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Where are our Cultural Centres?
by Karen Cummins Coghill (Yuggera Gorenpul)
W
hy is it that many Foreign Nationals in our Lands have been allocated a vast array of cultural supports in place but First Nations People have limited or no visible and sustainable Cultural Gathering Places or Centers? In Brisbane, the capital city of Queensland, many will see numerous non-Indigenous community centers, dance/ traditional dance, sporting and culture centers and even residential
customised urban living areas. As a Yuggera Gorenpul woman of Brisbane I am amazed at the extent of non-Indigenous supports in place to retain the foreigner’s cultures at the detriment of First Nations People, we are left to ‘make do’ with the dregs of Western Society. Where are our sporting centers, culturally appropriate healing centres, residential urban living areas, corroboree and initiation places, hunting grounds and social clubs? I have seen Celtic Football Clubs, Croatian Polo Clubs,
Samoan/Polynesian Churches not to mention the fact that when immigrants arrived as refugees, after the World War, foreigners were given areas of lands to sustain their culture while living in Australia - as they continue to do till this very day. In Queensland we have Malany a town dedicated to and drenched in Irish culture and Auchenflower, where all the Germans moved to. Moorooka today has been identified as an area specified to support African refugee nations where the Brisbane City Council has culturally appropriated streets
Karen Cummins Coghill (left) with one of her Mirrabooka Sovereign Sisters. Image supplied
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and libraries towards enhancing African Cultures. Sunnybank is another area identified and culturally modified to suit Asian Nations - all with the full support of the dominant people - the migrants from their mother country, England. Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley has become known internationally for its China Town. We have exhibition grounds for entertainment. The dominant culture also allocates land for dogs and other introduced animals for their sporting and social events. First Nations People have to constantly pleaded with the foreigner to give us land so we as First Nations people can have gatherings, including funerals and wakes, church, corroboree, sporting events and celebrations including christenings, weddings, graduations, Naidoc etc. Not only do we contend with the inter-transgenerational legacy of genocide and other atrocities, we are constantly challenged with the fact that Foreigners and their sovereignty is supported in the lands of Our Ancestors which I might add Our Ancestoral Gardeners/Horticulturalists/ Scientists/Marine Biologists/
Environmentalists/Priests looked after and nurtured since Creation, to now facing the destruction of Our Culture and Our Sovereignty is not supported but replaced with a European tokenistic approach that is not sustainable whatsoever. We are born into these Lands of Our Ancestors, Our Old Ones lived independant of the West and its influences; disease free where Elders Wisdom Keepers instructed the younger how to maintain a cusodial role keeping a wellbalanced living arrangement with Mother Earth and Our Creator. And now compared to thousands of centuries of freedom to live as God created we are now sustaining another man’s livelihood at the expense of Our Own God Given Rich Culture and Lands. We live in housing and pay rent and mortgages to foreigners; we work and pay taxes to Foreigners in Government where First Nations Sovereign People are in no way represented. We attend foreigner’s schools and churches and social clubs all supporting non-indigenous professionals and other workers, We pay superannuation and hope to live to receive Our money from foreigners.
Then when it’s all over we die and still we somehow are paying Foreigners under their system to be buried in Our Own Ancestral Homelands. We truly need to wake up! Our Sovereignty has never been ceded! Still we fight, we challenge and we try to make sense of it all, while our young are targeted by Child Safety and Juvenile Justice; 50% of all children in out of home care are Indigenous in Qld - some jails have over 70% Indigenous inmates and we are definitely over-represented in the criminal justice system. Deaths in custody continue even after a Royal Commission and poverty/unemployment, homelessness and health are serious concerns for our people. And we are only 2.6% of the current population. I hope our people can understand the gross injustice that has occurred and continues to the present day. Please stand up against further invalidation and systemic oppression and speak out. Far too many of our people died and suffered and are still suffering today due to colonisation and its ongoing detrimental effects on the First People of this planet we know and call Mother Earth!
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