Did you know that the Australian Government is guilty of committing genocide?

Genocide, as stated in the Geneva Convention is the slaughter of a particular race/culture of people in order to destroy that race/culture, or, the removal of children from a particular race/culture in order to destroy that particular race/culture.  In other words, the Assimilation Policy used by the Australian Government to take away Aboriginal children from their mothers.

Everyone has an image of Australia.  The carefree nation.  No blood on it’s hands.  Captain Cook sailed to this wide, empty land and declared it Terra Nullius, then claimed it under the Union Jack.  But no one ever told you that when Captain Cook became shipwrecked off the coast of Queensland that it was a tribe of Aboriginal people who helped him repair his ship, did they?

And you never heard of the massacres, poisonings, raping, torturing of the Aboriginal people upon colonisation and the new diseases the White Man brought with him did you?  I sure as hell didn’t, and they are my people, and it’s my history!  I find it funny that we know more about the native people of other countries than we do about the Aboriginal people of our own.

And why?  Because the Government doesn’t want to teach the truth of what happened to their children.  When John Howard stated that he wanted to teach the true Australian History in schools, you have to wonder which version of the true history is that?

The only history I learnt was when I was in school was the white history of Australia.  Ned Kelly, the Bushrangers, Colonisation, the Eureka Stockade, Captain Cook.  And I’ve only just realised that this country is inherently racist.  The Assimilation Policy, the White Australia Policy (one of the marketing campaigns stated that ‘two wongs don’t make a white’).

Now before I get into it, I want to tell you a bit about the aboriginal people of this country, which will help you further understand their position.

The Aboriginals believe that they were born of the Earth, and that the Earth is their mother.  When a child is born, they believe it to be a spirit from the Earth coming through a physical body to start its journey, not the pro-creation between man and woman.  Sex is just ceremony.

The main focus of Aboriginal life is the family.  The men are the hunters, the protectors, and the women are the mothers and the carers.  Children do not belong to one particular pair of parents, they belong to the entire community.  Outside of the immediate family, there are the extended family groups with nearby clans, which form language groups.  Did you know that before White Man came to Australia, over 700 languages were already spoken here?

They lived a life of constant movement in harmony with nature.  They would move from one area to the next as resources got low and prey moved on.  They would make sure that they never used up all the resources in any particular area, because they knew they would have to return.  They belonged to the land, not the other way around.  They did not see land as a commodity that could be bought and sold like the White Man.

Because of their nomadic nature, and the fact that they travelled constantly, the White Man decided that they were little more than savages.  They had no particular home, and as such, the White Man deemed that he could come in and claim the land as their own.

Up until 1967, Aboriginal people were not counted as people in the national census.  They were counted as stock, in line with Horses and Cows.

The Assimilation policy, which was used to take half-caste children away from their parents and to be raised in Missions is almost solely responsible for destroying the aboriginal culture.

Think about it.

You’ve been stolen from your parents and raised in an institution.  It was illegal to practice your customs and traditions, should you have known some of them before you were stolen away.  That is the main catalyst that has affected the Aboriginal people so negatively.

Apart from the media, of course.  Do me a favour people, don’t believe a word you hear in the media without checking into the story yourself.  Disconnect your TV, don’t read newspapers and don’t listen to the radio.  Violence, sex and disaster sells, and that’s all they spread.  But that’s an issue for another blog entry.

How could Aboriginal people learn to be good parents when they were never parented themselves?  The reason so many Aboriginal males are abusing alcohol and drugs is because their role in life, the protector, was destroyed.  How can the women care for children that have been taken away from them?  And native title?  It’s a joke.  In order to get native title to land you have to prove continuous links to the land by customs and traditions.  But you can’t have continuous links to the land when it’s been illegal to perform your ritual ceremonies and customs on that land can you?

One case of native title was not awarded because the farmer who squatted on that land put up a fence and did not allow the Aboriginal people of the area in.  My clan is still fighting for land rights.  They have been for years.

This new knowledge has awoken something inside of me.  I want to help my people, my brothers and sisters out there all over Australia.  What could be a more rewarding career choice?