Indigenous TV making Aussie strides

And now for some good news ....

Television about, produced by, staring and worked on by Indigenous Australians is making serious headway in Australia. This has been marked by wins at last night's Logies, Australia's serious TV awards, for two productions.

The wonderful actress Deborah Mailman won her third Logie for 'Mabo', the story of Torres Strait Islander Eddie Mabo's long fight for Native Title, which culminated in the landmark 1992 decision of the High Court of Australia which overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius ("land belonging to nothing, no one"). Mailman played Eddie's wife Bonita, who joined Mailman in a tearful moment on stage as she accepted her award.

Redfern Now, the first ever contemporary drama series written, directed and produced by Aborigines and which Mailman also starred in won two Logies.

One of the producers, Darren Dale, said that the wins highlighted the work of Indigenous people in the television industry. He said:

I'm so happy to stand here on this stage, with great Indigenous writers, actors and blackfellas suddenly on prime time.

That is what makes Redfern such a great show, that finally at 8:30 at night on the public broadcaster on the ABC you see black faces, and I'm so proud of that.

The six-part 'Redfern Now' was set in the inner-Sydney suburb usually associated in the public's mind with deprivation and depression. The individual stories, produced by Indigenous production company Blackfella Films, introduced all Australians to a far more rich, real and nuanced community living in the 21st century metropolis.

Most of the cast, directors and many production staff are Indigenous with many of Australia's most famous Indigenous actors participating, including Mailman and Leah Purcell. Well-known English television writer Jimmy McGovern was story producer.

Said Mailman:

When you have Indigenous writers, directors and actors, it means you can be uncompromising and complex with your stories and characters because you're giving it insight that doesn't often come from outside a community. We hope people will come away from it with much more understanding and insight into who we are and into our stories.

Sally Riley, from the ABC, told The Guardian:

We take the audience to a place they've never been before. People are saying to me they didn't even know this world existed.

It's a landmark because for so long we have had other people telling our stories and the government telling us what we should be doing to help ourselves. This is a chance for us to comment on our own stuff, our own problems, our own issues.

The show was part of an ABC strategy to get more Indigenous storytelling into prime time and drew an average of three quarters of a million viewers. It has been commissioned for a second series.

In 2013 the ABC is planning more prime time Indigenous drama as well as a comedy series set in an Alice Springs radio station and a sketch comedy series.

The show came on the 20th anniversary of a famous speech by then Prime Minister Paul Keating. In it, Keating, for the first time, gave state acknowledgment to the wrongs done to Aboriginal people, famously saying "we poisoned the waterholes ... we took the traditional land … we brought the diseases and murders... we took the children from their mothers … how would I feel if this was done to me?"

That speech is now seen as setting the path towards the 'reconciliation' process which has since been embraced by both sides of Australian politics and most ordinary Australians.

'Reconciliation' is explored in one of the shows. In 'Stand Up' sixteen year old Joel wins an Indigenous scholarship to an elite private school. At his first day's assembly he's not singing the national anthem, breaking the rules.

Joel's dad doesn't want his son to sing, his mum doesn't want him to lose his opportunity. The school's principal is shown as torn between her history of support for 'reconciliation' vs her role as the guardian of school tradition. How the show ends demonstrates how 'reconciliation' works in the real world.

This episode highlights the increase in the number of Indigenous success stories which has come from the efforts of white people in Australian professional bodies and organizations. Other episodes tell the other side of the story, which is shown in persistent poverty amongst Indigenous communities as well as newly recognized problems such as sexual abuse and drugs.

'Redfern Now' shows can be watched in their entirety (at the time of writing) on this YouTube channel.

Watch a preview clip of the "Stand Up" episode and two clips from 'Mabo' after the jump:

Canberra memories

The 100th birthday of Australia's capital Canberra has seen a lot of debate about the place. Not least on the BBC, after an article called it "dull and devoid of soul".

It's also seen a lot of history discussed, such as where its pronunciation came from (the Lady who pronounced it Can-berra at the opening ceremony), what the name means (much amusement about alleged 'tits' reference to local aboriginal names for mountains), how it was built for trams but, like most places of the era, got cars instead, how the building of it really only started in the 1960s and Malcolm Farr in Punch, who says it lacks "flesh and blood" because the humanity of those who built it has been deliberately removed:

There is a strange belief elsewhere in Australia that Canberra simply happened, as if it fell from the sky in final form, complete with clipped hedges and pampered inhabitants.

Thousands of people bent their backs to the task of carving Canberra from a group of farms. These people should be recognised because without them there would not be a centenary to celebrate.

Argues Martin McKenzie-Murray in The Age:

What was splendid in the vision was sterile in the living. [Canberra architect Walter Burley] Griffin had designed a city that pre-empted the primacy of the car, which was both prophetic and pathetic. Instead of a tightly knit centre, six (now seven) small districts emerged, separated by vast space and ill-connected by public transport. Between these centres lies mandated green space, which is pretty for tourists but pushes locals apart, limits land availability and drives up property prices.

All of which demonstrates the cruel irony of Griffin's vision of a ''humanised'' city - a vision that demands some of the lowest density living among our capital cities. Griffin applied to his canvas a vision that sought splendour in empty roads and monuments, rather than in the people that would inhabit it.

It's as if Griffin had unwittingly designed Superman's Fortress of Solitude for wonks and staffers.

My memories of Canberra are of a place exactly with humanity removed. There is not only no roadside advertising but shops and petrol stations are behind hedges, like something which needs to disguised. Everything is zoned to within an inch, Sim City on steroids. At that time it was the only place porn could be legally purchased in the country, but you had to go to the industrial zone near the airport, Fyshwick. The train station was nowhere near the city centre.

Getting around by car from my memory was stunningly quick, all the way across town in thirty minutes (though I read locals complaints now of traffic jams) and then there was the utter un-walkability of the central area where all the attractions lie. But also how amazing many of those attractions are, with particularly fond memories of the National Gallery.

The Gallery has Nolan, Streeton, Boyd, Roberts, Drysdale and Pollack, Matisse, Warhol, Rothko. But for my money its most striking work is the first thing you see as you walk in, the Aboriginal Memorial, a beautiful installation of 200 hollow log coffins from Central Arnhem Land. It was installed in the bicentennial year of 1988, a time of great anger and sorrow. 'Reconciliation' wasn't an idea then, Aboriginal art itself had yet to make much of a mark on the art world.

The Memorial was created by an Aboriginal man who was in part inspired by John Pilger's 1985 documentary 'The Secret Country', which covers the wars and massacres which came with the invasion. That history still lies largely buried, both in actuality as well as in the Australian psyche.

Canberra has a huge War Memorial and museum, Australia in general has almost nothing memorialising the tens of thousands who perished as their country was taken over.

First indigenous leader elected in Australia

Australia has its first government leader who is indigenous, and he is right-wing. Could his path to power hold lessons for conservative parties elsewhere?

Adam Giles won in a palace coup in the Northern Territory yesterday, as the ruling Country-Liberal (CLP) party dumped its former leader whilst he was on an overseas trip.

Giles' rise to the top marks the culmination of a transformation of Territory politics empowering indigenous voters. Last year they turned en masse against the Australian Labor party (ALP), who had counted on their block vote for many years.

Neglect of indigenous issues lay behind their mass defection to a CLP which had previously been associated with redneck politics. The party recruited a number of indigenous candidates who won in 2012 on enormous swings away from the ALP.

The new indigenous MPs won with 'conservative' policies seen as repellent by Australian liberals but which indigenous people, particularly Aboriginal women, saw as more closely matching their interests, according to the veteran Aboriginal leader Marcia Langton. She explained last year in Online Opinion:

Aboriginal people were fed up with left-wing causes imposed from down south, be they live cattle–export restrictions, opposition to mining or rolling back the intervention. And so the 11-year-old ALP government was blown to the four winds.

The Territory’s rural conservatives have finally figured out – as Bob Katter and others in Queensland have long known – that they have more in common with Aboriginal people than either have with city folk. Both groups need land-based industries to support their economies and way of life. Both share a deep disdain for greens, animal liberationists and bureaucrats, whether from Darwin or Canberra.

The 'intervention' was the extremely controversial reaction by the previous John Howard conservative government to a report on shocking levels of child sexual abuse in some Aboriginal communities. The package included, amongst other measures, the deployment of soldiers, quarantining of welfare benefits, bans on alcohol sales, and removal of customary law and cultural practice considerations from bail applications.

Langton details how the previous Territory ALP government had been seen by bush Aboriginal communities as misspending the millions of federal government dollars being directed at them in the 'intervention' and the bipartisan national promise to 'close the gap', ending child development and health differences, which accompanied Kevin Rudd's apology to the 'stolen generations' in 2007.

The caravans of high-end, late-model white Toyotas returning from the bush to Darwin and Alice Springs on Friday afternoon, and the young, shiny, well-fed members of the helping class alighting to enter their homes and hotels, are evident for all to see. The gap between this high-income group and the desperately poor Aboriginal people they purportedly serve is played out in all social relations in the Northern Territory. The whites-only revelry along Mitchell Street in Darwin on any Friday night is a jarring sight. Evident too are the regular small plane charters unloading teams of bureaucrats in the communities for endless consultations: it may be just talk, but it sure isn’t cheap.

Aboriginal people voted to end this conspicuous waste.

...

Time and again, native title groups have spent years getting an agreement with a resource company over the line, negotiating income streams that might shift indigenous people from the margins to the centre of regional economic development in return for land access, only for a ragtag team of ‘wilderness’ campaigners to turn up with an entourage of disaffected Aboriginal protesters to stop development at the eleventh hour.

With luck, the NT election represents a tipping point. The time of dismissing Aboriginal aspirations for economic development is over.

Both the the British Labour party and the American Democrats have been accused of taking their ethnic minority voters for granted. Their conservative opposition have, like the CLP in the Territory, similarly been accused of pandering to their redneck vote. The CLP's electoral success and the dramatic 'flipping' of indigenous votes may be particular to the vast Territory but it does demonstrate that 'voting blocks' are not necessarily 'loyal' and should never be taken for granted by politicians.

Rachel Maddow disappoints, again

The American liberal TV presenter and author Rachel Maddow just did a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' and it just reinforced my disappointment in her. She got properly criticised on Reddit and that's rare from anyone other than the wingnuts. It's an odd thing, this free pass she appears to have, which I wish I'd read more about.

Maddow has an influential, great show, which covers a lot of territory that mainstream US TV (as opposed to somewhere like Democracy Now!) ignores. It is well-sourced and argued and Maddow herself is smart but also witty and good with the snark.

Her show is mostly US politics and very rarely covers international issues, bar America's wars, but that is hardly atypical for US TV. It does cover military issues a lot, unsurprising since that's what she wrote her book about. It has pretty much campaigned for homecoming parades and done a lot on veteran's issues.

In a US context she's practically a communist, but looked at from across the pond it's pretty safe stuff.

When she first appeared, on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show, she was a breath of fresh air in cable news. A liberal woman who could argue really well and be likeable whilst doing it.

If you were British and paying attention to the presidential elections, both the last time and the one before, her show stood out from the rest as a very good one-stop to get a briefing from (as I detailed in 2008, the BBC's coverage really was awful, just reciting beltway thinking, as they did again in 2012). But for me, watching her show (and her), one instance piled on another to make me less of a fan and then something happened during the last election which made me start to not like her so much at all.

International Day of the World’s Indigenous People

Image via Wikipedia

Today is the UN's International Day of the World’s Indigenous People.

Here's something useful to read / pass along:

Survival International has named three destinations holidaymakers should avoid:

• Barefoot Resort, South Andaman Island, India

Barefoot India has established a tourist resort near the edge of the reserve created to protect the Jarawa tribe. The resort puts one of the world’s most recently-contacted tribes at risk from swine flu and other diseases to which they are likely to have little immunity.

• Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana

The Botswana government is promoting the Central Kalahari Game Reserve as a tourist destination, and is allowing a safari company to build a lodge that will use large amounts of water. But it refuses to allow the Bushmen to use a single water borehole inside the reserve.

• ‘First contact’ expeditions, West Papua

Treks to meet isolated tribes in West Papua, Indonesia – including one offered by American ‘adventurer’ Kelly Woolford to an area where tribes supposedly ‘have had no contact with the outside world’ – could, if true, have catastrophic consequences.

Survival have produced a tourism advice leaflet with more info.

Commonwealth Day = Dispossession Day

Only four members of the UN voted against the Declaration on Indigenous Rights in 2007: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA. Three are members of the Commonwealth.
Of the 53 countries which now make up the Commonwealth, only two of the smallest (Dominica and Fiji) have ratified the 1989 international law recognising indigenous and tribal peoples' rights.

The Commonwealth - and Britain's wealth - was partly built on the dispossession of indigenous peoples but the UK refuses to sign, in part explaining that this is because there are no indigenous peoples in the UK. That has not stopped countries such as the Netherlands from signing. The UK also does not recognise 'collective human rights' despite recognising that countries such as Canada and Australia are right to recognise them!

One hundred and fifty-eight members of the UK parliament have rejected the government's argument and asked it to sign the law.

The point of the declaration, says the UN, is that it does "represent the dynamic development of international legal norms and it reflects the commitment of the UN's member states to move in certain directions ... an important standard for the treatment of indigenous peoples that will undoubtedly be a significant tool towards eliminating human rights violations against the planet's 370 million indigenous people and assisting them in combating discrimination and marginalisation."

This is obviously not what the UK, representing commercial interests and not human rights, wants.

• Britain's indigenous peoples shame
• survival-international.org
• FAQs on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
  

Novotel bulldoze rainforest

In the Malaysian rainforest at the moment, recession et al, Novotel are building a hotel. And they are building it at the expense of the local indigenous peoples.

The Malaysian Interhill Group in collaboration with the French ACCOR Group are the corporations working on what's called the Novotel Interhill Kuching project. Interhill has a track record of destroying tropical rainforests in Sarawak and violating the native customary rights of the local indigenous communities.

The Penan of the middle Baram region, in particular, are accusing Interhill of using gangsters to intimidate them and to break their resistance to the depletion of their natural resources.

Blockades have been set up by the Penan of Sarawak (Borneo, East Malaysia) since the late 1980s as a means of protesting against the logging of their rainforests and as a tool for negotiating with logging companies and government officials.

For twenty years, the Malaysian Interhill logging company has been destroying the Penan's rainforest in Borneo and thus threatening the habitat and culture of these indigenous people. The French ACCOR Group is now helping Interhill to further boost the profits obtained from destroying the rainforest through a big hotel project.

Please help the Penan highlight their struggle against Interhill and sign the online petition.



Is your furniture certified? Find out.

Britain's indigenous peoples shame

Here's something you won't read, er, anywhere:

One year after the UN General Assembly approved the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, Britain and four of its former colonies have not shaken off their reputation as leading opponents of tribal peoples’ rights.

The four countries which voted against the declaration – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US – are all former British colonies. And the British government continues to resist calls to sign up to ILO Convention 169, the leading international law on tribal peoples.

In addition, many of the companies in the spotlight for targeting tribal lands are based in Britain, Australia, the US or Canada. Perhaps the most controversial is UK-based Vedanta, which is planning a massive bauxite mine on the sacred hills of the Dongria Kondh tribe in India, despite their steadfast opposition.

Other mining companies mired in controversy are US-based Freeport McMoran, operators of the world’s biggest gold mine at Grasberg, in Papua, Indonesia, and Canadian TVI Pacific, whose mine in the Philippines has been fiercely opposed by the Subanen people. Norway’s government has recently sold its shares in British company Rio Tinto, a joint venture partner in the Grasberg mine, due to ‘a risk of contributing to severe environmental damage’.

Stephen Corry, Survival’s Director, said today, ‘For centuries the colonial policies of Britain and other European countries were directly responsible for the deaths of millions of tribal people around the world. How tragic that today Britain and its former colonies are exporting another kind of misery – commercial exploitation under the guise of ‘development’.’

From Survival International. THE most vulnerable peoples in the world. And Miliband/Brown will stamp all over them. In your name.

Catholicism's victims

The Pope is in Sydney at the moment and one man has flown out from London to greet him.

Anthony Foster is an amazing man and father whose daughters were raped by a Catholic Priest, Kevin O'Donnell, when they were in primary school. Australian Cardinal George Pell stalled the family's compensation claim against the Church when he was archbishop of Melbourne. It's part of a pattern of abuse which the Church is being forced by some very heroic people to deal with.

Foster's eldest daughter, Emma, committed suicide after a long battle with drug addiction. His second daughter, Katherine, developed a heavy drinking habit, and was hit by a drunk driver in 1999 and left physically and mentally disabled and requiring 24-hour care.

They were raped over five years by O'Donnell when they attended Sacred Heart Primary School in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh between 1988 and 1993.

In 1996 O'Donnell was convicted of abusing 11 boys and one girl, aged between 8 and 14, between 1946 and 1977, and sentenced to 15 months in prison. He died after his release in 1997.

Initially offered A$50,000 (£24,000) by Cardinal Pell under his "Towards Healing" program, the Fosters pursued their case via the legal system for eight years, culminating in a six-figure settlement with the church in 2006 - one of the largest of its kind in Australia. Money which will be used for Katherine's care.

In 1998, when Emma was 16, Cardinal Pell wrote to her, saying: "It is my hope that my offer will be accepted by you as a preferable alternative to legal proceedings and that it too will assist you with your future."

"On behalf of the Catholic Church and personally, I apologise to you and to those around you for the wrongs and hurt you have suffered at the hands of Father Kevin O'Donnell. I offer you my prayers."

Foster says that this apology was removed by lawyers for the church in 2002 during the court case over compensation.

"Emma carried the pain of her abuse for all her life until it ended recently," he told the ABC. "We really want to make sure that in her name and her memory something is done for other victims."

Pell, like other Catholic bureaucrats around the world, has a history of obstructing sexual abuse cases, presumably on the advice of lawyers.

"I want them to set up a system that provides a life-time help to victims, that begs forgiveness to victims," Foster says.

"An apology is not enough unless it is backed up with action, unless he removes all obstacles to continuing support for victims."

"They should come to us and beg for forgiveness."

Last week I posted a video about the role of the church in the genocide of Canada's indigenous peoples. The same thing happened in Australia, and so this is another part of their history which the Pope will apparently be apologising for in Sydney. As this very brave man Anthony Foster is trying to explain, apologies are not enough.

• Interview with Anthony Foster on ABC Lateline
  "They have no authority to talk to society and tell them how to behave when their own church is unable to support their own victims."

Postscript: The Pope did not meet with Anthony Foster. Instead he held a meeting with six carefully selected victims at the last minute in Sydney and press were told about it on the plane going home. That's media management!

Canada's genocide

Canada's "dirty secret" - the planned genocide of aboriginal people in church-run Indian Residential Schools - and a clergyman's efforts to document and make public these crimes. An excellent, extremely moving and educative film.

• Another apology - where is Britain? where is Miliband

Another apology - where is Britain? where is Miliband

This brought tears to my eyes.

Canada's conservative PM, Stephen Harper, in the House of Commons, formally apologising on behalf of the government for the federally-run Indian residential school system, which forcibly took 150,000 children from their families and stripped them of their culture and heritage, often subjecting them to physical and sexual abuses. The apology comes after the government agreed to pay out $C billions in compensation payments for survivors.

Earlier this year Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, issued an apology for similar policies in Australia. It came without $ recompense and it did not move me like this does.

Our government, the British government, continues to refuse equality for indigenous peoples in international law and accept Britain's historic role in their condition.

• 'They wanted to brainwash us'

Les Patterson lives!

Despite the best efforts, largely on the backs of aboriginal culture, the success of 'Australian culture' has always been going - shall we say? - against the grain?

This week came a rather traditional backlash, confirmation of the dominant grain, as an art gallery in Sydney was raided (a major one, the RoslynOxley9 Gallery) for 'child pornography' images by the world renowned photographer Bill Henson.

Of course they weren't 'pornographic' except in the eyes of the prudish. But there was a 'beat-up'.

Beat-up
Australian slang - meaning: an exaggeration, big talk about nothing, often found in the media

The PM, Kevin Rudd, weighed in:

"Absolutely revolting. Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly, I don't think there are any - just allow kids to be kids."

Henson has had numerous shows involving nudes before - no reaction.

What links Rudd and New South Wales Premier Morris ("offensive and disgusting") Iemma? Catholicism, well known for its hypocrisy in such matters. Australian politics is steeped in this stuff.

Now you know why the Les Patterson stereotype is based on more than a kernel of truth.

Update: a group of prominent Aussies, including Cate Blanchett, released a letter today about the raid.

"We should remember that an important index of social freedom, in earlier times or in repressive regimes elsewhere in the world, is how artists and art are treated by the state."

"The intention of the art is not to titillate or to gratify perverse sexual desires, but rather to make the viewer consider the fragility, beauty, mystery and inviolability of the human body.

"The work itself is not pornographic, even though it includes depictions of naked human beings. It is more justly seen in a tradition of the nude in art that stretches back to the ancient Greeks, and which includes painters such as Caravaggio and Michelangelo."

"If an example is made of Bill Henson . . . it is hard to believe that those who have sought to bring these charges will stop with him."

"Rather, this action will encourage a repressive climate of hysterical condemnation."

Support aboriginal people, tell the FCO how

Did you know that the Labour government is failing to support international conventions for indigenous peoples?

It's not at all publicised but the UK Foreign Office is one of the world's most bankrupt when it comes to looking after indigenous peoples. That's you, master Miliband.

Well, there's a new push to get them to change their tiny minds

ILO 169 is the only international law for tribal peoples. It will become the world’s benchmark when more governments agree to it. Those that don’t ratify it make it weaker.

The UK has refused to ratify ILO 169 on the basis that there are no tribal peoples in the country. But this ignores the impact of British companies and development projects on the lives of tribal peoples across the world. Never mind our historic responsibility.

Act Now

Put pressure on the government to ratify ILO 169. There are several ways you can do this:

• Ask your MP to sign Early Day Motion 88 in support of the law
• Write to the Prime Minister, asking him to ratify ILO 169 as soon as possible
• Sign the online petition on the Downing Street website
• You could add a comment on David Miliband's blog
  

Rudd delivers for Aborigines

I, alongside many Aboriginal Australians, was actually quite cynical about the new Labor Australian PM Kevin Rudd and his well-trailed apology to the Stolen Generations earlier this year.

Unlike the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, who said he wept as he watched it on CNN (I didn't weep, been there, done that). But now he's done something which is really, truly significant.

The plight of indigenous Australians will be detailed by the Prime Minister each year in Federal Parliament to measure the success or failure of the Government's pledge to increase Aboriginal living standards.

Announcing this in London of all places, Rudd said that on the first parliamentary day of each year he would report on the progress of his promise to close the 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians by 2030.

The Government plans to guarantee indigenous people will get health services equal to those of the rest of the population within 10 years.

The time has come for the debate to move on from intentions and focus on outcomes, because in this endeavour outcomes are what really matters [too right, mate]. This annual statement will greatly increase pressure on my Government to make progress towards closing the gap.

The other elements of the new annual statement would detail the progress or otherwise on closing gaps in infant mortality, literacy and numeracy.

Australia, a successful developed nation with a modern and prosperous economy, should not accept a 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

There is no reason that indigenous children in Australia should have less opportunity for education or health care than the opportunities provided to non-indigenous kids. This gap has no place in a modern Australia.

The point being that they don't have equal health services at the moment (or sewage or lots of other basic things Aussies take for granted - that's the legacy). Pretty basic, but it has taken years for these facts to become accepted or not blamed on Aborigines themselves. There are millions of Australians who want this shame to end - finally, they seem to have some leadership. (And it is worth noting that Boris Johnson has the spinmeister responsible for continuing this shame running his team).

Rudd has also said that Australia will finally sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - something which the UK has failed to do. (And we rarely apologise.)

If you read nothing else about this, read (Aboriginal) Professor Larissa Behrendt's feature in the National Indigenous Times on why this is so important.

My father, whose life had been shaped by his experience in a home and his mother’s removal from her family, did not live to hear the apology. He died before he could hear the kind of acknowledgement of his experience that Kevin Rudd offered, that John Howard denied.

This alone can forgive the occasional smugness which accompanies the deep satisfaction in knowing our nation has finally moved on.

Tibet and boycotts

Jack P has blogged about Tibet, writing that people should boycott Chinese-made goods and suggested that:

If you know of anyone who was due to compete in the Beijing Olympics this year, ask them to consider what is more important: taking a stand against ethnic cleansing, or their own personal achievement.

Now I can remember the only really successful boycotts, of Moscow and then Los Angeles in 1980 and 1984, over Afghanistan. People said much the same about British athletes who went to Moscow, one of whom was Sebastian Coe.

This time though, the Tibetans, through the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet Campaign, aren't calling for a boycott.

This year, the Chinese people are proudly and eagerly awaiting the opening of the Olympic Games. I have, from the very beginning, supported the idea that China should be granted the opportunity to host the Olympic Games. Since such international sporting events, and especially the Olympics, uphold the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, equality and friendship, China should prove herself a good host by providing these freedoms. Therefore, besides sending their athletes, the international community should remind the Chinese government of these issues. I have come to know that many parliaments, individuals and non-governmental organisations around the globe are undertaking a number of activities in view of the opportunity that exists for China to make a positive change. I admire their sincerity. I would like to state emphatically that it will be very important to observe the period following the conclusion of the Games. The Olympic Games no doubt will greatly impact the minds of the Chinese people. The world should, therefore, explore ways of investing their collective energies in producing a continuous positive change inside China even after the Olympics have come to an end.

Here is his full statement about the Tibet events.

Instead, they say that they want pressure on our government and our Olympic authorities.

As Britain has become a fellow custodian with China of the Olympic ideal, Free Tibet Campaign is calling upon the UK Government to commit to a special initiative that will secure a negotiated settlement for Tibet and improve human rights in China before the Beijing Games of 2008.

"If our Government really wants to make Britain proud, it will back Tibet," said Yael Weisz-Rind, Director of Free Tibet Campaign. "We have no doubt that London is capable of hosting a truly great Olympics, but unless there is substantial progress on Tibet and human rights in China, the 2008 Games in Beijing will be badly tarnished."

Jack also suggest that people boycott Chinese-made goods, but recognises how difficult this might be.

The Dali Lama isn't calling for that either:

China is emerging as a powerful country due to her great economic progress. This is to be welcomed, but it has also provided China an opportunity to play an important role on the global stage.

I think people should be aware of the conditions under which much ‘Made in China’ imports are produced - they have been compared to modern-day slavery.

Organisations involved in this, again, suggest that protests be directed closer to home - to the British retailers who don't ask about those conditions as well as politicians who don't consider labour issues in trade relations with China.

The Free Tibet campaign has a number of ways in which people can get involved in some way, including spending your money on some lovely goods like this teeshirt over the web :}

Postscript: Jack P has responded to my post. To which I added these points:

From my previous work with Aboriginal people as well as past anti-Apartheid work, I do think it's important to take a lead from the people themselves: those you want to help.

Unfortunately, writing to your MP and/or Gordon Brown and/or the Olympic Authorities is often seen as boring. However this is what they - the Tibetan leaders - say they want: pressure at home. It's also, from my experience, part of the long-haul thankless process by which change happens.

The most racist article of the year

Survival - which works tirelessly for ignored indigenous people around the world - has issued a new international award for 'The most racist article of the year’.

The winner will receive a certificate inscribed with a quotation from Lakota Sioux author Luther Standing Bear: ‘All the years of calling the Indian a savage has never made him one.’

The article, published in the Paraguayan newspaper La Nacion, compared Paraguayan Indians to cancer and described them as 'Neolithic', 'out-of-date' and 'filthy'.

The award marks March 21, the UN International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

The award is part of Survival's 'Stamp it Out' campaign which aims to challenge racist descriptions of tribal people in the world's media.

Stamp it Out is supported by prominent journalists such as the BBC's World Affairs correspondent John Simpson, Sandy Gall and George Monbiot.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said:

Racism often underpins, or is used to justify, abuses of tribal people, whether it’s stealing their land, exploiting them or even killing them. This article makes it clear that in the media such racism continues to exist, even among people who are supposed to ‘know better’. This isn’t about political correctness – it has very real consequences for tribal peoples’ livelihoods, land and, ultimately, their lives.

This isn't just in Paraguay. Here's a Daily Mail article called 'Public School Savage' which refers to tribal peoples as 'Stone Age'.

30th Sydney Mardi Gras? I must be old

It was the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras on Saturday night. For those who've never heard of it (must be a few), around 700,000 watch the parade for a mile and a bit up one of Sydney's main drags, ending at the Showgrounds where the party's held. Several thousand participate and there are over 100 floats and marching groups.

The parade assembles in the city centre then turns into the main drag, Oxford Street — 'Dykes on bikes' lead, doing teaser runs up and down, warming people up— that moment when you hit the drag is like hitting a wall of ecstasy. The next two hours is a continuous rush.

Lots and lots of straight people both participate and watch — it's truly an event for all Sydney. The party had to introduce 'prove you're gay' measures one year because the party was so popular.

I was in a dozen parades, so have a few memories :]

There was the 'indigenous' year, when local Aboriginal elders led the parade in a very fancy old sports car. We made thousands of 'healing hands' and the reception was astonishing. Some of the national Aboriginal leaders participated, very butch blokes, but they had a wail of a time alongside Aboriginal drag queens. People always do. Politicians often come and I suspect it's for the good time rather than the votes. Seeing how they dress for the occasion is often fun. Even the evangelicals who pitch up with their banners have smiles on their faces.

There was the year we did a 'live' broadcast, which amounted to using phone boxes along the way (this was pre-mobiles!). At the party, where we took the DJ feed, around 4am I had a break and one nutty volunteer came on and ranted about the organisation - a Sydney tradition. I didn't find out until a pugnacious Board member complained :[

There was the year I pushed a very heavy robot all the way (not recommended). One year I watched from a prime spot and that year it poured down. Rain doesn't stop it because it's so warm and the spirit so high.

There was the year Julian Clary MC'd and spoilt things by being a bitch (maybe he was jetlagged). Rural groups always participate and they weren't quite as polished: doesn't matter, Clary totally missed the spirit of the thing. You rarely see these mobs in the pictures which go around the world, but they're the heart of it in many ways. It's wonderful to see 'community' in action: Muscle Marys alongside fat old queens alongside elder lesbians alongside asian drag queens: all encouraging each other.

What else? Imelda Marcos' shoes was a classic which everyone who saw it remembers. One hundred shoes on poles chased by a giant papier-mâché head of Imelda. That was the genius of David McDiamid and Peter Tully, gay artists lost to AIDS. David was inspired by the Mexican 'day of the dead' and did a very edgy but successful entry in the height of the crisis with "Dance of Death" puppets.

Then there was their giant Fred's Head on a giant platter — this was the local evangelical state senator, with a perchant for leather from his biker days, who protested every year. David and Peter's genius inspired a later float which spiked Pauline Hanson's monoculturalism. 'Fred's Head' actually survived and was brought out for the 20th Parade.

Individuals could make just as much of an impact. 'Miss New Zealand' achieved this with a floral print dress, flowery hat and a 'New Zealand' sign. Very Antipodean 1950s. My friend Brenton Heath-Kerr did this at the party with the most astonishing, inventive costumes I have ever seen such as his famous Tom Of Finland, the classic butch cartoon fantasy figure. He 'wore' the cartoon and was completely covered. He looked exactly like a cartoon. He also did Imelda. And Liza. And 'Wood Woman', a bizarre woodland creature, completely ... wood.

The party's is 20,000 or so past dawn. The Showgrounds ("where the country comes to town") is now sound stages for film but in the 80s you could wander into the pig stalls and the rest. Much shenanigans (or so I've heard ;] ) The party goes on until Monday. There's a tradition of the morning after gathering behind a pub which I don't know still goes on but the 'after parties' are legendary.

After 2000 there was a year when it was thought under threat. A giant Arts Festival had grown up around February, with massive corporate sponsorship. This ended up collapsing and possibly taking the parade with it. Mass 'no! ways!' stopped that. The show will go on.

I did a London Pride parade when I came back in 2000. Depressing. Very little music, the fun stuff was spotty and subdued. I did a version of Fred's head on a platter with friends. We made a papier-mache Tony Blair and posters of Blair as Pinocchio - this was before he'd got around to gay law reform. But it was all a bit sad after Sydney.

• Postscript: The 2008 party featured Olivia Newton-John finally taking to the Mardi Gras stage to perform Xanadu. Cyndi Lauper closed the party with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Other legends tickling my memories were Kings Cross drag queen Carlotta and DJing from Paul Goodyear. Out of 700,000 parade watchers there were 25 arrests made. One arrest was for a man who attempted to set fire to the tail of a police horse. Parade hits included the marching together of Jewish and Arab groups who were met with a huge cheer, as were the 100 Reverends, a group of church members apologising for the past treatment of gay and lesbian Christians. A school also organised a parade entry.
  
  
• Surviving webpage about the 1998 Aboriginal float and parade entry
  

The Australian apology and the BBC

I just read the BBC Sydney correspondent's take on the Australian government's apology to the Stolen Generations on his blog. Nick Bryant is new-ish to town, so I wanted to make a few points to him. But of course I can't. No feedback as blog comments don't work.

So here's what I said, Nick, and maybe from the link back you might pick this up. Sigh.

Nick - and what about the UK? We have never apologised to Aborigines but we have to the Irish and others.

Who started this? Who's the ultimate responsible party? We are and the UK continues to work against indigenous interests internationally. Here is the UK government's attitude:

"The use of the term 'indigenous peoples'... cannot be construed as having any implications to rights under international law".

Ask your colleagues about the Uk establishment's attitude, Nick, and you may be shocked.

Regarding the Rudd apology, it was carefully couched. Compensation is off-the-table as is any talk of genocide - they won't even discuss it but it clearly was cultural genocide and that needs to be understood.

I think this is a late, partial move in the right direction and Labor has bad form with actually sticking up for aborigines - Rudd himself has bad form and certainly needs to do much more before he's Nobel material [some have suggested this]. He could start by bringing the remote aboriginal communities up to the same standard of basic services which their white neighbours enjoy - I have seen for myself what this means in practice and also seen many Australians preferring ignorance about their fellow citizens situation.

[Note: I had a friend in the Northern Territory who was doing round-trips of several hundred kms several times a week for dialysis. Many Aborigines need this but the service isn't there for them because of the legacy of past, racist service provision. Many, many communities lack services, like dialysis, that other Australians take for granted].

When I lived there the ABC showed Frontier, the first real attempt to document the war of occupation. Despite a star-studded narration it got terrible ratings and I very much noted that even my 'right-on' friends didn't watch it. The massacre sites [estimates range up to 1300 with the last documented from 1928 ] remain largely unmarked and unknown or even denied and to my mind this says everything about Australian attitudes.

Confronting the past is hard and the apology is one baby-step only down the road which Australia must take.

Postscript: Weirdly, my comment has now appeared. Despite when posting being given a 502 (error) message. Kindof proving my point with the not so user friendly nature of the BBC's blogs.

Australia: the apology

Kevin Rudd with Nana Nungala Fejo, the Northern Territory great-grandmother named by the Prime Minister in his historic apology to the stolen generation

The apology by Australia's new Labor Prime Minister to the Stolen Generations [Aborigines removed en masse from their parents] was a well-hyped moment. Coming at the beginning of the new Parliament it was received by large crowds of Aboriginal people who descended on Canberra.

It's way over due. Way past Canada or New Zealand or Brazil in their approach to their indigenous citizens. And it comes with - deliberately - no compensation (although the courts may see more compensated, it's unlikely because the evidence trail is cold), unlike those other countries. Plus there is still large scale opposition and complete denial, in particular to anyone raising the concept of 'genocide'.

Here's what this means in practice:

I do not know if Rikki Davis (Letters to the Editor, NIT Issue 144 ‘In defence of Brough’) is Aboriginal or non Aboriginal but this is exactly what I mean; no such thing as cultural genocide indeed? I know there is, cause I can’t speak MY language or practice MY culture because some whitefulla told my grandfather that he cannot do that “it is the old way” and to ensure he never did he was beaten every time he spoke one of the five or so more languages he could speak.

So he had to do it in secret, never to pass it onto his children for fear he would “hold them back”.

He also had the fear of a foreign god forced into his psyche to aid the cultural genocide policies of the times.

Like many Indigenous Australians, I couldn't get too excited. It's just (carefully calculated) words.

Labor in Australia is not, traditionally, that friendly to Aborigines. Inspiring figures like ex-Labor PM Keating ('we poisoned the waterholes') are rare. PM Rudd, as well, has form from his time as a Queensland civil servant in working against Indigenous interests and in the lead-up to the election Labor backed former PM John Howard's shocking, paternalist and colonialist 'intervention' in remote communities for electoral advantage. The States have been largely in Labor hands for years and they have done b****r all for Indigenous Australians. The Labor States have in particular fought the allied issue of 'stolen wages' - years of failing to pay or underpaying Indigenous workers.

Labor has done part of The Right Thing To Do but until they start serious spending to reverse the gap - which is enormous, many Aborigines live in Sub-Saharan Africa circumstances - and propose real constitutional change I ain't convinced by their sincerity.

The UK should also apologise, being the ultimate responsible party, but we have a historic antipathy to indigenous people within the UK establishment, focused on the Foreign Office, which most Labour supporters wouldn't be aware of.

We apologised to the Irish for the potato famine but apparently Australia's Aborigines living in our 'Terra Nullius' (empty land) don't have enough clout.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~


From ENIAR:

Between 1910 and 1970 up to 100,000 Aboriginal children were taken forcibly or under duress from their families bypolice or welfare officers .

Most were under 5 years old. There was rarely any judicial process. To be Aboriginal was enough. They are known as the ‘Stolen Generations’.

What happened to them?

• Most were raised in Church or state institutions. Some were fostered or adopted by white parents.
• Many suffered physical and sexual abuse. Food and living conditions were poor.
• They received little education, and were expected to go into low grade domestic and farming work.

Why where they taken?

They were taken because it was Federal and State Government policy that Aboriginal children - especially those of mixed Aboriginal and European descent - should be removed from their parents.

Between 10 and 30% of all Aboriginal children were removed, and in some places these policies continued into the 1970s.

• The main motive was to ‘assimilate’ Aboriginal children into European society over one or two generations by denying and destroying their Aboriginality.
• Speaking their languages and practising their ceremonies was forbidden
• They were taken miles from their country, some overseas
• Parents were not told where their children were and could not trace them
• Children were told that they were orphans
• Family visits were discouraged or forbidden; letters were destroyed.

What where the results?

• The physical and emotional damage to those taken away was profound and lasting:
• Most grew up in a hostile environment without family ties or cultural identity.
• As adults, many suffered insecurity, lack of self esteem, feelings of worthlessness, depression, suicide, violence, delinquency, abuse of alcohol and drugs and inability to trust.
• Lacking a parental model, many had difficulty bringing up their own children.
• The scale of separation also had profound consequences for the whole Aboriginal community - anger, powerlessness and lack of purpose as well as an abiding distrust of Government, police and officials.

A National Inquiry was set up in 1995. Its 1997 Report ‘Bringing them Home’ contained harrowing evidence.

It found that forcible removal of indigenous children was a gross violation of human rights which continued well after Australia had undertaken international human rights commitments.

• It was racially discriminatory, because it only applied to Aboriginal children on that scale, and
• It was an act of genocide contrary to the Convention on Genocide, (which forbids ‘forcibly transferring children of [a] group to another group’ with the intention of destroying the group.)

That's how they get you

... or try their hardest to. But:




Story about a group of Care home workers who started an online campaign about their pay.

Their bosses cried 'defamation' and because the default is 'take-down' when pressured with such talk, their ISP, 1&1, complied and took the site down.

Fortunately, the workers could call on a big stick - their union, UNISON - and got the ISP to reverse. This was after the workers website had been mirrored on overseas servers.

Defamation is a great tool for silencing people. You need lots of money or good, free legal to defend yourself against the rich and determined. ISPs have a business to run.

I notice that they used an Australian non-profit host (SocialChange).

A decade ago I did a website for an Aboriginal group which was trying to stop a sacred site being developed over. The developer's lawyers used defamation law extremely well (amongst other tactics, chiefly lying) to try to silence them. The site got chased from four hosts, around the world before I found another Aussie non-profit (GreenNet) who would take the risk.

• More at Barnet UNISON blog