Comments on: Stabilize, Normalize, Exit…it has a nice ring to it

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 23:51:40 +0000

James and Grad Student,
There hasn’t been “open revolt” in the sense in which I think you both are speaking. However, Aboriginal people and the organizations they represent are challenging the government in other ways. The legal case by Maningrida that I mentioned is one, Yuendumu’s open condemnation is another. Also, when I was in Tennant Creek most of the talk I heard was of a sort of “passive resistance” type–so for example, with the “transition” away to CDEP people are supposed to show up for three separate interviews and so many folks were talking about avoiding those and seeing how long it would actually take the Centrelink folks to find them.

In terms of national organizing in 2004 John Howard was able to get rid of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and in doing so wiped out the only elected national Indigenous representative body. This was a huge blow and one could argue that if ATSIC was around there might be more sustained push back nationally.

But Howard and Brough have been very strategic about 1) intervening only in the NT where they have power (not in the States, 2) framing this in terms of abused children, so that anyone that disagrees is called out as being “soulless” in Mal Brough’s words and 3) getting Labor onside in an election year so that it appears there is bipartisan support.

The National Aboriginal Alliance (http://nationalaboriginalalliance.org/) is working to educate people about what is going on both in the NT and nationally, they have a list of “resolutions.”

Also check out the Women for Wik website (http://www.womenforwik.org/) for developments on the ground.

By: Grad Student

Grad Student — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 23:13:29 +0000

Like James, I’m surprised that we haven’t heard anything about aborigines fighting back or even violent incidents. I can’t imagine indigenous people in the United States or Canada not resisting. In fact, there was incident and Canada a few years back that pitted the Quebec’s provincial government against one of the First Nations groups that lived there.

Is this just a matter of organizational difference. In other words, are indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada better organized than those in Australia? Are the indigenous groups in the United States and Canada better adapt at lobbying and other related political strategies?

By: James Crippen

James Crippen — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:50:13 +0000

I can’t believe that Australian Aboriginals are allowing this sort of thing to happen. If the governments in America or Canada tried something like this the indigenous people would go into open revolt. The very idea that the government needs to treat its citizens – indigenous or not – like children and hold their hands, wipe their noses, and take away their allowance, is personally repulsive to me.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but to me it sounds like the Aboriginal community needs to take the Australian government to task for not treating them like autonomous human beings, and instead lowering them to some kind of misbehaving housepets.