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Leadership and followers
Matilda House giving a Welcome to Country address at the Inside Out Forum session at the Tent Embassy site in Canberra. Left to right: Fred and Sharni Hooper, Matilda House, Cheryl Buchanan and Matilda’s grand daughter Tiarna House. Image Rhonda Hagan
by Larita Lara Pullin 8 August 2013
D
ear Mr Hagan. I write, with great respect, to register my disappointment at the headline on leadership in the First Nations Telegraph (29 July). Your article online has attracted excellent contributions from other young, sovereign, original people. My favorite is the wise “ Leaders don’t need or make followers they create more leaders.” And that has been the legacy of our Embassy leaders, many mentioned in your article. We are asserting our old ways and when needed creating new ways of relations within the worlds oldest living culture, not merely copying the whitefella colonizers ways! As a proud Gundungurra woman, and supporter of the tent embassy, I stand for proper recognition of our continuing Sovereignty. I have been blessed by being mentored by many
amazing elders at the Embassy over the past 25 years, and by knowing countless of our people from many nations bringing their stories to Canberra. Ms House is not one of these mentors, and I just cannot agree with your use of her comments as a headline given her antagonism and collusion in the past to close us down, reiterated publicly on every possible occasion. Any point to be made by you was overshadowed by the bias shown in quoting Ms House. In her online womens biography entry she claims she is “one of the original protesters who established the Tent Embassy in 1972, Matilda House is tirelessly involved.” However after the violence back in 2002, after she fire bombed our site, (read it here -http://goo.gl/ VuoB7G ), Ms House didn’t really appear again until after Aunty Isobelle’s passing in late 2012. Ms House, instead of creating
more spite and division, why don’t you stand strong, like most all of the Embassy mob, stand proud for our unity and working together. I fail to see how such behaviour by Ms House, can be considered smart - her words were a nasty ‘put down’ towards those standing up for sovereignty. Nor does it show leadership or ‘elder’ship - teaching isn’t hateful or spiteful. Many respected visitors from other original nations on this occupied continent island have camped on the Embassy site even in recent times since 40th -some very important Sovereignty gatherings have since taken place at the Embassy and will continue to take place - and the important marches organised on Human Rights Day, commemorations be they for warriors like Pemulwuy, Moyangully and others of old, or our modern day warriors we are losing at too fast a rate, the marches to commemorate our people lost Page 1
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to massacres, genocide, stolen children, Mabo, Sovereignty and other days of significance, the march on parliament to support Toomelah elders, marches to oppose mining country, to support Walmadan and the Burrup, the launching of the first nations political party last January, the march to oppose the CONstitutional CON for so called Recognition and serve notice on Parliament and the GG. These are but a few of the many recent events that come to mind on quick reflection which we have had on site recently- apart from our recent active engagement with the Inside Out Forum - so I feel it is important to ask whose agendas are being serviced by Ms Houses comments? Mr Hagan, you are in a unique position to educate and inform others of that bigger picture which may have been overshadowed by paying undue attention to Ms Houses comment, or to one possibly mis interpreted or ill informed comment from the participants. When I for one have only see Ms House at the Embassy since Aunty passed, and when there is gubbament or media presence. She was very quick to call for shutting us down again after the 40th protests (http://goo.gl/FiaBZ) unlike Mr Hagan and the respected elders and activists who were with us at the 40th. Think hard and let the facts of what we do speak for themselves. Things are rarely what they appear when it comes to our Embassy and continuing our
struggle. Even government bodies like Congress and many other groups are quick to utilse the site for their media and consultation. I am sure Mr Hagan that you mean well by raising an issue that concerns many of us, about the desperate needs of homeless and dispossessed on the site. Neither of our Uncle Kev’s (Gilbert or Buzzacott) nor Aunty Issa herself, turned these people away - we can all say we share that plight of dispossession. The Embassy represents those people and the forgotten amongst us with pride and strength. Ms House has always maintained we were an eyesore, to which Aunty Issa always answered with great dignity: As long as our peoples live without proper housing, sanitation and so on, this place will reflect their living conditions, not a sanitized white version of an assimilated black. Ms Houses comments were not well intended - of that I am sure. Mr Hagan - please have another look at Ms Houses history of involvement in the Embassy - it is negative and violent. Who’s interests does this serve? I am sure it is not our unity and common black interests and aspirations that you Mr Hagan stated you represent and share. So many of us now, especially those of us who came together at the Embassy to organise the 40th weren’t born when the Embassy first started, we are the generation of the sons and daughters, and grandsons and daughters, of
the original Embassy fighters supported by our elders and those still with us - and like them we don’t necessarily WANT to have the same fights we have had every generation since invasion. How come even just in the past decade, our children are being removes at five times the rate of when the Bringing them Home report was released? And we have our kids being locked up in adult jails? And deaths in custody are still happening, worse, young fellas being shot by police in the Cross in front of witnesses, then dragged out of the car and beaten while bleeding to death? Or our elders are peppers prayed while attending a conference for stolen generations, and the police remind them they stole our land? The Racism legislation is repealed and the intervention put into place as a punitive measure and kept their by successive governments despite no evidence of any success? Our languages are again under attack and to improve english outcomes in education they ban our languages? Even though experts show learning in our languages and multiple language skills utilise more creative areas of the brain. For these and so many more reasons, until we can practice our culture our way, with proper respect for our land and our people, young and old, until we have Sovereignty, Treaty and real Land Rights and Justice, Self determination and reparations - here we are! And we are here to stay.
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