Sanity at the tent embassy?

One UN (UK) soldier did do something useful once, Johnboy. Apparently a tuti or a hutsi was methodically slashing refugees from the opposing side with his machete, including babies on their mother’s backs, the idea being to start a stampede and cause more deaths, and this soldier sort of breached protocol and quietly, and without shooting so as not to panic people, pursued the savage and plunged his knife through his heart!

Naturally Lefties would be appalled because the soldier didn’t first use non-violent methods to resolve the situation eg meaningful eye contact …

Seepi, I’m not sure the imperative to improve black conditions need be as urgent as what you seem to suggest for the simple reason it might come to a dead end very quickly!

Behaviour modification can be very difficult to achieve and changes may only be attained slowly and my point is – perhaps we are getting a little too hot and bothered over living conditions in the communities!

By analogy, drivers are pouring $millions into Greenfleet but Greenfleet has run out of land on which to plant trees!

You, my friend, could end up with many thousands of houses either used as animal enclosures or trashed in weeks so as to be unusable!

Perhaps a significant number of aborigines prefer to live in the long grass? Dunno but neither do you so your proposal is not evidenced-based.

And another thing, there are about 5-600,000 black people in Australia who collectively receive about $3-4 billion in Commonwealth funds but when added to State/Territory funds, the figure rises to approximately $16 billion. So, you know, if half a million blacks can’t be housed with this money then something is hideously wrong!

Surely someone in the federal government can come up with something that can guarantee education, health, and real jobs?

Let me know when you’ve figured out what that “something” is – and no, “it’s obviously a bit more complex but you get the idea” won’t cut it. Nothing’s obvious, and we haven’t begun to think about ways of grasping the complexity involved. It’s a policy conundrum that’s foiled some of the best minds in government, academia and the private sector for almost thirty years. If it was just a matter of “durely…coming up with something”, don’t you think somebody would have by now?

Generalisations about a “welfare mentality” that is only displayed by a small proportion of the Aboriginal (and non-Aboriginal) communities doesn’t help anybody, and nor do suggestions that the vast majority of people on both sides of government and Aboriginal people themselves aren’t doing their level best to resolve the situation.

As for the Tent Embassy not being representative – you said it yourself that Aboriginal unity is a myth. The Tent Embassy represents a core of people who believe in land rights over native title, acknowledging an honest view of history rather than sweeping it all away under the guise of “reconciliation”, and in keeping it all in our privileged, well-to-do faces as much as possible. Is it perfect? Hell, no. Is it effective? Well, it certainly keeps people talking, and it’s a big motivator for me, and I always see plenty of tourists to OPH taking pics and talking about it, so I guess that’s a yes. Is it an eyesore? I think it’s pretty clean and well-ordered myself, and I walk or drive by it most days. Do I agree with the means and methods of some of the people there? Not particularly. But I believe in the Embassy as a symbol, and a reminder, and an agitator of public opinion. Aboriginal people need all three more now than ever.

I think it’s hilarious that the barely literate ee cummings wannabes that populate this forum have the gall to criticise somebody else’s written communications skills. Perhaps we should silence everybody who has difficulty writing a concise press release about complex and emotional issues? It’d certainly be a lot fucking quieter around here.

As for arguing, I’m not here to argue about anything. I just think it’s dangerous for people to claim that because they’ve hung around a few blackfellas that they know the solution to everybody’s problems. You, and everybody else for that matter, including me, really don’t have the faintest idea how to deal with multiple, diverse interrelated and ‘wicked’ social, cultural and economic problems with complicated and often unknown causes. Something that works here fails there, and it takes months or years to find out why. More often than not pulling a lever here causes an explosion over there, and even if we learn why it doesn’t mean it will or won’t happen next time someplace else because we don’t understand yet another chaotic element. At least we’re doing our best, and at least we’re not blaming the victim or making vague generalisations while we’re at it.

Apparently luca does tho, and perhaps there are others who think squalor is approprate for ‘some blacks at this stage of their progress’.

That’d be the same UN which does nothing as each genocide unfurls?

You can keep them with the Germans.

I think we should be ashamed of the conditions of indigenous Australia and considering the small numbers more could be done.

But I don’t need Germans or the UN to tell me that.

I think if the tent embassy weren’t there people in Canberra wouldn’t think about Indigenous people at all.

The UN has described Australian Indigenous living conditions as poor, which i find embarassing.

Obviously it isn’t as simple as giving everyone a house, new solutions need to be worked on that take people’s lifestyle and family connections into account. But doing anything has to be better than doing nothing. Did your cousin have any ideas of a way forward?

Yeah but seepi, in my opinion the connection you talk of (reminder of appalling living conditions) isn’t being made (not that I can prove it)!

I don’t think people do think “christ, is this how aborigines in the communities live!”.

I think they think “yukky poo! What a bloody mess! I’m glad they don’t live next door to me! Why can’t they smarten themselves up a bit. Evonne Goolagong scrubbed up well”.

In short, I think the embassy is a bad advertisement for the black man and does more harm than good and indeed exists because the baby boomer activists see it as a poke in the eye of the Establishment!

Yet another example of whitey activists using the black movement to further their own aims at the expense of black Australia!

And as for this comment: “But it is still an embarassment(sic) for Australia that we have people living in such shocking conditions.”, you are using a white middle class yardstick of what constitutes “appalling conditions”.

It may be that such conditions are normal for some blacks at this stage of their progress?

My cousin once worked for the WA Public Housing agency (HomesWest?) and she said they’d make houses available for the black people in the communities and some/a lot (I can’t remember the quantity) would put their animals in the houses while they’d live outdoors. The houses became a pigsty, literally!

So, you know, if a significant number of aborigines are incapable of appreciating that their conditions are substandard (and I don’t know if that is the situation), then using the tent embassy to showcase those conditions wouldn’t seem to achieve much. Put simply, you can take a horse to water but …

I stress I’m not saying that community-aborigines would not live happily behind a white picket fence and keep their homes clean and tidy, I’m saying the solution to the problem might not be as simple as you seem to be implying (“just…just give them all nice little houses so they won’t live in appalling conditions!”).

The Gernam suggestions seemed to centre around banning alcohol etc. I had to point out that having lawas based on colour is kind of like apartheid.

But it is still an embarassment for Australia that we have people living in such shocking conditions.

And yet when a previous govt tried to take aboriginal children away to assimilate them into society they get branded as child thieves. Please note, I am not condoning this program, but simply want to make the point that this is an extremely difficult area, and although drastic action is needed, there will be many criticisms.

Personally I’m all for programs that help them to help themselves – whatever that means!

Considering the German record on race relations they can go f*ck themselves.

People in Germany are also stunned that Australia can’t seem to do anything for our Indigenous people.

Luca the present embassy has nothing to do with generating funds. That is done via official channels. A bit of busking money is not going to solve the Indigenous housing and health problems.

It is a reminder that Indigenous families are living in conditions like that shipping container, and we are dong nothing about it.

and the employment base and oppurtunities are there if they want to grasp it?

*snort* I’d love to see you be a blackfella in any of those places and get a fair go in the job market.

As for Thumper’s ‘welfare mentality’ – pull your head out of your arse. If you’d really “worked with, studied about, and lived with” Aboriginal people you’d know that at any given time over 30,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people forgo their income support entitlements to work on the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program, currently administered by DEWR. They’ve done so since the late 1970s. Until the very late 1990s, CDEP participants weren’t entitled to health care cards, rent assistance or any of the other add-ons their white counterparts received, despite the fact that they actually work for the dole – it took a HREOC report to convince the government of the day that this was a racist and inequitable arrangement. It’s the single largest Indigenous-specific program, and a massive chunk of it is completely offset by participants’ own social security entitlements. That’s some ‘welfare mentality’, ain’t it?

As somebody who really does work with Aboriginal people daily (as opposed to knowing somebody who lived next door to somebody who saw an Abo in a book once), the Tent Embassy is a daily reminder of the conditions suffered by Aboriginal people in rural and remote Australia, and the attitudes of some of the fucktards in this forum remind me why those conditions continue to exist.

Somebody told me about a recent trip to South Africa where they discussed poverty. The South Africans were boggled by Australia. Why, they asked, does one of the richest countries in the world, and one which derives so much of its wealth directly from the lands of its poorest people, find it so difficult to lift those same people out of abject poverty? Surely it wasn’t a problem of resources? My answer would have been that it’s almost completely a problem of ingrained racism that seethes beneath the gentile surface of pretty much every Anglo Australian I’ve ever met.

I’ve lost count of the number of times seemingly rational people, including close friends, have confided to me (usually after a few drinks) that Aboriginal people are the cause of, and solution to, all of their own problems, and all of your problems as well. They’ve everything that’s wrong with Australia, except Ernie Dingo, he’s alright I guess, and some of those footy players are all right, so long as they don’t touch my daughter, and Torres Strait Islanders are quite nice, they don’t smell nearly as bad. They’re all thieves, I hear, and billions and billions of dollars are wasted on them every year, and they get free cars and houses, and they want to steal my back yard. I saw it on Today Tonight, so it must be true.

Morons.

Luca, don’t click on the staff link on the aiatsis web-site. The staff photo is 5 bloody megs!

mmmm! Point taken. Well since it appears there’ll always be some type of aboriginal memorial at the tent embassy site then … I think there should be an aesthetically
pleasing one, rather than one comprised of a shipping container, and if such a memorial replicates one already in the nations’s capital then … that’s the situation!

No I did not. Just click on the last part.

Luca, there is a memorial to the Mabo decision near the High Court.

Also what is the purpose of ? Geez i hope I got html right.

I think the problem is with the marketing of the embassy (agree with DMD to an extent here).

Before the prominent appearance of the portable toilets I think the main comment aroused by the embassy was not along the lines of 200 years of oppression etc but “where on earth do they go to the loo?”.

If the embassy was marketed properly and orientated toward not offending the sensibilities of Middle Australia, the black fella would make a mint, exploiting whitey guilt!

A wonderful building could be established with soaring, cathedral-like ceilings as a symbol of hope and inside the walls could be festooned with harrowing depictions of aboriginal life at the turn of the century (and later!)(without wishing to make light of that real suffering).

Whitey-lefties would flock there in their millions to unload their guilt and have a good ‘ol boo hoo and sign the obligatory Sorry Books and there could be dot paintings to buy and just near the exit could be a … donation box!

Disneyesque? Of course! So? Whitey money could be used to further black interests. How much money does the present enterprise generate?

“Indigenous communities are third world”

You mean all over the world? Or just in Australia?

Also, is it relevant to the communities from Kempsey, Griffith, Port Augusta, Warnambool where the communities can be well educated if they choose to be and the employment base and oppurtunities are there if they want to grasp it?

completely agree with you seepi.
Actually, I’ve heard the term fourth-world being applied to indegenous communities – meaning their cnditions are going backwards instead of slowly developing.

– the tent embassy remains relevant as long as conditions in Indigenous communities are third world.

sorry, thumper, I misunderstood what you said earlier and now, I completely agree with you. I think I am developing the RA paranioa where I think everyone is a hardline right-winger. Yes to more education and yes to these communities developing working economies. It’ll be a long haul, but the journey must begin somewhere.
To AG, at what point was I whinging about my particular lot in life? I have been blessed with a decent (though not perfect) lot in life and I understand that I am fortunate to have it. i also give back to the community for what it has given me; by working, paying my taxes and obeying most laws (especially the ones which seek to prevent harm to fellow members of the community). I also understand that there are others whom have not gotten a fortunate lot in life, so I support them, through donations (which I make every time I stop by the tent embassy) and through moral support. Furthermore, I understand that this here Australia pretends to be a democracy on sundays, and, since I would like to see it become a proper one someday, I actively express my opinions and debate with others.
That’s hardly bringing down the country (whtever the hell that’s supposed to mean!)

Er…read comments more carefully, Pandy. I was talking about Aurukun in Cape York. And nowhere have I said they want “a place to camp and winge from”.

Hey Thumper I have read what you wrote and it makes sense. Maybe you are hinting you are an educated Aboriginal?

But at the end of the day will the representatives at the tent embassy now or in the future, be ever happy to pack up their bag and go home? Do they want more money, an injection of self respect, go back living their traditional lives, kick all immigrants out of the country? Or just have as terubo says a place to camp and whinge from for whatever irks them about the haves and have nots?

Clearly, Pandy, some of them want an Aboriginal Embassy.

Okay forgive me, but I lost interest in your retoric DMD and just decided to post a reply. I assume after about post 4 it was the same old whinge so here I go.

Go to Bunnings, buy the timber, build a bridge and get over it.

It is people with a chip on their shoulder like you that bring this country down whinging about their lot in life. If you spent more time and effort in doing something about whatever it is you feel is wrong with the country instead of whinging about it, you might actually make a difference, but instead you will just be part of the problem.

As for a nice reminder to our visitors, the “tent embassy” is an embarrassment. It is a filthy, disgusting looking blight on the landscape and anyone who sees it is either for it (like idiots like you) or embarrassed by it as it is a disgrace.

Where does it say that protestors have to be filthy lice ridden maggots and break up pallets for their fire (despite fire bans) and live like animals.

Whatever your little problem in life, get off your lazy ass and do something about it.

As for the PM saying sorry. Why wasn’t this brought up about Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, Malcolm Fraser, etc etc?? None of them were responsible for apologising, but somehow John Howard is the worst PM we have had for not saying sorry. Please explain?

That is white man talking folks.

What do the blackfellas want?

Agreed, and let’s hope so. That’s better than closing the whole place down, I’d have thought.

Thumper, absolutely. Your first sentence is dead right. I was in Aurukun about 20 months ago (when the copshop was in decent nick!), spoke at some length to the school head – he wants to train all the kids up and then get them out of the community altogether. So what happens to Aurukun?, I ask.
-We close it down completely, he answered.
The problem with that, surely, is that it’s on ancestral lands?

DMD – The Australian Government admits responsibility…then what? Compensation? It equates with more handouts at the end-point. A symbolic victory? Nice, but it won’t improve the lot of aboriginal people one iota. The return of ancestral lands? We have Mabo and Wik for that.

What we will get is more empty statements about “traditional owners” and “custodianship of the land”. It will still suck to be poor and aboriginal.

(See comment #2, Two of clubs.)

The author has not done their cause any favours with that rambling press release.

I found the whole thing downright puzzling until I clicked the source link at the bottom of the page.
Apparently it was intended to promote the 35th anniversary of the Tent Embassy.

No, but i think she should be in a museum. She’s a cack.

And thumper, as long as the howard government refuses to admit Australia’s responsibility for the attrocities against it’s indigeonous population, I say a symbol of protest is nessercary.

You’re not….you’re not….CrazyChester are you?!

Okay, I’ll abandon the government sanctions bit and thank you for being a reasonable RA poster.
I disagree with your point about the welfare mentality in rural communities. Frankly, I think it’s a little difficult for people whom have been born into several generations of poverty and alcohol addiction in remote communities with little employment prospects to suddenly pick themselves up and become upstanding members of the community. Many don’t have the benefits of canberran’s decent housing and education (although i will mention that some very brave teachers have made a difference up there), so the prospect of a better life for them seems about as distant as a government sanctioned tent embassy. It’s easier for us canberrans to get that degree with our hecs loan, kiss the right arse in that fundamental job interview and spend the rest of lives complaining about everybody else – and I for one know that is difficult.
To terubo – I’m stalking CIT teachers later this arvo, wanna come?

Thumper that is all well and good. But what do the representatives at the embassy “really” want to get them from making it a camping ground?

What is the answer if the communities who are in charge of their own affairs, on government handouts or on mining lease residuals make a hash of it?

At the risk of getting flamed by just about everyone else on RA, I’ll agree with much of what you say…apart from the government-sanctioned tent embassy bit.

Well, I can dream can’t I?
I’m just sick of hearing all this whinging about wasted taxes when most of our taxes are wasted on destructive military ventures and pricy advertising campaigns anyway.
And I still think the issue of aboriginal unity is relevant. There are lots of aboriginal people living in total poverty in remote communities that are affected by violence and alcohol abuse – and in all honesty, I think the only way some of these patterns can be turned is by the aboriginal people going back to their traditional roots instead of being shat upon at the bottom of our society.
Plus, the embassy is always a nice little reminder for foreign visitors to our lovely parkland capital. How else would they remember that modern australia was founded in bloodshed and persecution. It’s not like Howard’s going to tell them. He can’t even say sorry on the nation’s behalf.

In any case, there’s no chance in hell that the folk there would ever get into bed with the Govt., so you can kiss goodbye to that fantasy DMD.

I think it’s respectable that some people have managed to keep a protest against 200 years of genocide, kidnapping and social persecution going in a city that appears to be have fenced itself in the middle-class cloud.
But I suppose that makes me insane. So, screw it. I’m a raving nut and I think there should be a government-sanctioned aboriginal tent embassy.

Why they use white man technology at the tent embassy

Yeah, surely this media release should have been distributed on bark, using smoke signals to announce its release.

Boy, it seems a bit one sided doesnt it? I almost cryed when i read this, its so sad!!. They seem really hard done by don’t they?
Why they use white man technology at the tent embassy? I suppose they have plenty of time doing nothing living off our tax payers dollars. I feel so sorry for them. NOT>>>>>>>>>>>>

Last month they could have tore the whole thing down and removed any evidence of a tent embassy ever being there without anybody knowing.

As the heat has exploded, so has the population of the embassy – be prepared for more ramblings due to more key positions being filled…

Ahh, the plight of a conquered people.

Doesn’t look to me like a media release from the “tent embassy’ at all, merely the utterings of a mad cat called Ahni – who appears to be based somewhere in America.

Tear the fucking thing down already.