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| Home | The African Continent | Africa & the World | Indigenous to America |
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THE UNRELENTING STRUGGLE OF
INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS
Thank you, Brothers and Sisters. I'd like to thank The
World Uranium Hearing for giving me the privilege of being able to
present today. I have ten minutes to give you 200 years of colonization
of Indigenous Australia. So, I commence by giving a quote from an
Aboriginal woman in my country, Jackie Huggins:
"Aboriginal Australians have lived in Australia over
40,000 years. It has been a long argued view of European anthropologists
and prehistorians that modern humanity migrated South to Australia. This
fails to explain, however, why older forms of modern human beings have
not been found outside the continent. The legends and religious beliefs
of modern Aboriginal Australia have no stories of migration. There is no
evidence of migration memories anywhere in our country. This is a
religious position taken by Aboriginal Australians, and science has
failed to refute it."
Before 1788, Aboriginal Australians enjoyed a nomadic
lifestyle where men, women and children lived in harmony with each other
and the environment. Mother Earth was regarded as sacred which everyone
respected and did not exploit. The healthy lifestyle changed
dramatically when the invaders arrived from England headed by Captain
Cook. The land was claimed by them through a law that still exists today
called "terra nullius", meaning "no man's land". The British government
wanted to establish the penal colony because of the overcrowding in
their own country. It was estimated that about one million Australian
Aborigines inhabited the country with 500 different tribes in 1788.
Today, in 1992, 200 years later, there are 300,000 left. Many were
killed with guns, poisoned water holes and food, and many died from
diseases introduced by the invaders. A document from the late 1700's
states: "Some convicts were allowed to have the weekends free from the
confines of their masters' properties on the condition that they brought
back with them aboriginal scalps. These scalps were, in fact, pairs of
ears."
The remainder of the Aborigines were placed on
reserves and missions where white management had total control over
their Aboriginal lifestyle. The hunted and gathered foods were replaced
with high carbohydrate rations. Language and ceremonies were forbidden,
as it was seen as paganistic to the invaders' superior, Christian
values. The colonists brought with them their social order and notion of
property, their birth rights and Christianity. With their invisible
luggage they brought their racial prejudice. Aboriginal men were
drastically losing their role in society by being used to slave labour.
The women were used as domestics and sexual partners for the white
invaders. Raping and killings continued as a sport. And I quote: "One
gorges at the Sunday afternoon manhunts of sexual mutilation, of burying
live Aboriginal babies up to their necks in sand and kicking their heads
off after tying with a rape the severed neck of the husband around the
raped spouse."
Half cast children were being born and many were sent
away to welfare homes or to other reserves far away and many did not
return home. The most systemic destruction occurred in 1909 when about
5,300 Aboriginal children were sent to Cootamundra Girls Training School
and Kinchelle Boys Home in Kempsey, New South Wales, where they were
given training as domestics and farm hands. There was an estimation that
one in every six Aboriginal children were taken away from their families
in that century, compared to the figure of one white out of 300 to the
white community.
In the 1800's, scientists around the world -- in
particular Britain and Germany -- encouraged the killing of Aboriginals
for scientific research. Money was actually paid for skeletons.
Thousands of graves were robbed, the British and Australian scientists
ran one of the biggest graverobbing networks. Studies by an academic
researcher in Oxford indicated that the graves of between 5,000 and
10,000 Aboriginals were desecrated, their bodies dismembered to support
science. Recently discovered documents in Brisbane confirm that
Aboriginals were killed for displays in museums. Presently, Dr. Robin
Cox, head of the archeological branch of the Natural History Museum in
London, has requested on television that more Aboriginal bodies be sent
to his museum. Aboriginal Australians have called for his dismissal.
Legislation came in three stages for Aboriginals who
were regarded not even as human beings. First, there was a series of
official inquiries from 1845 to 1861 to investigate conflicts between
settlers and Aboriginals. Out of this came the conclusion that it was
best for both black and white, that Aboriginal people be separated from
Europeans and live on small reserves, where it was assumed that they
would eventually die out. The second stage was a protection act that all
Aboriginal people would be under the control of the government rather
than the settlers. Often, in isolated areas the person in charge was
usually the local policeman. The third stage was in the late 19th
century, an enactment of specific discriminative legislation. Between
1901 and 1911 all the states, including the Northern Territory with the
exception of Tasmania, passed acts providing for Aboriginal welfare.
This legislation was summed up by a researcher as "a system that
confines the native within a legal system that has more in common with
the born idiot than any other class of British subjects".
Queensland, where I was born, has many Aboriginal
reserves. One which is called Palm Island is notoriously known for
brutal treatment of Aboriginal people. Punishment for minor offences was
shaving childrens' heads bald and making them parade in front of the
community. And then the children were locked up in dormitories. The
childrens' hair was their pride.
My father, a member of the Birrigubba tribe, was taken
away as a child and raised on Palm Island. My grandfather was one of six
brave men from Palm Island who went on a hunger-strike in 1957 for
better conditions for Aboriginal people. All six men were taken in
chains, with their families separated from each other and relocated to
other reserves. In the 1950's and 60's, the British government tested
nuclear bombs at Maralinga, Monte Bello Island and Emu Field. The
fallout extended over a wide area including Queensland. At that time my
father was working on the railroad in central Queensland, where there is
now a high rate of leukemia in children.
In 1967, a referendum was held where 90 percent of
white Australians voted that Aborigines become citizens in their own
land. However, Queensland was the only state not to abolish all laws
discriminating against Aboriginals. Many of the South African apartheid
laws were actually modelled on the Queensland Aborigines Act.
In 1971, an Aborigine artist, Harold Thomas, designed
the Aboriginal flag in the colours red, black and yellow. Black for the
people, the red for the earth and the yellow for the sun, the giver of
life. In the early 1970's, the Aboriginal bureaucracy was structured
under the federal Labor government. Money was allocated for housing,
health, schooling and various projects. This was a form of compensation
to try to overcome the poverty among Aborigines. Most of the funding
went to white public servants in the administration, and little reached
the grassroot-levels. Many of the white public servants became experts
in being Aboriginal. At this time the Girynga people of the Northern
Territory were given some landrights. Since then there has been much
legislation and government inquiries into landrights and heritage acts.
Most Aboriginal people still have not had success in land claims.
Multinational mining companies are stifling many claims. Uranium and
other minerals were found where Aboriginal communities were mostly
located.
In the late 1960's, I learned about the dangers of
uranium mining in Mary Kathleen, a desert town in Queensland, from my
father. He was the only source of information my family had. We had no
access to newspapers, radio or television. He was very involved with the
trades and labor movement while working with the railways. There was
much opposition by railway unions against the transport and export of
Mary Kathleen uranium, and in 1977, the Australian Council of Trade
Unions called for a ban on the export of uranium. And like 1976, my
father became aware of the secret rail shipment of uranium from Mary
Kathleen on the Mount Isa railroad. Uranium demonstrators delayed the
shipment for some time and publicity resulted on the dangers of uranium
mining. In 1980, there was a theft of two tons of yellow cake from Mary
Kathleen. It was transported out of the mine in six drums and later
found in Sydney almost 5,000 kilometers away.
In the mid-1980's, my father died of stomach cancer,
although he lived a very healthy lifestyle. As a midwife for the past 20
years, working in the area of public health nationally and
internationally, I have witnessed an increase in sterility, cancers,
miscarriages, deformities and other problems. It appears to be a general
problem globally. The present situation of Aboriginal Australia is
alarming. Many remote communities lack clean running water, adequate
housing and proper sanitation. We represent one percent of the national
population but we count for up to 70 percent of prison inmates. Infant
mortality is three times higher than in the general population, and the
life expectancy is 20 to 25 years less.
The unemployment rate is three to five times greater
than the general population. We still have diseases like leprosy and
tracoma that some Third World countries have eradicated. Alcoholism is
on epidemic levels which causes family breakdowns and the loss of their
cultural identity. To further this insulting situation towards
Aboriginal society, we now have a black and a white bureaucracy.
The federal government gave the power to Aboriginal
people to elect representatives, to advise the government on Aboriginal
affairs. This advisory body called ATSIC, the Aboriginal and Torres
Straight Islanders Commission, is continuing to disempower Aboriginal
people as far too much money is spent in the administrative arm and very
little reaches the grassroots-level.
An Indian Elder said in Canada three weeks ago, and I
quote: "We must educate the indigenous people as well as the white
people about the dangers of the ugly nuclear industry. Some are
beginning to give the O.K. to mine on Aboriginal land in order to deal
with the poverty. They must be told to leave uranium in the ground." End
of quote. Michael Mansell, an Australian Aboriginal activist, summed up
the prospects of Aboriginal people in my country when he stated: "The
most crucial prerequisite to empowering Aboriginal people is their
desire and capacity to put an end to their disadvantaged situation and
take control of their own lives. There is no other way." The World
Uranium Hearing will hopefully unite us all to achieve this and to take
back our messages to our leaders and our people to leave uranium in the
ground. And in closing, not is all doom and gloom. I encourage my
indigenous sisters and brothers globally to continue our struggle. We
have survived and we will survive, as we were all B.C. -- before Cook,
Columbus and Christ.
Gracelyn Smallwood, Australia. Master of Science (in Health), registered nurse, midwife, member of the Aboriginal Islander Tripartite Forum, co-founder of the Indi-Genous Forum. Her email address is birriwoods@hotkey.net.au Reprinted fro the Global African Presence For information on Professor
Gracelyn Smallwood contact
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