issue #4
January 2016
www.facebook.com/blacknationsrising
a day to mourn a day to fight not a day to celebrate
ISSUE 3
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Photo credit: Marcus Salvagno
contents A year of resistance
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Who am I and what does it mean? - Dale Ruska
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Our communities need to stay open - Isabel Richards
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The abuse of Aboriginal women via racialized and gendered discourses - Dr Chelsea Bond
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Warrior Profile - Cameron Manning Brown
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Food is medicine: Decolonise your diet - Jade Slockee
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We are survival - Neil Morris
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Black Nations Rising (BNR) magazine is published by Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) in both print and online. If you would like to contribute &/or subsribe to BNR send an email to blacknationsrising@gmail.com We thank all who have made this publication a reality; the writers, photographers, and artists, along with the organizations assisting with printing and distribution.
Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy Community Food Program Inc National Tertiary Education Union
Co-editors: Pekeri Ruska, Jarrod Hughes, Anita Goon Wymarra and Callum Clayton-Dixon
Queensland Council of Unions
Printing/ Distribution Coordinator: Merinda Meredith
United Voice
Layout/ Design: Tahnee Edwards
Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance
Front cover illustration: Jade Slockee 2
PRINTED AND/OR DISTRIBUTED BY:
B LA C K N AT I O N S R I S I N G
Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Inc
A YEAR OF RESISTANCE IN REVIEW 12 Aboriginal #ActsOfResistance that made 2015 1.
For the Aboriginal community, January 26 marks the beginning of our political calendar. On Invasion Day 2015, Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) organized Melbourne’s biggest rally in years and led a march that crashed the city’s Australia day parade.
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Black Nations Rising (BNR) magazine, the new national Aboriginal activist publication, launched at the end of January. Over the course of 2015, WAR has printed and distributed thousands of copies nationally. #ResistReviveDecolonize
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Protests against the forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities swept the nation and the globe. From the country towns to the cities, the Aboriginal community mobilized in numbers not seen for decades. The Brisbane Blacks gridlocked the CBD and occupied City Hall in response to poor media coverage of the issue.
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WAR activists burned Australian flags in the face of a racist ‘Reclaim Australia’ rally in Melbourne. National Party MP George Christensen claimed burning the Australian flag was racist, a claim rejected by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
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Adam Goodes and Lewis Jetta demonstrated how cultural revival and expression is a form of resistance in the sports arena with their Aboriginal war dance.
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Aboriginal Provisional Government (APG) delegates travelled to the Solomon Islands to develop relations with the West Papuan independence movement. Solomon Islands customs officials stamped their Aboriginal passports on entry and exit from Honiara.
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Spearheaded by Grandmothers Against Removals (GMAR), the campaign to combat the ongoing stolen generations continued to grow in strength.
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The Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy (RATE) continued to occupy The Block until September, forcing action from both the Federal Government and the Aboriginal Housing Company on demands for affordable Aboriginal housing.
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The SEED Indigenous youth climate network actively fought the push to build the world’s biggest coal port on the Great Barrier Reef, and led the Brisbane/ Melbourne Peoples’ Climate March in November.
Occupying Brisbane City Hall
Stamps in Aboriginal passport from Solomon Islands
Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Jenny Munro
SEED lead People’s Climate March, Brisbane
10. An Aboriginal activist made headlines after flouting compulsory voting laws in Queensland, arguing it was their religious obligation as an Aboriginal person not to participate in Australian electoral process. 11. Gamilaraay land-defenders took a stand on the frontline of the fight against coal seam gas mining in the Pilliga forest, Gamilaraay country. #GamilMeansNO 12. The Aboriginal movement continued to build momentum and common ground in our opposition to the Australian government funded push for Constitutional recognition. #GamilMeansNO
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Who am I and what does it mean? Dale Ruska, Goenpul
From my bloodline and the families to which it is connected, the families which culturally and socially embraced me throughout my life, I am connected to the belonging to an identity. This identity is that of a first, original people who are connected to a land and its environment, from a time of ancient occupation. From this ancient connection, we developed a sophisticated system of culture and law that ensured our ability to exist with sustainable cohesion and balance. From this ancient connection to place, its people, culture and law, I inherit moral responsibilities and obligations of principle. Within my lifetime, and the lifetimes of the people to which my life is directly connected, involves the inheritance of further moral responsibilities and obligations to address the devastating consequences caused from European arrival and colonization of our place. This colonization and all of the severe destruction it caused for our people and place resulted in extreme negative consequences for many generations that remain unaddressed. From my lifetime, I can accept and respect the value and importance of responsibilities and obligations, resulting from connection to an identity and a place to which I belong. From my appreciation, devotion, accepting and respecting, I inherit recognition from the lives and lifetimes of the families and peoples to which my life is connected through belonging. From my belonging and connection to a people, identity and place, I am able to accept the true value of my life’s worth and 4
the importance of that worth to the original people and place, of the past, at present and into the future. I can accept that my life’s priorities are to all that are involved with my identity and my belonging involves my responsibilities and obligations to my identities originality. I accept the value and worth of originality and I accept the value and worth of the people and place to which my life is connected. Colonial history, involving foreign occupation and forced control of my people and place has been a reality for around 10 generations, or just over 200 years. This very small historical period of my identities occupation in time, involves real abusive, inhumane genocidal circumstances which have resulted in undeniable, unquestionable, devastation and destruction of the people and places to which my life is connected. Forceful colonial occupation and control facilitated through brutal undignified subjection has misled us to believe in and accept the unauthorized colonial law and its systems and their government’s administration of our lands and ourselves. This colonial system has no acceptance and respect for the meaning of my originality, especially to the ancient worth value of the people and places to which I am connected through belonging. The colonial system attempts to force me to accept that the value and costs of the devastation of destruction inflicted was a historical necessity, essential for the colonial development of the colonial founded country of Australia. In other words, be regarded as worthless Australian colonial collateral damages.
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The colonial systems inhumane brutality, oppressive policies and administrations have misled us to accept its supremacy and legal authority, causing us to become socially compliant. Throughout colonial history, small advancements have occurred from the efforts of the people’s original identity, causing change within the colonial system and its law, but only advancements that are acceptable to colonial authority and only ones that ensure we remain compliant. Today many of the people belonging to the original identity teach and action from the emotional state of forced compliance, under the belief that we can only make things better for our place and ourselves by changing the colonial system. Through this belief, we spend further lifetimes trying to accomplish improved change. We have allowed ourselves to believe through confusion that we have responsibilities and obligations to change the system and we willingly participate in the systems processes. We have endeavored for generations, trying to have our identity and our original entitlements recognized by colonial law and its legal systems. We have to prove and justify our identity and its connection to place and to accept and comply with the systems process, values and outcomes. For many, maintaining the value of their connection to their original identity was something that the colonial system deprived them of, through policies of forced removal and deliberate displacement. For many, simply identifying with the original identity becomes an issue of social selfchoice and many choose to disconnect. We now see situations where many whom were forcefully disconnected, spend much
lifetime effort to reconnect through their want of belonging. We are experiencing another extremely difficult situation where we have those who have always been connected and those that were forcefully disconnected and desire nothing more than to reconnect. It is this part of the original identity who have had to face the hardship and struggles of social trauma, who highly value the importance of their identities originality. Then there is having to accept those that chose to disconnect and are now able to reconnect only from a point of convenience and self-desire and interest in opportunity. We participate through proclaimed representation and we accept the disproportionate economic benefits that the system is willing to offer us. We participate in industries that are destructive and pursue opportunity of economic benefit and greater employment as a means of improved change. We willingly participate in the planning and facilitation of administration, destroying the lands and environments to which our original identity is connected. For the sake of our own individual social economic comfort and security, we use the value of our identity as moral justification of our entitlement and forgo our identities ancient responsibilities and obligations to place and the people to which our lives will be connected, which are still yet to live. Throughout ancient times, original peoples cultural and social organization and order was maintained by the respect, devotion and commitment to the principles of ancient law. Cultural/social entitlements and status were determined through bloodline as well as devotion and commitment. People’s entitlement was earned through completion of customary rituals testing cultural commitment and devotion to the principles through initiation ceremonies. Throughout more recent times of colonial occupation, people’s cultural and social organization order and place was determined from devotion and commitment to the people and the struggle for proper justice. From this period, the term, ‘you need to walk the walk before you can talk the talk’ was established. Today, having commitment and devotion to the ancient principles, people and struggle or walking the walk is not necessarily for many who talk the talk. Rights and entitlements can
Dale Ruska and his great-grandfather, Alfred Moreton, One Mile,1967
simply be claimed from having a bloodline connection to original people and earned from the convenience of choice. My lifetime’s appreciation, respect and acceptance of belonging to an original identity gives me understanding of my true value and meaning and clearly defines my truthful, righteous reason. My lifetime is a microscopically small part, through belonging, of an identities existence. I understand from my connection to a people’s identity and that identities belonging to place, what has allowed for this ancient connection to occur in harmony. A balanced cohesion with place is the identities principal acceptance and respect of ancient law obligations and importance of the sacredness of place and belonging. Our identities ancient generational cultural acceptance, a practice, connected to place and belonging defines the identities obligations and individual lifetime responsibility to protect and try to ensure the natural preservation of place. This is so that the lifetimes connected, that are still yet to live (the children and the unborn), can experience, enjoy, value and appreciate the place to which their identity will be connected. I am not obligated to accept my original identities compliant place through ISSUE 4
participation in colonial Australia’s future legal developments. I am obligated to my people and place of which my life is connected through bloodline to original identity and highly respect and appreciate the true value and meaning of my identities original worth. I feel morally sound, regarding the principles of my ancient cultural connectedness. I can accept the importance of ancient obligations and responsibilities to the originality of my identity and I can appreciate the true value of my life worth. I know that my lifetime will become merely but a few sentences, within the many moral encyclopedia of my identities dreamtime stories. I will uphold and teach my young to uphold the responsibilities of ancient principles and obligation. I will fully respect the entitlements of the lives that are yet to be connected (the children and the unborn). I will not allow myself to commence writing the beginning of the end of an ancient identities dreamtime story. Who am I and what is my truthful, righteous, reason and meaning? I am a part of an ancient bloodline belonging to and connected to an original identity and place. I am very privileged and proud, I am a Goenpul Goori.
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Our communities need to stay open Isabel Richards, Gubrun
My name is Isabel and I come from Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia. I am a Gubrun woman and my family have always lived on this, our traditional, cultural and spiritual country. Over the years we have watched blackfellas moved off of their traditional lands and into our town. We have seen how these people are affected and how they have struggled to cope with being discriminated against by the white community.
end up sleeping on the street, or roughing it out bush. In a town where temperatures can reach up to 40 degrees in the summer months and in the winter down to 5 degrees, our people are living out in the open or in what are really ‘white fella’ humpies. In fact, in the past, Aboriginal people in Kalgoorlie-Boulder have frozen to death in the winter, or will commit crimes just so they can go to jail to have somewhere warm to live.
provides them with decent housing, or assists them to get jobs and help them to become happy, safe, secure and productive community members. The Western Australian government does not value the opinions of the Aboriginal people living in these remote areas. Nor do they involve them in finding better solutions for the situation. They do not care about what they think or feel about their lives and their future in their country.
For people like us, who live where the effects of government policies are felt in real terms, every day, every week and every year, you get used to it. When we heard of proposed plans to close our remote Aboriginal communities, for the reasons of being uneconomically viable and other reasons such as children with sexually transmitted diseases and children not attending school, our first reaction was ‘well here we go again, nothing changes’.
Over time, the Kalgoorlie-Boulder city council decided to do something about these ‘transient’ Aboriginal people and they built camps outside of town. With its shed like humpies, running taps and toilets, the site became known to locals as ‘Silver City’ because of the corrugated tin buildings.
The local Aboriginal community are frustrated with the Western Australian government, and their unwillingness to have open and honest discussions with their people. According to some community members the facts are simple; the Governments both State and Commonwealth do not want to ‘deal’ with the Aboriginal people coming into the town from these remote communities. They continue to look for the answers to these problems without talking to Aboriginal people and so no matter what they do, without input, involvement and the participation of all Aboriginal people in the town they will continue to fail our people.
Over the years, Kalgoorlie-Boulder has struggled to accommodate the influx of homeless traditional Aboriginal people. Many come to Kalgoorlie due to family and cultural reasons, for specialised health care appointments or sometimes just because they have nowhere else to go. Sadly not all people coming into the town have a place to stay, so as a result they
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Throughout the years, this Camp has experienced various socio-economic issues such as alcoholism, family violence, sexual assaults and poverty, which has left Aboriginal people who choose to stay there feeling unsafe. They provide this camp for our people but I ask “would they expect white people to live here?” If not, why is it acceptable for our people and for us to be so grateful for these ‘white fella humpies’? No one asks our people what they want, what their dreams are, where they want to live, what they want for their children. No one
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We the people who have lived in Kalgoorlie, going back into time, have seen and heard it all and have become numb. We have seen our people moved off their traditional homelands and onto
Photo credit: Marcus Salvagno
our lands. We have seen our people living on the fringes of the town and in the parks. We have seen the hopelessness, sadness and loss of cultural identity. We have seen the alcoholism, drug use and violence. We have seen the truancy of the children through lack of homes and family life. We have seen them being dirty and hungry and either hot or cold with no shelter. We have seen the way the white people treat them, as if they are little kids who need to be looked after and are told what to do and how they have to live their lives. We have seen them lose their connection to their heart, their spirit and their country. We have seen the loss of their cultural laws and protocols resulting in the very dire social problems stemming from lack of respect for themselves as well as for others. The loss of living by their cultural norms and laws and having to live in a white man’s world. We have seen the council build tin shacks for them to live in and then say to them, “look at what we have done for you, you
should be grateful.” We have seen new governments come and go and have heard their promises time after time, who continually use Aboriginal people as political scapegoats because they are the least able to fight back. So when we say that we are numb, it is because we have seen it all. We feel powerless to help or do anything for our people. But now things are changing, people are standing up and are protesting. As many as two hundred people turned out in Kalgoorlie to protest because unfortunately, Kalgoorlie-Boulder is just one of towns that will be directly affected if these proposed closures go ahead. During the rally, Aboriginal elders spoke passionately about the importance of land and cultural connection, but many just wanted to show their support to the people who would lose their homes, their country and vital connection. We now see all of our blackfellas in places like Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and all of the small towns like Port Lincoln, Warrnambool and other places across
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Australia as well as the world, marching in protest of the closing of our communities. Communities where our people live, work, have families, build lives, go to school, enjoy their culture and where their families have died and are buried. We now read on social media the messages of support and encouragement from blackfellas across this country, to stand up and be counted. To show the government who we are, where we come from and that we will not be silenced. We are being awakened to the knowledge that we too have rights, just like all Australians. We have every right to expect that the government will provide us with all of the things that we need to be productive, happy, healthy and safe, where we choose to live and whatever we choose to do. We also have the right to show Australia that we are here, that we belong here, that this is our land, our country, our place and we will be heard, because our people matter.”
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The abuse of Aboriginal women via racialized and gendered discourses Dr Chelsea Bond, Munanjahli
…the overwhelming evidence and the experience of Aboriginal women points to the fact that Aboriginal women remain discriminated against due to their race rather than their gender. For example, a cosmetically apparent Aboriginal woman is regularly stereotyped on the basis of being a boong, coon, nigger, gin or abo far in excess of being a “woman”. (Huggins, 1998:25)
As a Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman, I’m troubled by public discourses about Aboriginal women, and how we come to be ‘known’ almost exclusively via the abuses inflicted upon our bodies by our own men. Aboriginal women’s bodies are positioned discursively in relation to Aboriginal men to reinforce hierarchical relationships of race and gender which serve to benefit white men and white women; thus constituting another form of abuse on our bodies. This article was inspired by my frustrations as a black woman, but also informed by the critical works of black women including Moreton-Robinson, Huggins, Behrendt, Lorde and Crenshaw. I write this article not just as a black woman; I write as the daughter of a black man, the wife of a black man, and as a mother of 4 black sons, each of which have had no hand in my oppression as a black woman. I write this not to absolve black men of their complicity in the oppression of women (black or white), but instead to interrogate the ways in which black women’s bodies are used and abused by those who are proclaiming to protect us. In the early 1990s, Bidjara woman Jackie Huggins along with a group of Aboriginal women challenged white anthropologist Diane Bell’s proclamation that Aboriginal intra racial rape was “everyone’s business” (Bell & Nelson, 1989). Huggins (1991) questioned the process by which Bell authorised her claim to speak on behalf of Aboriginal women and her failure to
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recognise how such sensitive matters are politicised in order to justify the oppression of Aboriginal people. Ironically Bell remained defiant and justified the subjugation of Huggins and the other “urban” Aboriginal women’s complaint through her concern for Aboriginal women. Fast forward to 2006, and another white woman speaks up about the horrific violence inflicted upon Aboriginal women and children across the Northern Territory on ABC’s Lateline (Graham, 2012). Central Australian Prosecutor Nanette Rogers highlighted shocking cases of sexual abuse which sparked intense and sustained media interest in the abuse of Aboriginal women and children. This in turn inspired the Northern Territory Inquiry into the abuse of Aboriginal children, and of course the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention. In these two examples, we witness the privileging of white women as ‘knowers’ who are benevolent to the plight of black women, while remaining indifferent to their own privilege and the dehumanisation of black men. Here white women align themselves with black women under the guise of protection when in fact the real alliance is with sustaining white control and undermining Aboriginal emancipation. The moral concerns of white women for black women’s bodies is revealing in terms of their silence on other matters. For instance, during Tony Abbott’s time in opposition and as PM, he made many sexist ‘gaffes’ which riled the sisterhood,
including noting a female candidate’s “sex appeal”, the ironing housewives of Australia, and Winkgate. Yet when Abbott addressed the Garma Festival declaring that Aboriginal women were “cowering in their huts” from their violent black spouses, the sisterhood was silent. Blogger The Koori Woman (2013) noted the feminist outrage about the low number of women in Abbott’s ministry, which was accompanied by their complete silence about the absence of women of colour altogether. Former PM Julia Gillard passionately and eloquently described how sexism had reared its ugly head during her term as PM in her infamous “misogyny speech” where she defended her qualification to run the country. Yet sadly, Gillard had no problem continuing policies that denied Aboriginal women the right to run their own household affairs.
colonial literature to white men’s desire for “black velvet” and “gin jockeys”, there remains a collective amnesia about the sexual abuse and exploitation of Aboriginal women and children at the hands of white men including by those deemed to protect us under the mission and reserve system. In focusing on the brutality of Aboriginal society, the abuse of Aboriginal women as domestics at the hands of white women could also be reconfigured as a civilising deed. Former MP Gary Johns’ recent calls for stricter controls over the lives of Aboriginal people was premised on his apparent concern for black women’s bodies who he suggested were forced by our men to reproduce for welfare benefits (Bond, 2015). Johns proclaimed to be protecting Aboriginal women by referring to us as “cash cows” on national television.
The construction of Aboriginal women as victims who need saving from ourselves, our men and our culture is nothing new. Anthropologist Phyllis Kayberry noted how early anthropologists (mostly white men) depicted Aboriginal women as “nothing more than domesticated cows” (2004). Early anthropological accounts ignored the role that Aboriginal women held and focused on the brutality of traditional Aboriginal society evidenced by the mistreatment of Aboriginal women and our apparent sexual promiscuity. These narratives proved useful for white men, as it justified the sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women and children on the frontier and beyond. Despite various references in
In the colonial context, Aboriginal women’s bodies have always been required to service white men and white women, domestically and sexually, so it is hardly surprising that our bodies are being used to service white people politically. In Aboriginal society, indeed we had different roles as men and women, but I can’t find evidence from Aboriginal people that one gender role was subservient to the other; they were simply different. I concede that some of our men have made white male patriarchy work for them and convinced themselves that the submissive Aboriginal woman is “our way”. Funnily
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enough many of those brothers tend to be married to white women. I have yet to encounter a sister who was “cowering in her hut”. In the community contexts I’ve lived and worked, it has been the women who are holding their families and communities together, who are leading and engaged in the most vigorous forms of warriorship. I cannot subscribe to the trope of the oppressed, abused and mute Aboriginal woman that white men and women seem to delight in speaking for. I am not suggesting that abuse is not an experience faced by Aboriginal women; rather I’m refuting the notion that if reflects the core truths of our capabilities as Aboriginal women, Aboriginal men or Aboriginal communities. Moreton-Robinson states “all contexts are racialized just as they are gendered” (2015, p 98) and thus as a black woman I cannot disentangle racism from feminism, as they operate in tandem to control and curtail the possibilities for black women in this country. I concede that for those who are not visibly read as ‘raced’, that gender may hold primacy in one’s emancipatory work. And, I concede that for those whose gender is privileged that race may be the axis on which their decolonizing work takes place. However I argue that our liberation requires recognition of and resistance to the ways in which both race and gender operate discursively for black men and black women in justifying ongoing colonial control over our lives and our lands. That indeed is “everyone’s business”.
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warrior profile Cameron Manning Brown, Gomeroi
Why did you get active and involved?
Who’s your mob and where are you from? My mob is Gomeroi. I was born and raised in Muloobinba (Newcastle NSW). How are you involved in Aboriginal resistance? I am involved in Aboriginal resistance through attending protests, through educating my people about our history and culture, and just representing my mob wherever I go. I am a Youth Worker and I work with a lot of Koori youth. I see one of my main roles as educating youth about our people. I endeavour to be a proud, strong Aboriginal role model for them, I try to promote positive change. I believe that we need to educate our people about our history and our struggle, as this will make us better equipped to unite and stand up against the racist
colonial system. I believe that we need to get back to our culture and learn as much as we can about what we still have left. A goal of mine is to learn as much as I can about my Gomeroi language and culture, and teach this to younger generations of Gomeroi people. I see this as a practical way of being involved in Aboriginal resistance. I also maintain my connection to my culture with my tattoos. I have many Aboriginal tattoos, which represent my journey, my dreaming stories and my connection to my Gomeroi people and to the Awabakal people whose lands I have lived on my whole life.
Photo credit: Tattooist Lou Tatulu Conlon 10
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I think I have a responsibility as a young Aboriginal person to be on the frontline fighting for our rights and educating our people. As Aboriginal people, we are born into the struggle. We are faced with discrimination and racism from day one, as we are born into a society that does not value our culture or us. I think it is important for us to maintain and revive our culture, instead of being assimilated into the colonial state. Why is it important that other Aboriginal people get involved in the causes you stand for? We need to fight for a common goal and liberate ourselves collectively. Our people have achieved goals in the past through coming together and fighting as a united front. Division within our community will only cause us to go backwards, and this is what the oppressor wants to happen. We must stand tall and fight against the injustices being committed against our people.
Photo credit: Barbara McGrady
What do you see as the biggest issues facing Aboriginal people today? I see the destruction of our land as a big issue facing our people, our culture and our identity, especially from large mining companies. This leads to feelings of worthlessness and of not being valued as people, which can lead to suicide. Aboriginal youth suicide rates are some of the highest in the world and this is an issue which is largely ignored in the mainstream media.
What have you learnt from your old people that you would like to share with others? I have learned to be patient and to stay grounded. My aunties and uncles have taught me to be proud, to stand strong and to not let people put you down for who you are. I see many young Aboriginal people these days not having strong Aboriginal role models around them to teach them good values and about our culture. That’s why I feel it is very important for me to do all I can to help educate our people. I’ve learnt a lot of the knowledge I now have from my elders and Aboriginal activists.
January 26, what does it mean to you? It really annoys me when I hear other Aboriginal people calling Invasion Day “Australia Day”. We are not part of their colonial nation, nor did we ever intend to be part of it. We are a sovereign people with our own law, culture, religion and language. I find it totally offensive when non-Aboriginal people refer to our people as “Aboriginal Australians”. What even is an “Australian”? What is their culture? I have my own culture, my own law, my own language that was here long before the term “Australia” was even thought of. I am Gomeroi and that is my nationality.
What are your hopes for the future of Aboriginal people? An ideal future for our people would be for us to assert our rights as the sovereigns of this land, for our children to have better opportunities than our generation and previous generations, for our land to be protected from mining and destruction, and our culture to be revived and maintained. Photo credit: Eva Manning Brown ISSUE 4
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roo stir fry Jade Slockee, Gumbaynggirr
Ingredients t 500gm kangaroo fillet, sliced into strips t 1x onion, sliced t 4x cloves garlic, chopped t 1x large carrot, sliced in thin circles t 1x medium sized bunch of broccoli, cut into small trees t 1x bunch of bok choy, rinsed and separated t 10x small button mushrooms, halved t 1x handful raw cashew nuts t 1x heaped tablespoon corn flour t 1x half tsp honey t 1x tsp cracked black pepper t 1x tsp fish sauce t 3x tblsp reduced salt light soy sauce t 2 ½ x tblsp oyster sauce t 1x tsp reduced salt chicken stock powder mixed with 50ml water t 1x tblsp sesame seed oil t Steamed brown rice to serve
Method 1.
In a small bowl combine soy sauce and corn flour to form a paste.
2.
Pour this mixture onto the kangaroo strips and marinate for up to 20 minutes.
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Heat half of the oil in a wok on high heat.
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Add half the amount of garlic.
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Then stir fry the kangaroo strips in two batches very quickly until the strips are just seared on the outside, remove and set aside.
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Heat remaining oil in pan.
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Stir fry the rest of the garlic and onions and fry for one minute.
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Stir through then cashews then add the broccoli and carrots, stir fry for two minutes.
9.
Add mushrooms, bok choy stalks, fish sauce, soy, honey and lastly the chicken stock mixture and stir.
10. Return kangaroo strips to pan along with bok choy leaves and oyster sauce and heat through. 11. Sprinkle with pepper and serve with steamed rice.
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Why Kangaroo is such a good meat to eat Jade Slockee, Gumbaynggirr
The cattle industry has played a big part in the devastation of Aboriginal lands all over the continent. Aboriginal people and native animals were moved off their land so hooved animals could graze and destroy the natural soil and water ways. Cattle expel large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Kangaroos, on the other hand, produce very little of it. Kangaroos also have less impact on the land compared to cattle and use less water. The hooves of cattle causes land degradation and increases soil erosion. Kangaroo meat is a good source of high-quality protein with less than 2% fat and is also a good source of omega 3, iron, zinc and B vitamins. All kangaroo meat sold at supermarkets comes from kangaroos harvested from the wild. It is game food that is hunted seasonally instead of inhumane factory farming. It is a meat that is free from antibiotics, added growth hormones and chemicals. It is the ultimate clean meat – the way we were meant to eat it.
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We are survival Neil Morris, Yorta Yorta
Over 228 years, we know the storyline. The stories of unabated, unaccounted for crimes
They aren’t designed for the survival of you and me my brothers and sisters and never will.
We know over this span, horrendous thunders have downpoured
And in fact they aren’t truly designed for the survival of their own designers.
Like a canister of cancer waved around over our heads,
They are perishables factories of hysterical babbled languages of societal delusion ill fitting, ill produced blueprints illegible.
Pillaged and plundered. A thunderous wave of decimation, severely reduced in numbers Nearly whipped from the lands of sacred pulse. We have been. The hands of sacred pulse. We be. We the custodians of, stood tortured. Ancestors gaze looking deep into the abyss of executionists crazed Weapon wielding, yet we have - submit never. Face of being, taken into custody ruthlessly, morosely. Guns poked, women groped. Genocide. Attempts to have mob captivated by Western ropes. Noose choke, new scopes, new hopes, but hoping for what? Gap closed? Spirit hosed down With an elixir of attempts to, induce lust for these ivory tower desires, Forged in tainted poisoned grounds by Charlatans, upper crust, upper echelon ? Prozac propaganda - concepts of material status quo? Imperialistic definitions of Success? Defined as the Australian dream? Illegal alien teams deludedly devised those schemes. Most certainly, They aren’t designed for the longevity,
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True spirit. Not found in those faulty counterfeit designs. Of conveyor belt fabricated lifestyles, synthetic canvass. A ticking time bomb Plague - Already escaped upon the veins of this deceit - barren empire ff greed, separation, detonator set, unraveling. Explosions already happening.
No ripeness, no fruit. Decimator of life. Detonator. Trife We are tiles of the floor of sacred lands. We are lined on every beaches sacred sands, We are nourishing every drop of water with our sacred plans We merge with air that pulse through sacred sites through to urban constructed spaces, For we are not Australian and their are none, We are the dreaming, we flow, we breath, we are breath, we survived always will we are this land, this land is us. When this illusory dream, capitalistic imperial death falls away, rusted Requiem sung, ready for readjustment.
This is not our place, this false castle of Imperialism, this crumbling counterfeit palace, so called Australia.
We will already be aligned. In the next phase,
Let our faces go not blue under the southern cross, crown constitution Illegal dotted lines signed are not the grounds of any solution.
As we always have been destined to, for we are dreaming - And that is why we will always survive.
A ground song, dirt, ochre, totem, plants, animals we inhale - Mix in spirit turn to sacred flame, Eucalyptus leaf, open heart. Release, Its so simple and plain Brothers, sisters, you smell that raw aroma of beginning - you feeling the aura of spinning dream cycles leap into the atmosphere. Dreaming habits, inhabit here We have it here smeared upon us Even in these modern scraps of mother that have been laundered, That have tried to trap us in this here modern ‘lifestyle’ rife lies, styled as life
B LA C K N AT I O N S R I S I N G
Human subsistence,
We don’t need any revival. We have never been taken under - we are survival each and every day From so called January 26th, through and back again Through these illusory western frames our spirit breath through - Our spirit dream through the concrete, the bricks mortar, This be sacred altars. Every speck of this Land It will never die, nor shall we, we are Survival.
CHAINS OR
CHANGE ISSUE 4
15
On 26 January 1938, the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA) declared a Day of Mourning and held a conference and protest, ‘against the callous treatment of our people by the whiteman during the past 150 years.’ The ‘Australian Abo Call, a voice of the Aborigines’ newspaper published the proceedings and here is what they were saying back in 1938, much of it is still very relevant today. We must not forget all that the APA did for our movement. Today we still acknowledge January 26 to be a Day of Mourning.
“Now is the our chance to have things altered. We must fight our very hardest in this cause.” MR DOUG NICHOLLS (VICTORIAN ABORIGINES LEAGUE).
“Nothing done half hearted is a success. We should all work together to arouse the mind of the white men and women of Australia to our awful conditions.” MR JOHNSON (BATEMAN’S BAY), VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE APA.
“White people do not realise the terrible conditions of slavery under which our people live in the outback districts,” MR JACK PATTEN, PRESIDENT OF THE APA.
“Surely the time has come at last for us to do something for ourselves, and make ourselves heard. This is why the Aboriginal Progressive Association has been formed… We do not need Government protection.” MR BILL FERGUSON, SECRETARY OF THE APA.
“All Aboriginal legislation today is intended to drive our people into the aboriginal reserves, where there is no future for them, nothing but disheartenment.” MR BILL FERGUSON, SECRETARY OF THE APA.
“In 150 years the white men have taken away the hunting grounds and camping grounds of our people and left us with nothing. We must have unity among ourselves or we will not succeed in the uplifting of our race,” MR CONNELLY (SOUTH COAST). 16
B L A C K N AT I O N S R I S I N G