The Sydney Morning Herald
Surprise at absence of black faces
By SHARON VERGHIS and ANTHONY DENNIS
Published: Monday, August 14, 2000
One of the Australian performers chosen last week to appear at
next month's opening ceremony, singer John Williamson, was
surprised no indigenous artists were chosen for the event.
Williamson, speaking at a torch relay celebration in Benalla,
Victoria, on Saturday said, "to me [indigenous Australians] are
part of the nature and the spirit of the land. If we only have
international artists who aren't really doing anything particularly
peculiarly Australian, it sort of loses what's different about us."
However, Williamson said he was not surprised or offended by the
criticism of his inclusion and
the chosen performers, who included Olivia Newton-John, Julie Anthony
and John Farnham. But
he believed it would have been "absolutely disgusting" if Sydney had
sought to stage an opening
ceremony with an international flavour rather than a discernible Aussie
flavour.
"It wouldn't have mattered who was chosen; everybody has their idea of
what it's about ...," he
said. "It isn't an arts festival, it's an Olympic Games. And it's not
really about showing off our
up-to-date talent. Obviously, everyone who has been chosen have paid
their dues and they've
got a lot of followers in the country."
Pastor Cec Grant, head of Albury Koori Church, said yesterday that black
faces were
conspicuously missing among torch runners, even in towns with large
Aboriginal populations. He
said the Sydney 2000 torch relay celebrations around Australia had been
a kind of "white
dreaming", ignoring the country's black history and heritage except as a
token.
He said the torch relay celebrations at Uluru had begun promisingly with
a strong indigenous
influence. Since then it had declined, said Mr Grant, a Wiradjuri elder.
The torch celebrations also
distracted from the fact that racism was strong in many towns.
Communities were divided along colour lines over everything from
employment to health, he said.
Many bore scars of the stolen generations, but the response from the
Government had to been
to ignore the scope of the damage. Albury's Wiradjuri community will
join celebrations of the
torch's arrival today with a traditional welcome and message stick
ceremony at a party in the city
centre.
The community was asked by the local torch committee to organise a
larger celebration on both
sides of the State border 18 months ago, but when plans failed tension
arose between the
groups.
Mr Grant said: "It was not because we had gone walkabout, as some said,
but because the head
of the Aboriginal studies program here, who was organising celebrations,
left and it took some
time to replace this position.
"There's a lot of good work been done in Albury but there are still
problems here that need to be
addressed."
Mr Grant also criticised the lack of indigenous performers at the
opening and closing ceremonies.
Many in the Aboriginal community felt excluded. He believed it was a sad
thing there had not
been enough recognition of Aboriginal heritage at the Games.
Black protest at the Games was "inevitable", he said, as the only way to
deal with social problems
that beset so many Aboriginal communities.
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