The Australian Cracks in the black face By DAVID NASON 27may00 THE week leading into Corroboree 2000 has been another epic for the old war horse Charles Perkins. It began last Sunday when Perkins, on the Ten network's Meet The Press, declared John Howard a fascist and, as he does at every opportunity, the worst prime minister in Australian history. By Tuesday, Perkins was calling Howard a "real dog" and condemning the tucker dished up to Aboriginal callers at The Lodge as not fit for human consumption. The day after, it was the AFL's turn, with Perkins branding football's senior management "racist" for rejecting his plan for an Aboriginal carnival. All of it was typical of the headline-grabbing rhetoric Australia has come to expect from the veteran Aboriginal activist. But significantly, the Perkins vitriol was not confined to the white eyes alone. Asked about the decision of Kimberley Land Council director Peter Yu to join former Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation chairman Pat Dodson in boycotting Corroboree 2000, Perkins's response was poisonous. "If Pat Dodson says the world is red, so does Peter Yu," Perkins sneered. "I don't think he (Yu) has got too much of a brain of his own." It was a swipe that might be dismissed as just another Perkins indiscretion, except that it actually says a lot about the state of Aboriginal leadership in Australia today. Going into Corroboree 2000 – an event always expected to unify Aboriginal Australia, even if it was going to fail in terms of reconciling black and white – the solidarity that once defined and sustained indigenous politics is gone. In its place is a lot of anger, division and personal jealousy. On its own this is a potent enough mix, but add in the continuing and debilitating frustration of Aborigines with the Howard Government over issues such as an apology to the stolen generations and the anguish of indigenous leadership is bordering on terminal. One result has been a collapse of discipline. Public displays of contempt such as that of Perkins for Yu are becoming commonplace. The most startling example this week was the insult delivered to reconciliation council head Evelyn Scott on Thursday when she was left out of a pre-Corroboree summit with Howard organised by Dodson and Geoff Clark, chairman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Go back five years when Dodson was at the reconciliation helm and such a snub would have been unthinkable. But not anymore. Aboriginal politics has reached a stage where long-established leaders such as Pat Dodson won't even pretend that unity exists. It has left many feeling confused and disillusioned. These are the same people whose hearts and minds were once prized as a fundamental currency for Aboriginal advancement. Many are struggling to maintain their convictions. Their difficulty is that the once coherent Aboriginal national vision they relied upon, drew strength from and believed in no longer exists. Seven years ago, under the paperbark trees at remote Eva Valley Station in the Northern Territory, it was a different story. There, over three historic days and nights, more than 400 Aborigines from across Australia gathered in a bold attempt to forge a unified position on the difficult issue of native title. By the end, a range of personal, ideological and regional rivalries had been put aside and the common purpose many thought impossible was achieved. >From it came a leadership group charged with the ultimately successful task of pursuing native title negotiations with the Keating Labor government. Ironically, Eva Valley also involved the resurrection of Perkins, then fresh from a stint as adviser to John Hewson, to the Aboriginal mainstream. With Corroboree 2000 at hand, it is sobering to remember what he said in his speech on Eva Valley's final day. "Let's stick together," Perkins urged. "We're on the road, so let's be friendly to each other and see what we can achieve." The unity reached at Eva Valley may stand as one of the great Aboriginal monuments of the reconciliation decade, but it also makes the leadership malaise of today so much more profound. With a few notable exceptions, such as Clark and Aboriginal senator Aden Ridgeway, the leaders whose names and faces are most familiar to Australians have left the game. For some, such as Lowitja O'Donoghue, there should only be sympathy. O'Donoghue has been exhausted by her role as one of the public faces of the stolen generations and she despairs at the approach of the Olympic Games. She knows it means the scars of her past will have to be opened up all over again for international media consumption. "People don't seem to understand just how draining it is to keep on reliving your pain," O'Donoghue confided this week. For leaders such as Yu, Mick Dodson, David Ross and Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who rose to power in the great land rights campaigns of northern Australia, the despair is more political than personal. The passions that drove them during the Hawke-Keating years have given way to a crippling despondency over the record of the Howard Government. "One of the biggest problems we have had is the attitude that leadership is a domain that belongs to the few rather than the many," says Ridgeway. "My view is that too few Aboriginal people are speaking about the issues." To this end, Ridgeway is negotiating with SBS television for a new indigenous current affairs program where views would be canvassed from younger Aboriginal people. He's also working up plans for a privately funded Aboriginal think tank based on an Israeli model, with a charter to encourage Aboriginal people around the nation to be involved in discussing issues. "A think tank can help the process of change," he says. "I'm not talking about Aboriginal people becoming homogenous. This is about building a capacity to reconstruct ourselves so we don't just become victims of our own grief." -- ********************************** 'Click' to protect the rainforest: Make the Rainforest Site your homepage! http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ********************************** ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." 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