Discussion Random Discussion

[SaintsSeptember]

How about if 160 years later your relatives had been used as slaves and then 200 years later people blame your community for its economic disadvantage when more then 8 out of 10 people under 35 still have their parents paying their bills using the wealth they gained from the housing boom.
The majority of issues in the aboriginal community are the result of structured disadvantage and victim blaming is just a justification to avoid putting an end to it.

Pretty sure that slavery was never legal in Australia .

 

[Persevering Saint]

So it appears to be offensive that Australia was colonized.
Time to accept that it WAS and move on.

Could not agree more. "Moving on" would be moving our national holiday to a date not directly linked to the time our indigenous people were screwed out of their land.

 

[joop]

Except, in my analogy, we're the ones reaping the benefits now of those people 's crimes. We're the ones getting the birthday presents every year, in case you missed it.

Now, on one level we can't do anything about that (other than ongoing evening things out for our indigenous people, who still get a pretty rough go at it). But we can still change the narrative, stop rubbing their nose in it every year.

Sorry mate I was being sarcastic, I'm in total agreeance with you

 

[joop]

So it appears to be offensive that Australia was colonized.
Time to accept that it WAS and move on.

And by move on you mean forget. Terrible attitude.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

Could not agree more. "Moving on" would be moving our national holiday to a date not directly linked to the time our indigenous people were screwed out of their land.

Its not.
Its linked to a symbolic date that Arthur Phillip went somewhere.
It seems to be the actual fact that Australia was colonized that is offensive.
So it seems to be offensive that we celebrate the fact that Australia exists as a nation.

 

[Persevering Saint]

Its not.
Its linked to a symbolic date that Arthur Phillip went somewhere.
It seems to be the actual fact that Australia was colonized that is offensive.
So it seems to be offensive that we celebrate the fact that Australia exists as a nation.

Arthur Philip went somewhere, kicked off a bunch of pesky natives, and before too long was saying his people could shoot them like a kangaroo if they got in the way of raising some sheep.

Like I said, change the narrative. Make it less about celebrating the past injustices (however much that is implicit, or complicit), and make it more about who we all are now and who we can be in the future. Make it about a new symbol, like the Wattle, a beautiful tree that comes out in spring, and that aboriginals and everybody else can happily identify with.

 

[VDS66]

We must stop the boats!

We must turn back the boats!

We cannot allow these foreigners to destroy our way of life!

Many of them are murdering terrorists who are simply making a lifestyle choice at our expense...

But sadly, they were only armed with spears and the British killed them with guns and cannons.

The rest is history.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

Another date isn't going to be on the day that Philip landed here to start taking over their land.

Imagine that somebody came over to your place, stole your stuff, and gave a piece of your stuff, bit by bit, to somebody else for their birthday - and then asked you to sing happy birthday while they did it. I suspect you would give them a seriously "UP YOURS".

Why is this concept so damn hard for people to understand?

Its not the Date Arthur Phillip landed "here".
If you believe that the owners of any land are the first group of nomadic people to wander through there, well the same thing has happened on every piece of land on the planet.

What do you suggest Perse? We give it back? And go where?
I was born here, and i have nowhere else i can go.
My parents worked for what they have and purchased it as part the only system that is in place for them to do so.
So did I.

They'd love to be living in peace ( apart from tribal wars and traditional violence ) in a huge empty country.
So would I.
Its not going to happen, the world is filling up.

 

[SaintsSeptember]

Arthur Philip went somewhere, kicked off a bunch of pesky natives, and before too long was saying his people could shoot them like a kangaroo if they got in the way of raising some sheep.

Like I said, change the narrative. Make it less about celebrating the past injustices (however much that is implicit, or complicit), and make it more about who we all are now and who we can be in the future. Make it about a new symbol, like the Wattle, a beautiful tree that comes out in spring, and that aboriginals and everybody else can happily identify with.

Its never been about celebrating the past injustices. That has been an agenda that has been recently inflicted upon us.

 

[VDS66]

You cannot move forward as a Nation until you address the dark aspects of our history.

Constitutional recognition would be a great start IMO.

I just don't get why it is so hard for white Australia to just admit that it happened and move on?

It is obviously a problem of long standing but we just seem to be in denial.

 

[Defacto]

I think it's disingenuous calling it "invasion day" as its an attempt to undermine the origin of settler Australians, many of whose ancestors did not choose to come here either.

That said, this date specifically does represent a massive change for indigenous people that resulted in considerable bloodshed and tragedy occurring to them and is meanwhile a date that represents the founding of Sydney, not this national as a whole.

Frankly I say bring on the republic day where we can celebrate an actual day for all of Australia and its peoples.

this. well said.

the date is just massively insensitive and just absolutely stupid anyways as the first fleet arrived earlier

 

[Defacto]

I think we can still celebrate Australia Day but why do it when it offends the indegenious population.

Would love to have an Australia where all of us are included.

Nobody is arguing that some people are better or worse. We are all different and we can all celebrate the country we share.

Just some compassion for our first people.

this.

 

[Kilroy]

Its never been about celebrating the past injustices. That has been an agenda that has been recently inflicted upon us.

Mate. Check the scoreboard.



21 posts and not a single "like" from any Saints supporters.

Oh. And Jade Gresham says hi.

 

[RoundCubic]

Pretty sure that slavery was never legal in Australia .

Google slavery in Australia some time there were also the kidnapped islanders before federation

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational...-legalised-slavery-exist-in-australia/5580456

Did legalised slavery exist in Australia?
IMAGE: PHOTO OF THE EMPLOYEES AND INHABITANTS OF THE COOLANGATTA ESTATE, SHOALHAVEN RIVER, N.S.W. / PRESENTED TO JOHN HAY, ESQ., BY HIS EMPLOYEES.
(USED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE STATE LIBRARY OF NSW)
For almost a century, tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians were forced to work for pastoral stations, missions and government reserves for little more than pocket money. Some have called it legalised slavery and are now fighting to recoup stolen wages. Verica Jokicreports.



Between the 1860s and the 1970s, Aboriginal people of all ages were taken from their homes and sent to work on cattle and sheep properties all across Australia.

Several such schemes were run by colonial and state governments, theoretically to protect Aboriginal Australians from mistreatment.

This is also about truth in our history. The vast majority of non-indigenous Australians have no idea of the enormous debt they owe to the Aboriginal men, women and children whose labour built this country.

DR ROSALIND KIDD, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR
People were forcibly sent to work, sometimes far from their homes, where they spent up to 16 hours a day toiling in kitchens, homesteads, shearing sheds or on the land.

Wages were very rarely paid.

Felicity Holt is almost 77 years old. She lives in Queensland and remembers the day she was taken away from her parents in Cherbourg. She was just 16 and hopeful of a future in nursing.

'I had enrolled in nursing at the Cherbourg Hospital because I love looking after people, and they came and took me and sent me to St Joseph's Convent in Dalby to work in the kitchen,' Mrs Holt says.

'I had no say on the settlement. I wanted to finish nursing and it was devastating to be taken away from it.'

Mrs Holt spent more than a year working as a domestic in the convent's kitchen before being sent to one pastoral station and then another.

'I did the washing, cooking, ironing,' she says. 'I was getting up at 5 am to milk the cows and had to separate the milk from the cream.'

'Then I had to cook breakfast, get the kids ready for school, make lunches for the kids, cook the evening meal and prepare things for the following day. By the time I got to bed it was 10 o'clock at night. It was like slave labour.'

For all her work on the pastoral stations, Mrs Holt was given a few coins in pocket money each week. The rest was placed in trust accounts opened by the Queensland government that she and other Aboriginal workers were rarely, if ever, allowed to access.

Mrs Holt was one of the more fortunate Aboriginal workers and says she was treated well at the pastoral stations and only spent three years working under the protective laws scheme.

Others spent 30 or 40 years working on stations and missions, some until the day they died.

Dr Rosalind Kidd is an historian, author and specialist in Aboriginal affairs. She says from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, colonial and then state governments contracted out Aboriginal men, women and children to work.

'The government saw they were a very useful workforce and the government needed the pastoral industry to succeed.'

'White people would not go there and do the work and there were whole groups of Aboriginal people out there; they brought them under control to work anywhere in the state and with no real protection.'

'It became such an advantage for state governments to do this that they continued to do it.'

According to Dr Kidd, the schemes only ended in 1970.

The laws gave the governments an extraordinary level of control over every aspect of Aboriginal people's lives, including their personal finances, where they lived, where they worked and how much they were paid.

Each colony had its own protective laws. In WA, for example, from 1874 any Aboriginal child could be institutionalised and apprenticed to work from the age of 12 until the age of 21. In 1886 the age a child could be sent to work was lowered.

IMAGE: ABORIGINAL CHILDREN REMOVED FROM HOMES AND SENT TO WORK ON MISSIONS.
IMAGE: UNDER GOVERNMENT WATCH, ABORIGINAL WORKERS ON A CABBAGE GARDEN AT BARAMBAH SETTLEMENT, CIRCA 1912 (ABC)
Dr Kidd says boys were generally sent to work on pastoral properties, while girls worked as domestic servants. They were given no protection and were often exposed to both physical and sexual abuse.

'Floggings were common,' says Dr Kidd. 'Police would find runaways and send them to Palm Island as punishment.'

Palm Island was so far away from most workers' families that it ensured separation of families.

According to Dr Kidd, some police colluded with business owners to increase prices on goods, to forge witness signatures to withdraw workers' money or to deny them access to their money.

'Sometimes they would tell the Aborigines to come back another day, but some of those Aboriginal people were only able to come into town once a year,' she says.

Dr Kidd is one of the few people in Australia who has had open access to Queensland government documents on protective laws and stolen wages. She says there is evidence of long-term failure by governments to protect the wages, pocket money and savings of Aboriginal workers, despite countless warnings that people were being cheated.

'From 1919 the government said pastoral workers would get 66 per cent of the white wage, but records show that in 1949 workers got only 31 per cent,' she says. 'In fact, in every year between 1941 and 1956 the government sold Aboriginal labour for less than the 66 per cent rate.'

'Evidence shows the government itself raided Aboriginal monies: it intercepted federally-paid maternity allowances from 1912 and child endowments from 1941, and paid only a fraction through to the mothers.'

'In the mid 1950s, when infant mortality on government settlements was six times higher than in the white community, the government used child endowment for buildings and machinery.'

Tens of millions of dollars were taken out of the Queensland trusts and never returned to Aboriginal workers.

Mrs Holt is one of the tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians who have been fighting to recoup their stolen wages.

'They built Queensland's hospitals with our money,' Mrs Holt says.

'We've been asking for our stolen wages and have been told our files were deliberately destroyed or our personal files are missing. The community is ropable because they worked hard for the money and it's been stolen from them.'

In 2006, a Senate inquiry was held into stolen wages and recommendations were made for all state and territory governments to make reparations, and to allow access to all files.

However, Dr Kidd says the compensation has been insufficient.

The Queensland government under Peter Beattie fought several cases for compensation, with little success. Thousands lined up for payments, which the government capped at $7000. Mrs Holt was one of those who accepted the offer.

She says the payment came in two instalments: the first when Mr Beatty was Queensland premier and the second under Anna Bligh.

'When I got the first $4,000 I was told I had to sign a paper that I would not take the government to court and I signed because I thought it was better than nothing,' Mrs Holt says.

'I found out I couldn't get the money unless I signed the document.'

Two years later she received the remaining $3,000. 'I don't think I made the right decision,' she says now.

Dr Kidd says the fight for stolen wages is about more than money.

'This is also about truth in our history. The vast majority of non-indigenous Australians have no idea of the enormous debt they owe to the Aboriginal men, women and children whose labour built this country.'

'They have no idea that many workers would have had money and freedom to prosper if governments had not stifled their choices, ignored, unpaid and underpaid [their] labour, and misused their earnings and entitlements.'

Celebrating NAIDOC Week on RN


Email
Guests
Felicity Holt
Stolen wages claimant
Rosalind Kidd
Commentator, specialist in Aboriginal affairs, author, historian
Credits
Producer
Verica Jokic


Presented by Cameron Wilson

 

[Defacto]

Up until 1967, Aboriginal people of Australia were considered part of the flora & fauna of the country..... Yes, that is right, up until just 49 years ago, Aboriginal people of our country were considered animals....

This is just a part of why the aboriginal people dont celebrate or embrace Australia Day.... I dont blame them, as that point alone just makes me pissed off with the country i live in & I'm not even of Aboriginal descent.

i know for a fact in the 60s they had to have a type of passport to come in and out of some country towns...

imagine that. pretty effed up

 

[Defacto]

the thing people miss in all of this is that what happened here happened to pretty much every indigenous people since day dot. some didnt just put up with 200 years of it, they put up with it over a much large time span from a number of different countries

what we need to do is learn from other countries how they helped heal that wound.. i mean ****ing hell even the USA is moving away from Columbus day

i've read some really good articles on how one of the big over sights on the commentary of american slavery and the civil war was the crimes against the irish. they were the first slaves. they were much cheaper than having to acquire people from africa and the various islands, but it wasnt until the slave population got too large and started to rebel (blacks and whites together), that they used the divide and conquer approach and granted white people their freedom. after that they worked on changing the attitude of the free'd white slaves to turn on the still enslaved black people, the rest is history because well people are easily fooled to do terrible things

also the number of irish people that died in the civil war is off the charts. basically conscription.

dont get me started on the centuries of atrocities forced upon them either

but no one talks about it... because it doesnt suit the narrative people want

 

[RoundCubic]

the thing people miss in all of this is that what happened here happened to pretty much every indigenous people since day dot. some didnt just put up with 200 years of it, they put up with it over a much large time span from a number of different countries

what we need to do is learn from other countries how they helped heal that wound.. i mean ******* hell even the USA is moving away from Columbus day

i've read some really good articles on how one of the big over sights on the commentary of american slavery and the civil war was the crimes against the irish. they were the first slaves. they were much cheaper than having to acquire people from africa and the various islands, but it wasnt until the slave population got too large and started to rebel (blacks and whites together), that they used the divide and conquer approach and granted white people their freedom. after that they worked on changing the attitude of the free'd white slaves to turn on the still enslaved black people, the rest is history because well people are easily fooled to do terrible things

also the number of irish people that died in the civil war is off the charts. basically conscription.

dont get me started on the centuries of atrocities forced upon them either

but no one talks about it... because it doesnt suit the narrative people want

You could argue that Ireland was the first colony of the British.

 

[Defacto]

You could argue that Ireland was the first colony of the British.

british were probably pretty kind to them and seen as an improvement after their dealings with the vikings etc.

looooonnnggggg list of races who have been ****ed over by a more dominant power

how did the spanish treat the native populations when they colonised counties... if i had a choice between the spanish and the british, i know which one i'd prefer

 

[Highlander35]

Depends if you count Wales or not. 13th Century I think, never got their independence back despite the Identity remaining.

 

[RoundCubic]

british were probably pretty kind to them and seen as an improvement after their dealings with the vikings etc.

looooonnnggggg list of races who have been stuffed over by a more dominant power

how did the spanish treat the native populations when they colonised counties... if i had a choice between the spanish and the british, i know which one i'd prefer

Its a false equation comparing suffering to suffering but the experience of aboriginals was as bad and lasted longer then the native peoples of the Americas its a myth we were told as children that it was better, native americans were not used as slaves till the 70's.
But i cant find the quote but either little Richard or Chuck Berry commented that they never thought they would find a place were blacks were treated worse then the South until they came to Australia

 

[Defacto]

Its a false equation comparing suffering to suffering but the experience of aboriginals was as bad and lasted longer then the native peoples of the Americas its a myth we were told as children that it was better, native americans were not used as slaves till the 70's.
But i cant find the quote but either little Richard or Chuck Berry commented that they never thought they would find a place were blacks were treated worse then the South until they came to Australia

i re-call those quotes and i agree with your post

the shit is still going on today i mean look at west papua

 

[majortinkle]

You could argue that Ireland was the first colony of the British.

Only after the Irish had killed off/bred out of existence the scots (although they weren't called that at the time to be fair)

 

[Persevering Saint]

Its not the Date Arthur Phillip landed "here".
If you believe that the owners of any land are the first group of nomadic people to wander through there, well the same thing has happened on every piece of land on the planet.

What do you suggest Perse? We give it back? And go where?
I was born here, and i have nowhere else i can go.
My parents worked for what they have and purchased it as part the only system that is in place for them to do so.
So did I.

They'd love to be living in peace ( apart from tribal wars and traditional violence ) in a huge empty country.
So would I.
Its not going to happen, the world is filling up.

Never made ridiculous or impractical suggestions like giving it all back. Simply suggesting we move the celebration of the nation we all live in and love, to a day that isn't linked directly to an unjust part of our history.

Dude, because of my work, I've had to become a student of Palestinian history and politics. Believe me, I get the "when do you start the clock to decide who owned the land first?"! A great step away from that fruitless and painful conversation, is to move away to a day that focuses on the future, like a day in Spring.

 

[CursingFijian]

The fact that we are passionately debating this issue is a sign of our growing maturity as a nation. I don't want to antagonise people here but as the country continues to mature it will change as sure as night follows day. In my opinion the best option would be for Australia to move toward declaring itself an independent nation state, with it's own head of state and a new flag, and the new Australia day can be the day we celebrate that! I would love to see the national anthem include Aboriginal language in the same way the South Africans and New Zealanders have been able to.

 

[Defacto]

The fact that we are passionately debating this issue is a sign of our growing maturity as a nation. I don't want to antagonise people here but as the country continues to mature it will change as sure as night follows day. In my opinion the best option would be for Australia to move toward declaring itself an independent nation state, with it's own head of state and a new flag, and the new Australia day can be the day we celebrate that! I would love to see the national anthem include Aboriginal language in the same way the South Africans and New Zealanders have been able to.

god i hate our national anthem and flag.... i'm all for what you said. lets just get it done