those who had campaigned for a decade hoped for more:for justice and equality. The anniversary is a reminder of the massive inequalities that still exist in housing, health, education, employment and life expectancy.
Until the referendum, Aborigines were not, officially, human beings. They were "flora and fauna". They were confined to white-controlled reserves and forbidden to travel without special permission. They were paid wages in meat and salt.
Linda Burney, the first indigenous member of the New South Wales parliament, recalled her childhood, pre-referendum, this week. She told the Sydney Morning Herald she was taught that "my people were savages and the closest example to Stone Age man living today". Ms Burney, now 50, said: "I vividly remember wanting to turn into a piece of paper and slip quietly through the crack in the floor."
The Australian Medical Association this week blamed institutional racism, as well as "criminal underfunding", for a 17-year gap in life expectancy between white and black Australians. A recent World Health Organisation report found that Aboriginal health lagged nearly a century behind that of the white population.
While some traditional lands have been handed back to indigenous people, they remain, on the whole, marginalised - socially, politically and economically. Many communities are blighted by alcoholism and violence. Black Australians are still waiting for an official apology to the "Stolen Generation" - the thousands of children forcibly removed from their families and assimilated into white society, under a policy not abandoned until 1975. Last Thursday marked the 10th anniversary of a landmark national inquiry that concluded that the policy amounted to genocide.
For the past decade the Prime Minister, John Howard, has resisted calls to apologise. Instead, his government has pushed through a series of paternalistic measures. The latest plan is to withhold welfare payments if parents fail to send their children to school. The reality is that some remote communities do not have full-time teachers.
The 1967 referendum followed a civil rights campaign inspired by the example of black American leaders, including "freedom rides'' on buses. Jackie Huggins, who was 11 at the time of the referendum, said: "I thought things would really get better now that we had the shackle of invisibility taken away." Forty years later, as chair of Reconciliation Australia, a national body that aims to close the gap, she is still fighting for equality.
Quote:Linda Burney, the first indigenous member of the New South Wales parliament, recalled her childhood, pre-referendum, this week. She told the Sydney Morning Herald she was taught that "my people were savages and the closest example to Stone Age man living today". Ms Burney, now 50, said: "I vividly remember wanting to turn into a piece of paper and slip quietly through the crack in the floor."
Linda Burney's statement in this article sparked my memory of this poem:
Incident
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
-- Countee Cullen
So, on another continent, another child impacted in much the same way...although the ancestors of this one were imported so that he could receive such treatment. I was going to say I guess it doesn't pay to be an indigenous person anywhere in the world, but it seems to only negatively impact those with darker skin.
Quote:This weekend Aborigines are converging on Canberra, the national capital, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a referendum that led to the constitution being amended. More than 90 per cent of white Australians voted in favour of including indigenous people in the national census. But those who had campaigned for a decade hoped for more:for justice and equality. The anniversary is a reminder of the massive inequalities that still exist in housing, health, education, employment and life expectancy.
I hope they can achieve what they set out to.
as smart as we humans think we are, its amazing how stupid we are.
i almost cant believe that this is true! at least we are changing though.
I'm not proud of the above but have worked, in my small way, to rectify the problem as have many Australians.
4th from Left bottom photo
I'd be careful about laying blame at the feet of Australians. Seems to me it was a hangover from British rule.
How long after settlement by the British did Amerindians get a vote?
How are mexicans treated today?
In 1948, the Arizona Supreme Court
declared as unconstitutional disenfranchising interpretation of the State constitution. Thus Indians were
permitted to vote as in most other States. A 1953 Utah State law stated that persons living on Indian
reservations were not residents of the State and could not vote. That law was subsequently repealed. In
1954, Indians in Maine who were not then Federally recognized were given the right to vote, and in
1962, New Mexico extended the right to vote to Indians. Indians also vote in State and local elections
and in their affiliated tribal elections. Each tribe, however, determines which of its members are eligible
to vote in its elections. This qualification to do so is not related to the individual Indian's right to vote in
national, State or local (non-Indian) elections
So 1492 until 1950's...........450 odd years. Have a look in your own backyard first BBB
BBB just cut and pasted an article by a Sydney journo, DP.
I have no problem with all us colonialists in all colonised countries facing up to our ****, and welcome BBB's cut and paste.
My sense is the Americans have done better in terms of redressing wrongs with American blacks than we have yet done with our aboriginal people.
I don't know how we compare vis a vis our indigenous people.....but we shouldn't, I don't think, get defensive about BBB marking this stunningly important anniversary.
I can remember the referendum, although I was a kid, and can recall being stunned that aboriginal people had not always had the same status as other Australians.
I am never defensive. But there was an attempt at guarded warning that I still feel the need to emphasise. I'm a big boy deb and half reasonably intlelligent. If I didn't like what I read i'd turn the damn computer off.
I dont remember the vote at all. 67 was a huge drought year.
Chris Thorne, who took a lead role in the play I linked to is a friend of mine. (a friend of many) He does the most remarkable things with pant and natural materials.
Below is the only online representation of Chris' paintings that I can find.
http://www.afmelbourne.asn.au/AllianceMagAugSept06.pdf
Honoured at last: Aboriginal war heroes
Honoured at last: Aboriginal war heroes whose only reward was discrimination and prejudice
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 02 June 2007
Independent UK
A rare ceremony to honour Aboriginal war veterans was held in Sydney yesterday, reviving memories of how shabbily they were treated after they had fought for their country.
About 500 Aborigines volunteered for the First World War - a substantial number, given that the black population was just 80,000, and it was only in 1917 that "half-castes" were allowed to enlist. Up to 5,000 indigenous Australians joined up for the Second World War.
They included four brothers who fought in both world wars - and who were from a family recently recognised as having a service record probably unrivalled throughout the Commonwealth. In all, 20 members of the Lovett family, from Victoria, have served Australia - in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and East Timor, as well as in both world wars.
But when Aboriginal servicemen returned, they found that their social and political situations had not changed. They still could not vote, buy property or marry non-Aborigines. They were confined to reservations and church missions. They were turned away from some veterans' clubs, and could not drink in pubs.
Their white counterparts were given plots of land by the government. Blacks were not even allowed to settle on land they once owned, before white Europeans took it from them. Only in 1967 were they classified as citizens of the country they had fought for.
Five of the brothers - Edward, Leonard, Frederick, Herbert and Samuel - volunteered for the Second World War. While on leave, they returned to their community, at Lake Condah, in south-western Victoria. The brothers walked into the local pub, in uniform, and asked for a beer. The landlord refused to serve them.
Their parents, Hannah and James Lovett, had six sons in all. Out of them, Edward, Leonard, Frederick and Herbert fought in the Great War, along with their older brother, Alfred. They saw frontline action in France, Gallipoli and Palestine. Alfred was at the Somme, Leonard at Passchendaele and Edward on the Western Front.
When the Second World War broke out, they all enlisted again, apart from Alfred, who was too old. They were joined by their younger brother, Samuel, who had been too young the first time. The four older men were assigned to garrison and catering units.
All the brothers survived, as did family members who served in subsequent conflicts or, more recently, in peacekeeping duties in East Timor. The 20 include two women, Alice and Pearl. Alice was in the Women's Auxilliary Air Force during the Second World War
Nigel Steel, the chief historian at London's Imperial War Museum, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he knew of no service record to match the Lovetts'.
The family are from the Gunditjmara people, who are known as the "fighting Gunditjmara" because they fought white settlers who occupied their land In the 1830s and 1840s.
The Lake Condah Mission, the Gunditjmara's ancestral land where the brothers grew up, was carved into soldier-settlement blocks after the Second World War. "But my father didn't receive any block - him or his five brothers," according to Johnnie Lovett, Herbert's son. "When he'd finished his service for this country, he was given nothing."
Other Aborigines from their area went to war. They included the army's first indigenous officer, Captain Reg Saunders. Nathan Lovett-Murray, Frederick's great-grandson and an Australian Rules football player, told the Melbourne Age that his grandfather, Stewart Murray, later recounted: "The first time in uniform I felt good and better than in civilian clothes."
Some things have changed. In 2000, Australia's Department of Veteran Affairs renamed the Canberra tower that houses it after the Lovetts. In March this year, the Federal Court gave the Gunditjmara "native title" rights over 140,000 hectares of their former land. That means they can hunt, camp and fish there, as well as look after sacred sites.
Baptising the Lovett Tower, the then governor-general, Sir William Deane, observed: "Until comparatively recent times the approach of our nation's armed forces to indigenous Australians was far from generous. Indeed, too often it was grossly unfair and discriminatory." Sir William noted that Aboriginal soldiers were paid a low wage, or sometimes paid in tobacco or not at all.
The Aboriginal contribution to Australian military history is still not fully acknowledged. On this year's Anzac Day, - 25 April - when the country honours its war dead, indigenous veterans staged their own march through Redfern, Sydney's Aboriginal heartland, in protest at being ignored by veterans' groups.
Yesterday, Aboriginal children and ex-servicemen and women laid wreaths at the city's War Memorial. The New South Wales Education Minister, John Della Bosca, said: "Thousands of indigenous soldiers fought side by side with white Australians on battlegrounds across the world, and this ceremony ... gives us the opportunity to honour those who made the ultimate sacrifice."
Re: Aborigines mark the day they became 'humans'
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:Aborigines mark the day they became 'humans'
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 26 May 2007
Independent UK
Extraordinary though it seems, it was not until 1967 that Australian Aborigines were recognised as citizens of their own country. Before that they were classified as native wildlife, along with kangaroos and koalas.
[......]
This is such an obviously nonsensical headline that no educated person should fall for it - professional victims excepted, judging by some posts here.
The 1967 referendum simply asked whether Aborigines' population statistics should be removed from the responsibility of the several States of Australia to the national statistical office - not a word about declassifying those Aborigines from the koalas / kangaroos categories, btw.
dadpad wrote:I am never defensive. But there was an attempt at guarded warning that I still feel the need to emphasise. I'm a big boy deb and half reasonably intlelligent. If I didn't like what I read i'd turn the damn computer off.
I dont remember the vote at all. 67 was a huge drought year.
Chris Thorne, who took a lead role in the play I linked to is a friend of mine. (a friend of many) He does the most remarkable things with pant and natural materials.
Below is the only online representation of Chris' paintings that I can find.
http://www.afmelbourne.asn.au/AllianceMagAugSept06.pdf
I know nothing of paintings but plenty of statistics, and think you're right - nobody except the hysteric in the original article here remembers said referendum for reasons made abundantly clear in my previous post.
Re: Honoured at last: Aboriginal war heroes
BumbleBeeBoogie wrote:Honoured at last: Aboriginal war heroes whose only reward was discrimination and prejudice
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 02 June 2007
Independent UK
A rare ceremony to honour Aboriginal war veterans was held in Sydney yesterday, reviving memories of how shabbily they were treated after they had fought for their country.
About 500 Aborigines volunteered for the First World War - a substantial number, given that the black population was just 80,000, and it was only in 1917 that "half-castes" were allowed to enlist. Up to 5,000 indigenous Australians joined up for the Second World War.
They included four brothers who fought in both world wars - and who were from a family recently recognised as having a service record probably unrivalled throughout the Commonwealth. In all, 20 members of the Lovett family, from Victoria, have served Australia - in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and East Timor, as well as in both world wars.
But when Aboriginal servicemen returned, they found that their social and political situations had not changed. They still could not vote, buy property or marry non-Aborigines. They were confined to reservations and church missions. They were turned away from some veterans' clubs, and could not drink in pubs.
Their white counterparts were given plots of land by the government. Blacks were not even allowed to settle on land they once owned, before white Europeans took it from them. Only in 1967 were they classified as citizens of the country they had fought for.
Five of the brothers - Edward, Leonard, Frederick, Herbert and Samuel - volunteered for the Second World War. While on leave, they returned to their community, at Lake Condah, in south-western Victoria. The brothers walked into the local pub, in uniform, and asked for a beer. The landlord refused to serve them.
Their parents, Hannah and James Lovett, had six sons in all. Out of them, Edward, Leonard, Frederick and Herbert fought in the Great War, along with their older brother, Alfred. They saw frontline action in France, Gallipoli and Palestine. Alfred was at the Somme, Leonard at Passchendaele and Edward on the Western Front.
When the Second World War broke out, they all enlisted again, apart from Alfred, who was too old. They were joined by their younger brother, Samuel, who had been too young the first time. The four older men were assigned to garrison and catering units.
All the brothers survived, as did family members who served in subsequent conflicts or, more recently, in peacekeeping duties in East Timor. The 20 include two women, Alice and Pearl. Alice was in the Women's Auxilliary Air Force during the Second World War
Nigel Steel, the chief historian at London's Imperial War Museum, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he knew of no service record to match the Lovetts'.
The family are from the Gunditjmara people, who are known as the "fighting Gunditjmara" because they fought white settlers who occupied their land In the 1830s and 1840s.
The Lake Condah Mission, the Gunditjmara's ancestral land where the brothers grew up, was carved into soldier-settlement blocks after the Second World War. "But my father didn't receive any block - him or his five brothers," according to Johnnie Lovett, Herbert's son. "When he'd finished his service for this country, he was given nothing."
Other Aborigines from their area went to war. They included the army's first indigenous officer, Captain Reg Saunders. Nathan Lovett-Murray, Frederick's great-grandson and an Australian Rules football player, told the Melbourne Age that his grandfather, Stewart Murray, later recounted: "The first time in uniform I felt good and better than in civilian clothes."
Some things have changed. In 2000, Australia's Department of Veteran Affairs renamed the Canberra tower that houses it after the Lovetts. In March this year, the Federal Court gave the Gunditjmara "native title" rights over 140,000 hectares of their former land. That means they can hunt, camp and fish there, as well as look after sacred sites.
Baptising the Lovett Tower, the then governor-general, Sir William Deane, observed: "Until comparatively recent times the approach of our nation's armed forces to indigenous Australians was far from generous. Indeed, too often it was grossly unfair and discriminatory." Sir William noted that Aboriginal soldiers were paid a low wage, or sometimes paid in tobacco or not at all.
The Aboriginal contribution to Australian military history is still not fully acknowledged. On this year's Anzac Day, - 25 April - when the country honours its war dead, indigenous veterans staged their own march through Redfern, Sydney's Aboriginal heartland, in protest at being ignored by veterans' groups.
Yesterday, Aboriginal children and ex-servicemen and women laid wreaths at the city's War Memorial. The New South Wales Education Minister, John Della Bosca, said: "Thousands of indigenous soldiers fought side by side with white Australians on battlegrounds across the world, and this ceremony ... gives us the opportunity to honour those who made the ultimate sacrifice."
I listened to a great radio program about those brothers....with interviews with families and all.
It's unbelievable that four of them made it through BOTH wars pretty much unscathed....(the youngest did not go to WW I, and the eldest did not go to WW II) only to be denied soldier settler benefits TO THEIR OWN COUNTRY!
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