In the South Burnett Times 10th July 2015
"It's nice seeing all the children out here respecting the
celebrations and elders out enjoying themselves. I really wish it could be
every day; not once a year. I want to have this feeling every day." The Ration Shed's Sandra Morgan, wishing the Naidoc Week celebrations
would not end on Sunday.
I believe you can
have that feeling of respect and enjoyment of your traditional culture every
day Sandra, if you chose to – it’s your community’s choice whether you want to
celebrate and enjoy practicing your Aboriginal languages and your generous,
resilient & supportive traditional cultures every day, as you always have
done for tens of thousands of years. Your cultures were stolen from you and I
personally think that teaching that precious knowledge and wisdom of millennia
to your children (and elders who have lost it) so they can pass it on to their
children, is far, far more important than teaching them English and the Western
culture. There are 360 million English speakers on this planet – how many Wakka
Wakka speakers are there? Perilously few - the news report below suggests
it is 98% extinct. It would be an utter tragedy if it did go extinct, taking
culture with it. I know a few elders are trying to keep it alive.
Our global society is currently in the vortex of
transition, from the usury/greed/out-of-balance growth,
ecologically-destructive, fossil-fuel-dependant capitalist military/industrial
system to the knowledge-economy, renewably-powered and mutually-supporting
ecologically-balanced local community system (informed by Aboriginal cultures).
If the First Nations all asserted their never-ceded
sovereignty, as those below have done, this year’s NAIDOC week could become the
NAIDOC Millennium….as every millennium always has been on this
continent, and always will be in truth and reality.
Maureen Brannan 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA Q 4605 ph: 0427710523
theconversation.com/happiness-born-of-connectedness-lifts-up-aborigina...
Jun 23, 2015 - Unless you have been on one, it is hard to understand the level of
poverty that some Aboriginal people live in – sleeping on concrete
floors, .
(I have selected a few polar opposite views from the comments)
Don Cameron Engineer - Thank you so much Larissa. There is so much negativity and political
bias contained in most of the articles here (as with all
designed-for-the-consumer journalistic media outlets nowadays), that I had all
but given up on reading TC... I feel so lucky that by a scant browse I was
brought to the gorgeous image at the head of your article and read your words. My wife's
extended family are Aboriginal and located throughout western NSW. As with your
experience, many of our aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews (1st, 2nd,
3rd or 4th removed, it makes no difference in Aboriginal family life) are
wonderful artists and musicians who paint, carve Emu Eggs and make Didge's,
create bark paintings; and of course all are story-tellers. They fish, they
interact, they drink, they love, argue and laugh. They tell wonderful stories.
They care so deeply for their extended family's it's palpable. They are
private; they are open and willing to teach. They treat me as an absolute equal
in every way (and couldn't most white-fellas learn something from this!) On another of my increasingly less frequent forays to TC I briefly
scanned an article a few days ago that was highly critical of people who live
frugally and pass on their superannuation savings to their children... I didn't
comment, what's the point? But how have we become so wrong minded? How can
people purporting an academic ability be so wrong as to think it is not
"in the national interest" to plan to support our families, our
children across the generations this way? That we must consume at all cost;
only think of today, not consider the future that we will not see; not save
today for the tomorrow our children and their children must live? Through your
experience you were given a wonderful gift - and it's a credit to you that you
recognised it as such.
Maureen Brannan piggie in the middle still waiting for the permaculture revolution
In reply to Don Cameron Thanks Don, so glad you didn’t give up on TC
– your posts were full of heart & spirit – a breath of fresh, invigorating
air - sadly rare in today’s climate of fear, negativity and cynicism. If we
only realised the immense power we could generate by combining our good will
towards each other and all creatures, as the people in Larissa’s post do so
effortlessly, I believe we could overcome all adversity. (My blog post on the
Midday Minute Meditation proposes this) I haven’t had the opportunity to visit
any Aboriginal communities yet (other than Cherbourg, near where live), but it
is on my agenda when I resume Indigenous Studies at SCU and purse a thesis on
the Aboriginal Trade routes network. I have read A LOT though on traditional
culture, and it has mind-boggled me just how advanced (environmentally and
socially way beyond the West) and super-sophisticated the Aboriginal
civilisation is, on so many levels - and how adaptive of every technology - I
can say without hesitation that the very best book for our times is “Treading
Lightly: The Hidden Wisdom of the World’s Oldest People” by Professor Karl-Erik
Sveiby and Tex Skuthorpe. This is a fantastic innovation too:
http://startsomegood.com/Venture/sharing_stories_foundation/Campaigns/Show/songlines_online
http://startsomegood.com/Venture/sharing_stories_foundation/Campaigns/Show/songlines_online
William
Stewart Teacher - What's
missing from this rustic idyll is that no one works. Men are pretty absent too.
The huge cost - maybe $80k per person per year - doesn't factor either. Lots of
people like going bush and doing a bit of fishing but they do it on their own
coin.
Maureen
Brannan In reply to William Stewart - OMGA
William… I think you might be Aboriginal people’s colonial opposite polarity!
The legal sovereign owners of the tribal territory in which you live are your
landlords...and as with all the First Nations, I am sure they are generous
hearted and welcoming of anyone who wishes to live among them with good will.
We should all understand that there is a compelling argument that the
Australian government has no legal tenure on this continent - in any event,
it’s well past time that we learned our place within the Aboriginal
civilisation. More info here: http://nationalunitygovernment.org/ & http://nationalunitygovernment.org/euahlayi-nation-declares-independence-and-asserts-pre-existing-and-continuing-statehood & http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/murrawarri-republic-declaration & http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/yidindji-tribal-council-elders-public-notice & http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/djurin-nyoongar-swan-river-treaty & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBz7GLP0vs8 [First Nations Sovereignty New Way] - transcription here: https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8191464476578542044#editor/target=post;postID=1939636507132286890;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname
William
Stewart In reply to Maureen Brannan No thanks
Maureen, most remote Aboriginal communities are Hobbsian nightmares. The one
that Professor Langton describes might be a bit better than average but I doubt
she stayed long and I don't blame her. It's the 21st century? Who wants to
sleep on a concrete floor? I bet you don't.
Maureen
Brannan In reply to William Stewart William, how
do know that “most remote Aboriginal communities are Hobbsian nightmares...”
(which I had to look up but presume you mean that the state they live in
“without civil society -the state of nature- is nothing else but a mere war of
all against all”) and sleep on concrete floors?
Have you just heard that or have you witnessed it yourself? I ask
because if you have seen Aboriginal
people living with such chronic deprivation, I believe you are morally obliged
to ‘bear witness’ and do something about it, as our Saint Mary MacKillop urged
us all to do. I don’t personally need to witness it to feel a moral obligation
to do everything I can to provide those people with furniture and whatever else
they need to live descent lives. I have complained often re the NT Intervention
that the government should have intervened by supplying bunk beds to get kids
off the ground where they regularly succumb to ear infections and later hearing
loss, not with the military conducting duplicate medical checks.
In public office, to witness such things and then walk away and do
nothing can be seen as ‘willful neglect’ and should be reported to the
Ombudsman – I believe Nigel Scullion is guilty of that. In an RN interview (transcript provided on request)
Minister Nigel Scullion described living conditions in remote Aboriginal
communities as “cave like” and “uncivilised”….he said that
in many communities Aboriginal people ate at the same level as animals, which
was unhygienic and contributed to poor health outcomes. Quote: “And I with despair was
describing what I saw. Now you can
imagine walking into a concrete box, because nothing else exists there. …
there’s nothing. Nothing. So what I was
saying is that people actually have to live in a house without furniture so
they sit on the floor. There’s often a television in the corner, on the
floor, there are mattresses in the bedroom, on the floor, but you are right
down here the whole time. They deserve better than that… they shouldn’t have to
live in a cave… we need to move to ensuring that we provide the same level of
amenity and furniture for people so that can actually sleep on a bed, they can
eat at a table…”
My
complaint to the Ombudsman was that if Nigel Scullion had witnessed people
living in such horrendously impoverished conditions, and he said he had “seen
it everywhere” he went in remote communities, he had a moral and legal
obligation to provide those families with furniture and a clean water supply –
as far as I’m aware, all the government has done is remove funding to make
their situations even worse.
William Stewart Teacher In
reply to Maureen Brannan - Thanks Maureen, I think you
are agreeing with me about the Hobbsian nightmare. [The
reply I didn’t send! - No I wasn’t you racist dickhead – I
was obviously quoting -from Wikipedia- not agreeing with you] Well agree
to differ on what to do about it.
Personally I think the current situation is beyond redemption. There's
only so much the government can do to help people. We're talking about a pretty
high level of incompetence to be overcome. Surely a parent should know how to
wash a kid's face so that the kid doesn't get glue ear? Why do we need a
government department for provision of bunk beds to Aborigines? Everyone else
seems to manage OK. What we don't need is any more of these ridiculous stories
about how wonderful everything is "when the laughter rings around the
campfire". [Your comments are beyond contempt.]
Bob Durnan Community
Development Officer In reply to William Stewart Langton? You
are getting your professors mixed up I think, William Stewart.
William
Stewart In reply to Bob Durnan I did too.
Thank you for bringing that to my attention. On reflection, as I was writing my
post, I did wonder what could have persuaded Marcia Langton to have written
such tosh.
Don Cameron Engineer In reply to Maureen Brannan Thank you so
very much Maureen. I am humbled and more than a little surprised as I tend to
see myself as something of a rebel in this largely left-leaning tower of cynics
and critics. I nearly
didn't come back but it is magnetic... so many opinions, so much anger and
angst (you should visit the "off topic forum" sometime if you are
keen to participate in some really "out there' conversations). Larissa has
touched on something that is truly beautiful in this world, and there's not
much of it left... Thanks for being human and showing compassion and concern.
Good luck with your work! Cheers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
theconversation.com/some-australian-indigenous-languages-you-should-...
Some Australian
Indigenous languages you should know. Most Australians cannot manage the
name of a single Indigenous language which is
theconversation.com/indigenous-education-report-misses-the-big-picture...
Jul 3, 2012 - Any work that shines a spotlight on the appalling state of education
for Indigenous Australians is to be welcomed. And so Helen and
Mark ...
Bringing back the forgotten
tongue
Keagan Elder | 9th Nov 2014 6:00 AM "It's probably 98% extinct," Cr Bone said.
LOSING TRANSLATION: Cherbourg mayor Ken Bone said
the native languages have fallen victim to the past
Cherbourg mayor hopes to bring back the ancient
Wakka Wakka language to the townspeople.
THE native languages spoken in
Cherbourg are at risk of getting washed away by time.
Mayor of Cherbourg Ken Bone,
born in 1946, witnessed firsthand the eradication of the Wakka Wakka language
from his community.
"I went to school in the
1950s, we weren't allowed to speak it in school," Cr Bone said.
"Even the elders weren't
allowed to speak it loudly.
"When you're in school,
you had to be careful of what you said," he said.
If students were caught
speaking the local tongue, they would face canings and being labelled a
"my-all" Cr Bone said.
"It means you're a dumb
black fella," he said.
"Nobody dared talk about
the language. There was no Aboriginal language taught in school."
However, Cr Bone would like to
see the heritage of the Wakka Wakka people in Cherbourg kept alive.
"If there is anybody out
there (who knows Wakka Wakka), put your hand up," he said. Cr Bone can barely talk his own language as a result, knowing only a few songs sung in secret and passed along the generations.
"My grandmother knew it and my mother knew how to speak it too," Cr Bone said.
"I think the opportunity was there, but people were too scared to pass it on.
"I wish I would've picked it up (the Wakka Wakka language)."
Nowadays, Wakka Wakka is spoken by few within the Cherbourg community.
"It's probably 98% extinct," Cr Bone said.
He said it was a reminder of the people of Cherbourg's past and has resided to that being a fact.
"It's good to be reminded of the past, but the past wasn't filled with lollies," Cr Bone said.
"You just get on with life and live the way white people wanted you to live.
"In time, we're turning things around, we're learning new skills to carry on."
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