I guess only Irene knows what she really meant but this is how I understand it for myself. Your 'aboriginality' or your origins - roots if you like - are elsewhere. I think it would be very hard for an Aboriginal person to see as we see ourselves - often not more than one or two generations of family that we know about. We have very little history or 'grounding' (lovely word) not because we were stolen - although that is possible too - but because it has not been important to our family or ourselves to see beyond ourselves any further than that. I think this is why non-Aboriginal Australians travel so much - they are looking for something but most of the time they don't find it until they return.
As non-Aboriginal people we know we came from elsewhere. We talk about all kinds of roots but not Australian roots. We talk about Anglo-Celtic, Irish, Polish, whatever. Many of us are unsettled in spirit because we know we live in a stolen land and we also know that most of us could not go back where our roots are because our heart and spirit is in this land.
Several years ago I began to look for my roots - not just for myself, but also for my children who have family all over the world but no settled idea of who they were. Born Australians in Canada who left most family behind to live here and meet family they hadn't known. Even though they love it here they still felt this lack of 'belonging'.
I have traced my roots back to the late 1500s and found that my people are a fairly homogenous lot who have been in one area of Europe since 600 BC. For northern Europe that is about as far back as I'm likely to find out. I am trying to find out as much about the history and the pre-Christian beliefs - the original or aboriginal culture as I can because that is where my aboriginality is.
I have a long way to go and it is difficult because many things weren't written down. I am lucky though in that my people resisted Christianising much longer than many other peoples of the area and retained their customs and their language to a large degree.
It is this language that English is still closest too but most people don't realise it because the Frisians are hardly ever mentioned along with the Angles and Saxons.
Has it made a difference? It most definitely has. It is very difficult to explain because it is a journey of far more than just genealogy and history.
If I might make a comment on the article about Noel Pearson. The despair that Noel describes in non-Aboriginal terms - is what Irene illustrated in her article this morning - that of self-colonisation. This is an instrument of colonisation, destroy the feelings of self-worth in the people being colonised, keep telling them how unworthy and inferior they are and if successful, the colonised will continue the process themselves. Of course, stating it in those terms would 'upset' a lot of the colonisers so it is better to use the language they understand - responsibility and working for money. I wonder though if the other language might be more useful for the colonised themselves?
Tim, everyone on this list has a right to speak but what we don't have the right to do is to speak for others. You don't know Irene's reasons, only she does. If you're not sure what she means exactly then you can always ask her but 'assuming' always gets us in trouble.
One more thing. I have seen a lot of people use the term American Indians. Native Americans get very upset when they are called 'Indians' because they are not. Also, in case it comes up, please don't use the term Eskimo. This is a derogatory Cree term for the Innuit people. As far as is possible we should use the terms that people prefer out of respect for their wishes and feelings.
Off the soapbox now! ;-)
tim dunlop wrote:
Thanks to Graham for this response. Seems to me that this issue (as raised by Noel Pearson) should be occupying the list, more so than arguments about who said what to whom in a chance meeting and what they might have meant. Which is not to say the discussion re Karyn's bio is not important. Incidentally, as a non-Aboriginal person, I related to Lance's response and would like to thank him for it. I just can't accept Irene's assertion that "you might be 6th generation here but you are in your place aboriginal somewhere else." Maybe I misunderstood what she meant. I lived overseas for a number years, including England, and the one thing I found out was that I wasn't "of" those places, no matter what my genes were made of. I was "of" Australia, and that "ofness" is no doubt quite different to that of First People's but it is still real. But maybe Irene thinks there shouldn't be any non-Aboriginal people on the list either, expressing a point of view. Anyway, I hope we get some comments on the Pearson piece because it seems to me he has really taken a risk here. But I guess we all do, everytime we open our mouths. TimRosemary Neill's articles seem to express a similar sentiment to a report in this morning's CM about a paper that Noel Pearson has written.- Our Right to Take Responsibility.Full text follows from the CM's web site:
Pearson hits welfare "poison"
30apr99
PROMINENT Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson has appealed to governments to help
break the welfare dependency of indigenous people so they can live more healthy,
dignified lives.Speaking in Cairns this week, Mr Pearson said welfare was "a poison" that had turned
many Aboriginal people into "drunken parasites" and was destroying family and
community life.He also challenged Aborigi nal leaders to cease disempowering their own people
through continually depicting them as "victims".But most of all, Mr Pearson wants Aboriginal people to accept that, along with the
rights comes responsibility – to themselves, their wives, husbands, children, elders
and the general community."The whole Aboriginal policy debate has been about rights – human rights, legal
rights, land rights, individual rights against government and so on," he said."There has been no discussion about our responsibility. There is a defensiveness."
Mr Pearson has written a 42-page discussion paper for Cape York Aboriginal leaders,
titled Our Right to Take Responsibility."We have to get rid of the welfare system from Aboriginal community governance in
Cape York Peninsula, and get rid of the welfare mentality that has taken over our
people," the document says.It states the two key problems affecting Aboriginal people are racism and welfare
dependency."It is time we analysed our condition as a people without being defeated and
paralysed by the racial issues. This is not to say we should forget about racism, or
pretend that it doesn't exist," Mr Pearson wrote."By addressing the concrete social and economic circumstances of our welfare
dependency, we can find the power necessary to prevail against racism."Mr Pearson advocates a changed system in which money coming into communities –
there are 13 on the Cape which are home for about 12,000 indigenous people – is
controlled by "a new interface" between the federal and state governments and
ATSIC.He said the new administration needed to be "holistic and de-welfared" and he is
seeking support for Cape York to be the pilot model for the changed system."Welfare is a resource that is laced with poison and the poison present is the money-
for-nothing principle," Mr Pearson said."In the 1950s and 60s, our people worked hard in the hot sun for red-necked
pastoralists, and people placed value on every penny earned. It is only the welfare
system that has devalued money – because it is not earned."Mr Pearson said the "welfare poison" was progressively breaking down Aboriginal
society – a society that put tremendous pressure on community members to "provide
resources to a parasitic drink-and-gamble coterie"."Since the 1967 referendum, Aboriginal people have believed their right earned was
the right to drink," he said. "What about the responsibility to your children? The
rights that are acknowledged are the rights of people to party, drink, use money in
their own destruction. No talk of rights of children or old people."And why has there been this collapse in responsibility? In my view, it is related to
the nature of the economy under which Aboriginal people are forced to exist – the
poisonous welfare economy."Aboriginal people should participate in the real economy – where you don't get
money for nothing, you have to work. Aboriginal people lived at the lowest, most
miserable end of the market economy for most of colonial history and the time has
come to change all that. Welfare is a parasitic exploiter."The Government is paying these people to sit around the canteen to drink and
destroy the prospects of their children – destroy society. The madness of that system
has to stop."
