Beyond this blog!

This is an old blog and I was going to remove it. However I notice there have been links to it accompanying various articles I have written elsewhere so I will leave it up. Those interested in my religious pontifications should check out - "A New Australian Theology" Those interested in my art - "John Tracey's Art" And for an assortment of unrelated and incoherent ranting - - "Unlearning the Problem" JT

Treaty Now

Check out "Treaty Now" the Website of the "Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal, Custodian of the land Minjerriba, Peace Prosperity and Healing, Sacred Treaty Circles"

TREATY NOW

"Unlikely Travellers" - movie review

The controversial movie “Unlikely Travellers” by Brisbane film maker Michael Noonan had its world premier on Sunday (Aug 12) as part of the Brisbane International Film Festival. The documentary features the lives of a group of people with intellectual disabilities who travel to Egypt as well as their families and support workers.

Up until Sunday’s screening “Unlikely Travellers” has benefited from perhaps the most sensational pre-publicity campaign of any independent documentary ever made in Australia.


Noonan’s academic work at the Queensland University of Technology , including the production of “Unlikely Travellers”, has come under severe public criticism by two academics, Gary MacLennan and John Hookham, who claim his work demeans and exploits people with disabilities. As a result of this criticism MacLennan and Hookham were charged, convicted and suspended without pay for six months for crimes against Q.U.T., This in turn ignited an international media sensation around free speech and censorship which has still not died down.

Noonan’s work has been condemned across the globe, yet until Sunday’s BIFF screening nobody has seen it except a small group of quarreling academics. The anticipation of the release of this film has been electric, further energised by recent news that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is investigating QUT’s action against the two suspended academics. - A publicist’s dream!

Those looking for controversy will not be disappointed by “Unlikely Travellers”. It is indeed confronting, morally ambiguous and in many places sexist. Such is the nature of the real lives of real people presented in the documentary.

“Unlikely Travellers” is about adventure. The first half of the movie documents the physical and emotional preparation for the trip to Egypt, the second half focuses on the trip itself and its consequences. This journey is a collective step into the unknown that changed the lives of each of the participants.

Noonan, his crew and camera have been allowed privileged access into the lives of the cast. Inside he finds some of the key issues relating to the rights of people with intellectual disabilities, especially as weighed up against the will of their families and support workers. But Noonan’s film does not make any grand gesture in support of these rights, instead exploring the complexities, contradictions, differing perspectives and needs of all those involved including family and support workers. His interviews with over-protective parents about over-protectiveness is as profound and enlightening as it is contradictory. The families interviewed have been brave and honest in discussing their real family situation, not just detached principles and protocols governing the lives of people with disability.

One of the themes of the movie is sexuality. It is an honest, beautiful and disturbing insight into the unresolved issues of sex, marriage and children from the perspective of the travelers, their families and their support workers. The anxieties of temporarily separated spouses (Nicole left her husband at home while she went to Egypt), holiday romances, fidelity and fickleness are all confronted head on with no neat resolutions. The authority in charge of this project, John Hart from the Spectrum organisation also shares his own challenges as a support worker as to when and if he should intervene in relationships heading in the direction of sexual intimacy. He respects the adulthood and independence of the travelers at the same time as being morally and legally responsible for their well being. Lucky for him the trip only lasted two weeks and the dilemma is handed back to the families.

And then there is the terrible sexism! There are two characters that stand out in this film – James and Darren. These are the two who Noonan is presently working with on a comedy project. Their aptitude for such a project shines brightly in “Unlikely Travellers” as it did with their impromptu speeches after the screening. Darren, 40 and James, 20 develop a friendship which provides much of the comic relief in this documentary. Darren is the ideas man, he knows what he wants (which includes women!) and he has a fair idea how to go about getting it. The more reserved and intellectual James has reached the point in his life where he wants to be independent and is obviously inspired by Darren’s zest for life and mischief. James is willingly drawn into Darren’s grand schemes including moving into a house together to create a barbeque wonderland that will attract women.

One of the scenes singled out by the QUT critics was of James’ figuring that if Darren got a girlfriend then the two could share her. This was well received by the audience who laughed at the statement as well as Darren’s interjection that this might not be possible to arrange. This scene is near the end of the film and the audience has already got two know the two men well. In this context the scene is neither sexist nor offensive but just another insight into complicated perspectives of sexuality, humour and independence.

Darren emerges as the expedition leader as he pursues his quest to find out if there is a trap door underneath the foot of the Sphinx and how Tutankhamen died, if indeed he did die.. Darren’s excitement at proving his brother wrong about how many Sphinxes there are in Egypt was audibly shared by the audience, as was his disappointment at discovering that some people in Egypt may try and rip him off - a truly sad point in the movie.

There are other sad moments such as Stanley’s story of welfare authorities taking away his three children, and then losing his wife because of the pressure of losing the children. His brave attempt at a holiday romance and coming back to earth after the trip is also a brave and honest insight into the life of this particular person with an intellectual disability. For me the saddest part of the movie was Stanley explaining that the authorities had decided it was not appropriate for his children to see him off at the airport or to welcome him home as all the other travelers’ families had.

All the travelers – Nicole, James, Darren, Stanley, Natasha and Carla - have their own unique stories which are portrayed with depth and integrity. It is the intertwining of all the different stories that holds this film together.

Viewing the film has dismissed in my mind the much publicised criticism that Noonan has an exploitative or inappropriate attitude towards disability. Four of the six unlikely travelers spoke after the film, expressing a deep gratitude to Noonan and Spectrum for the experience, as did members of their families speaking from the floor.

Darren took the microphone to the cheers of the audience, a situation that he immediately took advantage of to show his talent as a comic orator, Stanley spoke and gave an update on his continuing struggle to be reunited with his children. James opened the floor to questions and skillfully handled heckling from his mother. Nicole made some insightful comments about the comparative difference of cultures in Egypt and Australia.

MacLennan and Hookham have criticised one scene in “Unlikely Travellers”, but to be fair to them the bulk of their attack is on Noonan’s current work in progress – the “Down Under Mystery Tour”with Darren and James. Again nobody in the world has seen this except the same small group of quarreling academics. Supporters of the suspended academics handed out leaflets at Sunday’s screening claiming they were not talking about “Unlikely Travellers” as an example of “misanthropic and amoral trash”, only the “Down Under Mystery Tour”. This ongoing criticism is sure to inflame the pre-publicity of “Down Under Mystery Tour” as with “Unlikely Travellers”. Noonan sure is lucky with publicity!

I look forward to seeing how Noonan tackles comedy in his next project. I also look forward to laughing at the antics of Darren and James, I predict we will see a lot more of these two movie stars in the future.

John Tracey

Laughing at “THE DISABLED” - power, perception and prejudice.

Background

A recent controversy at the Queensland University of Technology has has resulted in severe punitive action being taken against two academics, Gary MacLennan and John Hookham who, in the name of speaking up for “the disabled”, publically criticised a Phd. Student, Michael Noonan and his Phd thesis “Laughing at the disabled (later renamed “laughing with the disabled”) for demeaning “the disabled”. The student is exploring the notions of “laughing at” and “laughing with” the disabled and is making a comedic film featuring two men with intellectual disabilities.


As a result of their public criticism of QUT and Noonan’s work the two academics were suspended for six months without pay. The legal wranglings of this matter continue but what began as a significant contribution to the discussion of disability issues has now become an issue of academic integrity and free speech, in particular the role of the university and academics in the wider community and perhaps most significantly it has become an issue of employee rights and the excessive punitive measures meted out to MacLennan and Hookham for their public criticism of the university.

My own position is that I strongly disagree with the sentiments and attitudes about “disability” expressed by MacLennan, Hookham and their supporters. From what I have heard of Noonan’s work it seems to be fascinating and a significant step in challenging dominant prejudices and stereotypes of “the disabled”. However I am deeply disturbed about the punitive action taken by QUT against the academics for speaking out, not just because of industrial justice or the importance of free speech but because they are repressing the discussion, the dynamic friction, of disability issues in the public domain as well as in the institutions that train those who will work with people with disabilities. By repressing the discussion of contrary opinion, QUT has played a major role in concretising status quo attitudes and policies which will make them invulnerable to innovation of any sort including that envisioned by Noonan’s work. By repressing those who would criticise and challenge, of any perspective, is an arrogant dismissal of a major and necessary public debate that is all too often swept under the carpet because of embarrassment, political correctness or the entrenched institutional norms of the disability industry.

Despite my disagreement with MacLennan and Hookham on which I am about to pontificate, these two men have initiated a public debate which seriously needs to occur and it is most unfortunate for the development of an apparently progressive disability project that QUT has turned this into a highly politicised free speech issue.

I can’t comment too much on Noonan’s work as it is being kept secret because of the controversy and will apparently not be made public until the film is released.

Gary MacLennan and John Hookham have seen some of Noonans preliminary work and were deeply disturbed by what they saw of the project and wrote a widely publicised article entitled “Philistines of relativism no longer at the gates”
where they criticised what they saw as offensive material and its acceptance by the academic trends of post-structuralism or post modernism. The following is a reflection on Gary Maclennan and John Hookham’s article (henceforth known as “the article”) and the movement that has arisen in support of these men.

The myth of the disabled

The article speaks of “the tradition of mocking the disabled”. I will get to the mocking business later but for now deal with “the disabled” as a notion embraced by the academics and their supporters including a supporter’s statement that “the disabled community protesting the suspension of Hookham and MacLennan”, an assertion also made in the youtube video “The Disability Community speaks out against QUT”.

It is inaccurate to speak of “the disabled” as a class or a community, as if disability provided a cultural and historical unity with some evolved mass sensibility. A person with a disability is going to be defined or socialised by their family, peers, work, institutions and television – just like anyone else. The public perception of a disabled community is generated by workers in the disability industry and is an illusion that describes their work issues and environment more than the real lives of people with disabilities.
The exception is the deaf community who resist the notion that they have a disability, just a different language, culture and community.

This disability worker generated illusion of a “disabled community”is that which informs government and community group policy and programs for this class of people “the disabled”.

By objectifying the heterogeneous lives and perspectives of real people who have disabilities into a single box labeled “disabled” we create the mechanism by which society imposes its own notions of what a disability is and what a person with a disability is in accordance with this preconception of “the disabled”.

This box containing “the disabled” is governed by a range of social norms which do not apply to “ordinary people” thus creating a distinct and separate class of people who, for their own protection, are proscribed from particular kinds of social activity taken for granted by “the normals”, the example in the case of the article, the comedic tradition of self mocking is considered inappropriate. Other taboos imposed on “the disabled” are sexuality and alcohol consumption, also displayed in the article with the disapproving reference to a pub scene in Noonan’s film “This produced a scene wherein a drunk Aboriginal woman amorously mauled William”. “The disabled” is a notion of disempowerment and dehumanisation.

“The disabled” in the entertainment and media industries.

If entertainers with disabilities like, Steady Eddy or Dave Allen with his amputated finger or Ian Dury’s self reflection “Spasticus Autisticus” want to make fun of themselves, any aspect of themselves including their disability they are engaging in a mainstream comic tradition that is not considered to be offensive in any other context than “the disabled”. Danny Devito’s height has not been used by Hollywood as a cruel attack on short people and Devito is not exploited.

The first two of ““twelve secrets of comedy””.
from Sandi C. Shore’s “Stand Up Comedy Workshop Workbook” are

“Secret 1 ………Comedy is based on truth. Are you stupid? Go with it! Are you a liar? So what! Are you fat? Good. Are you perfect? Oh, please.”

“Secret 2……We are perfect as we are. The idea is not to change a thing about yourself, faults and all. The reason you should accept yourself is that you can’t fool your audience. They can see right through you.”

Yet the article seems to think that this mainstream principle of comedy which appears to be part of Noonan’s Film is not appropriate for “the disabled”. Disability, it seems, is something that should be hidden. The article suggests that these two young men were being used by the film maker, including being presented with scripts and set up situations, but is this not the normal film industrial relationship for all on-screen talent? Yet this industrial norm is described by the article as exploitation when applied to “the disabled”.

There are indeed the power relationships inherent in film making and the manipulation and presentation of on screen subjects. However, I believe, a film maker should not change their style if they are working with people with intellectual disabilities if (and only if) the person has a functioning and sensitive support and advocacy structure to negotiate with the film maker in conjunction with (not on behalf of) the particular actor. The existence of such a structure is one of the few publically available facts of the nature of Noonan’s work.

Vulnerability and Adulthood

One of the issues raised by the article was that of the vulnerability of people with intellectual disabilities, which is indeed a different issue than the situation of the artists such as Steady Eddy, Dave Allen and Ian Dury. The article speaks of the actors in Noonan’s film in the following terms….

“It’s worth noting that William’s condition may make it difficult for him to understand the subtexts of social interaction.”

and

“But we don’t think it’s funny to mock and ridicule two intellectually disabled boys. We think we, and the university, have a duty of care to those who are less fortunate than us.”

Speakers at the rallies supporting the persecuted academics have also spoken of the actor as “boys”which is a bit of a faux-par within disability protocols when discussing adults, including young adults. The two men in Noonan’s film are 20 and 40 years old. It is the perception of adults with intellectual disabilities as child-like that is, in my opinion, the single largest cause of oppression of people with such disabilities. The major obstacle to personal maturity is not any intellectual capacity but a rather a world who will not allow these people to grow up and participate as equal citizens.

It is especially important to reinforce adulthood in young people with intellectual disabilities, just is it is for any young person. Perhaps the most important skill of adulthood is to be able to make responsible and mature decisions about our own lives, irrespective of peer group pressure or the expectations of anyone else – including the principles and protocols of the disability industry. A young adult, with disabilities or not, does not need the imposition of an act of parliament, an industrial standard or the counsel of a social worker to find out who they are and what value system they will apply to the decisions in their own life.

Recent enlightened disability legislation has as a principle of the “presumption of capacity”. That is similar to the “presumption of innocence” in that a person is considered to be legally fully capable of making their own decisions until a proper assessment of their capacity indicates a limited capacity. However, beyond the similarity with the presumption of innocence, if a person is deemed to have a limited capacity, whatever capacity they do have is to be fostered and facilitated and incorporated into the making of decisions about that person by a guardian, advocate or support person.

Another principle of disability legislation is that the role of guardians, advocates and support people is to assist people with disabilities to participate fully in the community as if they did not have a disability - the world is modified so that the disability is no longer relevant, not modified so that it is reduced to the level of the disability. The role of the assistant is to complement their client’s capacity, to fill in the gaps caused by the physical or intellectual disability so that the client can be a full and independent citizen. The guardians, advocates and support workers are correctly bound by the principles of the current legislation in exercising their responsibilities, but nowhere in any disability legislation anywhere are there any instructions or even principles about what decisions, whether supported or individually that a person with disabilities may or may not make about their life.

In the eyes of the an enlightened law, if not the general community, a person with an intellectual disability is not bound in any way by the expectations of the disability box as their support staff are. Support structures and people are designed to empower a person to full capacity, not protect them from real and equal involvement in the world because of any incapacity.

Notions of “the disabled” are illusions that objectify and dehumanise human beings, that define a person by the obstacles in their life or those things that make them “less fortunate than ourselves” rather than their capacities, interests and aspirations.

In conclusion

I would like to suggest a close parralell between community attitudes and policy regarding disability and Aboriginality. Too often Aboriginality has been perceived by policy makers as a disability that needs to be overcome rather than a cultural framework on which to build. But this article is not about that.

There are four historical policies/attitudes of 1/extermination, 2/protection, 3/assimilation and 4/self determination that have been applied, though differently, to Aboriginal people and people with disabilities. Just as poisonings and the native police exterminated aboriginal people, disabled people were often killed in hospitatal at birth “for their own good”. Then they were protected in institutions as Aboriginal people were herded into missions and reserves. Then the disability field focused on getting people out into the community and Aboriginal people were released from the missions into mainstream society. Self determination has stalled in both cases. While being well articulated by indigenous people and actually manifested in government policy with the development of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, indigenous policy has turned around and is now marching back through the assimilation era and returning to the protection era with John Howard’s Aboriginal emergency or Peter Beattie’s Aboriginal grog laws.

Similarly, self determination has stalled as a policy in the disability field because its implications necessarily mean professional disability workers must let go of the power over the lives of people with disability, meaning residents of nursing homes should run the management committee of their home which conflicts directly with the status quo interests of, for example, a private nursing home and its investors. Institutional power is not determined by the needs of individual clients, they just plug in to the system however it is. But until there is a reform of power in the institutions that deliver services so that the user groups themselves design and manage them, even if only in an executive fashion, then self determination is just a shallow platitude for people with disabilities.

The four policies represent an evolution that has largely been driven by the activism of indigenous people and people living with disabilities demanding recognition of their basic human rights. In both cases policy has stalled at assimilation but the next step of self determination has been clearly mapped out already, all that remains is the political will to move forward. But the political will will not manifest if the social attitudes that underpin paternalistic policies such as protection and assimilation are widespread in the community, as is our contemporary status quo.

I was once at a lecture in Mayne Hall at the University of Queensland by famous disability theorist and theologian Jean Vanier, the founder of the “Communities of the Ark” in France. After his lecture he was asked a question from the floor along the lines “in your work with the disabled have you ever witnessed a miracle healing?” Vanier replied quite brilliantly. “Yes! I have witnessed many people change their attitudes towards people with disabilities.”


Background on the QUT controversy - youtube of ABC's "Stateline" June 15 2007

See also paradigm oz - "Still laughing at the disabled"

Neo-colonialism in Australia

A non-Aboriginal perspective on neo-colonial illusion
and reconciliation with Aboriginal Australia

By John Tracey


Some Basic Information

Wherever we live in Australia we are on the ancestral homeland of a particular Aboriginal family, we are either on or in the vicinity of their ancient birthing centres, cemeteries, ceremonial areas and agricultural areas.

**1770 Aboriginal people have occupied this continent for many thousands of years, evolving a highly sophisticated system of law, language and economy. Trade routes ran throughout the country and north into Asia.

**1788 The fist fleet estimated that there were three million Aborigines in Australia based on the population in the vicinity of the new colony. This estimate was based on the assumption that Aborigines only inhabited coastal areas and were incapable of surviving inland.

** The first one hundred years of Australia was marked by a vicious war between Aborigines and settlers. In some areas guerilla resistance continued into the twentieth century. The gun, water and food poisoning and smallpox were the weapons that subdued the guerilla armies that rose all around the country,

**In the late eighteen hundreds bands of Native Police under the command of white officers tracked and murdered Aboriginal people still posing a threat to the expansion

of white farms

** The beginning of last century saw the birth of Australian federation. Also the Aboriginal protection laws and reserves were instituted around the country. Most of the surviving aboriginal population were rounded up onto reserves and their lives were regulated, including travel, marriages and employment by white protectors, often police.

Under the protection laws Aboriginal people were paid under award wages, most of which was held by various state governments and never paid to workers or their families. Many Aboriginal Children, especially fair skinned children and those still living a traditional lifestyle, were forcibly removed from their families and raised in orphanages or adopted to white families.

** Today an Aboriginal person is more than 27 times as likely to be imprisoned than a white person, On Average, Aboriginal people die twenty years younger than white people.

Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free.......Aboriginal culture is the oldest living culture on the planet and Aboriginal people are the most imprisoned people on the planet.


What is exploitation and liberation? Who defines it, the exploited or exploiter, Aboriginal culture or English/Australian culture? Australia's racial discrimination laws gives people of all races and cultures the right to be white. All have legal equality within the frameworks of white industrial democracy and culture. Indigenous rights, or rights generated from migrant cultures other than English are ignored. For example, an aboriginal worker has a legal right to award conditions the same as anyone else. However if they miss work for attending to essential cultural business they may be sacked, they have no indigenous legal rights.

Similarly native title law gives to Aboriginal people certain rights to land within a white framework of land law. White courts and judges adjudicate land disputes and define the territories and legal rights of native titleholders. Aboriginal people have no right within native title to exercise rights and obligations within Aboriginal law except those that conform to white land use notions. For example native title holders will go to gaol if they hunt a protected species of animal on their own country.

Recent movements for justice and social change have included indigenous issues amongst their political demands. I remember the chants echoing around the city skyscrapers "One struggle One fight, women workers blacks unite" as Joh Bjelke Petersens storm troopers were confronted in the streets of Brisbane. This notion of a united front of progressive social movements was itself an alternative dismissal of black perspective. Aboriginal oppression was defined from a Marxist, feminist, anarchist, ecological or social democratic framework. Likewise the strategy for Aboriginal liberation was perceived along white ideological lines.

Today most social activists admit to an ignorance of indigenous issues . This ignorance allows for no constructive collaboration with Aboriginal people. White social movements have objectified Aboriginal people, creating their own concept of what Aboriginal oppression is and how that can be used to further their own white ideologies. In this sense the mode of operation of the alternative movement apes the grotesque failures of mainstream bureaucracy.

I am suggesting that many of the philosophies and ideologies that we espouse as an alternative to the oppression of the mainstream are just as ethnocentric, culturally specific, illusory and oppressive as the status quo. Our movements are charachterised by the three strands of environmentalism, socialism and feminism . It is easy to point the finger at Christianity and see how it was and is used as a tool of invasion and genocide. We should be just as critical of our own sacred cows. Alternative philosophies are just a part of the rich fabric of the invader society imposed on this Aboriginal country.

The Green movement has built a concept of wilderness, without consultation with Aboriginal people, we have generalised that concept, politicised it and it is now a significant issue on the Australian political landscape. Yet the way we have described the natural environment bears no resemblance to its ancient reality.

Modern Australia began with the legal principle of Terra Nullius, meaning a land with no law or government, no sovereign population. The British declared this continent to be Terra Nullius after Captain Cook "discovered" it, which allowed the British Crown to claim possession of the land in accordance with international law. Terra Nullius of course is a lie and was found to be such by the Australian High Court when Eddie Mabo proved that his family had owned their block of land since before Captain Cook.. Anthropologists and Aboriginal people assert that there was, prior to Cook and up until today, a complex and sophisticated system of law, government, economy and language, all the defining points of a sovereign nation.

Despite the high courts findings, Terra Nullius remains as the legal foundation for the sovereignty of the crown in Australia which in turn is the foundation authority for the parliament, courts, police, military and every other migrant legal institution.

Modern Australian conservationism dovetails with the legal fiction of Terra Nullius. Both deny the reality that this country was and still is occupied by a large complex Aboriginal society.

The conservation values of the Australian Bush are usually articulated in terms of species of plants and animals, geological considerations and often last and least, cultural heritage; usually a description of the history of the European colony and, occasionally, a reference to native title holders or Aboriginal place names (with little understanding of the meaning of either).

The principles of ecology and biodiversity have made us aware of the devastating consequences to an eco system if a particular species of plant or animal is removed. For example if a particular bird becomes extinct, the seeds it used to carry do not propagate and the insects it used to eat swell in numbers. Insect plague and reduced propagation in turn affects an infinite number of other organisms, radically degrading the systems of the ecosystem. The balance of bio-diversity has become an accepted principle in green ideology, yet how much have we considered the devastating consequences of removing the human species from wilderness eco-systems? For thousands of years humans interacted with the bush which provided them with all of the resources of daily life.. Human society and the natural eco systems evolved as one. Today we protect places in national parks and nature reserves and pretend that we are preserving their ancient integrity. Yet the form of bush that is protected in the national parks of today, places without the human species, are a phenomenon of the last hundred years, younger than many Australian urban centres. The removal of human beings from the bush in the last two hundred years has turned our wilderness areas into overgrown untended gardens.

Bushfire management is one example that highlights our misunderstandings of the bush. Conservationists have often argued that preventative burning strategies threaten eco systems; and they are right. Many farmers and fire authorities say the only way to avoid super-fires is to burn forest litter, and they are right also. In the old days the landscape was scattered with sacred campfires burning twenty-four hours a day providing a wide range of functional and spiritual purposes. These fires, along with hunting and cleansing fires, were fuelled solely by forest litter, gently and gradually cleaning the bush in a way that does not disrupt the sacred ecosystems that sustained the fire makers.

It has been a long time between sacred fires in many of our protected areas and as such they have degenerated into dormant infernos awaiting ignition.

Environmentalism tends to subscribe to the notion that the natural habitat of the human species is towns and cities, this is our territory and we should stay out of the territories of the other species. Centuries old notions of the evolution of humanity identify a progression from living in the bush in a savage and unsophisticated consciousness, through the epoch of barbarism into civilised society. This Darwinian notion conforms to the idea that the habitat of the modern human is urbanity. The inherent contradiction of this is it is the city structure that is doing most damage to the habitats of all species, including human. As a product of feudalism, industrialisation and capitalism, cities have grown as ever extending cancers, totally destroying the ecosystems of Europe and almost completing that process in Australia. By the simple evolutionary imperative of survival of the species, industrial civilisation represents a failure, it is our greatest threat as a species. the development of urban civilisation has been a process of ignorantly shitting in our own nests for millennia. Compared to the hundreds of thousands of years or more of sustainable human society in the bush, urban society is a dysfunctional devolution and disintegration.

If we are serious about preserving the Australian environment and indeed the human species we must take direction from Aboriginal people, their traditions of are the only record of the true history and nature of the bush, including how humans manage it. Aboriginal culture itself is a working example of a social ecology, including law and the individual and collective consciousness' that have been created by the interrelationship between human society and the wilderness.

Socialism is an ideology born of the emerging working class of the industrial revolution in Europe. The process of environmental degradation, hierarchical social structures, militarisation and the development of the nation state was the social context of socialism. Marx and Lenin both advocated industrialisation as historically inevitable and in the interests if the emancipation of the working class. The push towards centralised industry fuelled by the great wealth and greater greed of the ruling class was a wave on which socialism surfed, failing in any environmental foresight or radical analysis of the means and process of production beyond economic parameters.

Marx's fellow ideologue,Engels speaks of his understanding of Australian Aboriginal society as savagery, the bottom of social evolution yet to transcend into barbarism and then civilisation. (The origin of Family, Private property and the state) Marx and Lenin's prescriptions for European industrialisation were both racist and ignorant of the land rights of peasants sacrificing their land and land based cultures, for the benefit of the developing urban working class.

In Australia the working class has developed as a necessary component of the imposed industrial capitalist economy. There was no working class here until there was capitalism and the both grew together in a symbiotic, yet unfair, history.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, the highpoint of European socialism, two significant historical events occurred in Australia. One was the development of trade unions and the other was the rounding up of the remnant Aboriginal population from rural areas and incarcerating them on Aboriginal reserves and missions. Up until then there had been over a hundred years of armed resistance to the expansion of white agriculture. The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the native police and their paramilitary commanders systematically massacre aborigines providing any resistance to the new farmlands.

The reserve system and Aboriginal protection laws mopped up the survivors of the war. Only now was it safe for pastoralists to propagate their sheep, cows, pigs, wheat, sugar etc. These developments lead to the necessity of a growing working class.

Today the struggle for control of the means of production is fought over between capital and labour over an economy that was stolen in the first place from Aboriginal people who are poor and unhealthy today as a direct consequence of the original theft. Imperialism and colonisation has always involved the transmigration of a working class as the primary occupation force in securing land from indigenous people. British and Scottish workers in Ireland, Indian workers in Fiji and south Africa, Australia's white Australia policy etc.

The working class did not develop in Australia as in Europe. It was imposed here. The indigenous Australian economy provided a prosperous lifestyle for millions of Aborigines. Trade routes through Indonesia to Asia and the rest of the world meant Australia was a modern dynamic trader in this part of the world also. Yet socialist intellectualism, while welcoming aborigines as fellow workers, has never acknowledged the integrity of the indigenous modes of production in particular the core principle that the earth, not labor, is the basis of the economy. John Howard took full advantage of this situation with his masterful manipulation of unionist forestry workers in Tasmania during the 2004 election campaign. Left wing unions appeared to abandon the labour party and its environmental policies and publicly endorse Howard and his policy that jobs (meaning bosses profit) was more important than the environment. The task of reorganising industry so that it is sustainable into the future has not yet been tackled by the agencies of the working class.

Feminism shares many cultural underpinnings with patriarchy and the nuclear family. Historically feminism is a reaction to patriarchal structures, European notions of freedom, the self and society have not been dismissed by feminism, indeed it is because these notions were not fulfilled for women that feminism been embraced. While feminism has caused superstructural change, more women are achieving more power in white society, the social infrastructure, consciousness itself, remains unchanged.

White consciousness, including feminism sees relationships as isolated units, and men and women as isolated units within that isolated relationship. White consciousness is ego based, the supremacy of the concept of an individual self. Here the nuclear patriarchy and feminism mirror each other, that identity is based on individual ego relationships, . Feminism however goes further in identifying relationship with men as being inherently oppressive. Men therefore need to be disconnected and transcended as a prerequisite to ego satisfaction or "liberation".

The materialistic and individualistic consciousness of capitalism and its consequent mobile workforces dovetail perfectly with feminism and nuclear families alike. The individual is more attracted to upward mobility and individual satisfaction than connection with family and country.

Historically, Aboriginal society has not suffered from notions of patriarchy and the nuclear family until the invasion.. The frameworks of extended family, men's and women's law and men's and women's country has created notions of freedom , self and society based on relationship and connectedness. Exploitation has not been the dynamic between men and women but between white society and and black society. Domestic violence is not a product of a testosterone induced patriarchy inherent in all men but' as with all social dysfunction is a direct consequence of invasion, genocide and colonisation. Similarly notions of healing are based on reconnection with family and country, resolving issues one way or the other.This stands in contrast to feminism's imperative to break free of connection, especially with men.

I assert that feminism, like socialism, Christianity and environmentalism are social constructs of European consciousness that along with capitalism, the nuclear family and everything else make up the colonial matrix that occupies this country. .

The extended family is not just more relatives, it is social processes and law to deal with everything including crisis. These are the very processes that have been smashed in the war of invasion. The fragile system of customary law today, including consciousness based on men's and women's business, family and country need to be respected, resourced and reinforced. It is a different way of life and doing things to the European nuclear family, the state and feminism.

I do not believe that reconciliation can occur by Aboriginal and non Aboriginal Australia meeting in the middle. English/Australian consciousness and culture is at essence hierarchical, literary, individualistic and material/property based. Indigenous culture is at essence lateral and egalitarian, oral (as different from literary), communal and spiritual. Where is the middle ground? So much of traditional Aboriginal society has been smashed during the past two hundred years, including language, the halfway mark of today is well within the cultural "turf" of European society. How far does Aboriginal society have to suffer and move away from its essence before white culture will start to move to the middle? Why would a comfortably numb white society change?

I don't think there is a middle ground, it is an either/or situation : I believe that after thousands of years of war and dislocation there is little left in mainstream culture that is worth preserving. We have created a social monster that is in the process of devouring itself unto extinction. This stands as an antithesis to Aboriginal culture, not as an equal standard by which to design the future.

Reconciliation can only occur when non-indigenous people cross the line. We do not become Aboriginal, we remain the descendants of Irish, English, Japanese etc. We are that same person in the context of Aboriginal reality, rather than colonial reality. As such our own aboriginality of Ireland, England, Japan or wherever comes into focus as does the necessity to contribute to the aboriginal law of where we live now. This is a spiritual transcendence (or paradigm shift if you prefer) that , I claim, is an essential prerequisite to demolish imposed colonial illusions such as Terra Nullius, the "untouched" wilderness and white supremacy in Australia.

Social change in post Nazi Germany involved coming to terms with the reality of history in order to prevent its repeat. Similarly in post apartheid South Africa, the truth and reconciliation process has been central to creating a new nation. In this country I believe the starting point is to come to terms with the history of Invasion, genocide and colonisation of this country. Doing this not only provides political support for Aboriginal Australia, it also demolishes the dominant Australian world view and consciousness that justifies not only genocide but also ecocide.. This allows us, psychologically, to overcome, or at least be aware of the power of hegemonic force to control perspective and opens the door for us to embrace new concepts and perspectives. Like the realisation that Santa is not true, the demolition of the Australian myth is a key part of our maturing as a people. Such an enlightenment calls to question every aspect of modern society and our own place in it, not just Aboriginal issues.

Personally, I do not identify as an Australian. I am an Aborigine of Ireland and England, born in the country of the Yarra people and living on Jaggerra/Turrable country at the time of writing. Aboriginal perspective is a universal consciousness equally as relevant to migrants and indigenous people. Our sacred places including ancestral burial and birthing places are not in this country but they do exist. Our law and traditions have been smashed and in many cases we have been forced off our own land centuries ago. What happened to our families in other parts of the world is happening to Australian Aborigines today. Much of the old culture is left in Australia today and these are signposts, or metaphors even, suggesting to us different parameters of our own reality. What belongs to the people of this country can never belong to us, we have our own places. By learning from people who still have connection to ecological consciousness opens doors to our own humanity that have been closed by mainstream western society. We have a working model of a different way to relate to each other and the environment. This is the twenty-first century and an ecological consciousness will manifest differently today, for both aboriginal and non aboriginal people, than it does in anthropological museums. I must emphasise that I believe that any attempt to reconstruct models of centuries ago, whether traditional Aboriginal culture or Marxism, they will remain as hollow anachronisms. The essence of the ancient cultures around the world is consciousness itself, how consciousness manifests in the material world has always adapted and developed to the conditions of the time, culture is alive and always relevant.

I have noticed that many non-Aboriginal people are seeking insight into Aboriginal spirituality. It appears to me that each person has their own ideological or philosophical matrix that is like a jigsaw puzzle. Over time we build up understandings of ourselves, society and our environment, filling in pieces of the jigsaw. The older we get the more pieces of the jigsaw are put together, beginning to develop a coherent form that can be understood. Yet their is a gap, missing pieces in the area of Aboriginality and the ancient spirituality of the land we are on. We search for missing pieces, usually asking premeditated questions of aboriginal people, based on the logic and form of the rest of the jigsaw. We never get the answers we are looking for, we are given responses to our questions but they do not seem to fit the shape of the missing pieces in our jigsaw, so we continue hunting for more pieces. Whatever the size of our jigsaw, the aboriginal jigsaw will be at least the same size and cannot be crammed into the area of missing pieces in our own jigsaw. To remove a single piece of the Aboriginal jigsaw, which would of itself betray the Aboriginal principle of holism, and then see if it can fit the gaps in the western jigsaw will create a discordant absurdity.

Many of the spiritual questions that non-Aboriginal people ask Aboriginal people can only be answered by people of higher understandings. These understandings were acquired through pain and suffering, both in day to day life and through sacred ceremony and cannot br explained in a one dimensional communication such as writing or speaking. It is unfair to expect these answers, that aboriginal people must labour and suffer for over time, to be handed out cheaply to curious non-Aboriginal people.

So, because the core of the spiritual essence of country resides in a very specific group of people, the issue of Aboriginal authority arises. While we may learn from and participate in dreaming processes, we are visitors, passengers. This is not a black and white issue for the same understandings exist for aboriginal people from other dreamings and areas who must similarly abide by the aboriginal authority of that particular place. Non Aboriginal peoples education of and participation in Aboriginal dreaming and culture will be through relationship and connection with Aboriginal people. Again this is not a black and white thing as all Aboriginal people learn and practice culture by way of relationship and connection.

The genocidal war smashed many of the systems of education into the dreaming and the political structures of governance within Aboriginal sociology. Aboriginal people are denied the proper education of country and dreaming, and that is their birth right, so our capacity as non aboriginal people to learn of the dreaming is severely restricted.

Obviously for non-Aboriginal peopleto learn, Aboriginal culture needs to be healed and reestablished in Aboriginal society. Cultural revival. Cultural revival is an enterprise in itself requiring budgets and resources, while there is a desperate need for it and an eagerness for it to occur it will not simply occur on its own. This is a key role for non indigenous supporters, to provide resources and budgets to develop cultural processes amongst traditional owners and other local aboriginal people. Apart from beginning to rectify the injustices of history, this creates a working entity from whom to learn ( a by-product of involvement in the process).

Reconciliation must be action and outcome based otherwise nothing changes .....If we are not part of the solution we are part of the problem. If we are not directly supporting Aboriginal people and their assertion of sovereignty, no matter what our ideology or personality. we are simply adding to the bulk of the imposed invader society.

Apparently two percent of the Australian population are indigenous. It is too much to ask every Aborigine to educate and organise fifty non aboriginal people. We have to do this ourselves. We must, in some way have a meaningful relationship with Aboriginal people to be able to learn but this must not be a drain on Aboriginal Australia or our search for truth will become a genocidal force in itself. Our connections to Aboriginal Australia have to be those that resource and facilitate aboriginal agendas. To look at the demographics again, enormous progress could be made if each Aboriginal person had financial and other assistance from fifty non Aboriginal people. If everyone gave only ten dollars a week then that Aborigine could be employed to do cultural and community business, pay off a loan to secure land and accommodation or develop some business enterprise Things will only change when things change. Having stolen all material wealth from Aboriginal people, white society must return, even some, wealth before Aboriginal society will have any capacity for social rebuilding and economic self determination.

I do not believe that the governments and bureaucracy will, in the future, do any more than regurgitate dysfunctional programs and continue to erode Aboriginal power and lifestyle. If we wait for the governments the genocide continues

Creating Aborigines in our own image

By John Tracey

A reflection on….
“Black and white lies”
An article in the Australian (national newspaper) written by William J. Lines

A recent article published in the Australian entitled “Black and white lies” written by William J. Lines represents an emerging new attitude by some non-Aboriginal environmentalists about this continents history, in particularly the traditional role of Aboriginal people as managers and custodians of land.

Lines claims that notions of Aboriginal ecological sustainability are myths generated by non-Aboriginal environmentalists.

He says

“Conservationists trapped in wishful thinking about the wisdom of the elders and disdainful of dissent cannot see the truth: there are no models, no templates for living sustainably on this continent or on this planet. We're on our own and must make our own way.”

and

“The myth of the ecological Aborigine elevated Aborigines to positions of moral and spiritual superiority and disparaged people of non-Aboriginal background. They would never belong in Australia. Their ancestry rendered them incapable of acquiring a sense of connection.”

Lines' article is a simple opinion piece, masquerading as an academic critique. It refers to the European use of Chief Seattle’s famous quotes about the environment as the basis of his dismissal of Aboriginal anthropologist professor Marcia Langton and Australian environmentalists such as Professor Ian Lowe, who claim that non-Aboriginal environmentalists need to learn from Aboriginal people about how to look after this country.

Like others, Lines makes a tokenistic allusion to Flannery’s future eaters hypothesis to discredit Aboriginal ecology, that is Aboriginal people hunted a species of mega fauna (big animal!) into extinction. Aspects of Flannery’s work were not included, including his own claim that it is just a hypothesis and there could have been many other reasons for the extinction of the mega-fauna. Lines neglects to mention another of Flannery’s hypotheses. that Australian society learnt from the extinction and implemented conservation law to ensure it never happened again.

Lines has done to ecological and Anthropological fact the same as historians such as Keith Windshuttle have done to modern history or what Mal Brough has done to indigenous affairs – interpreted and imposed a colonial construction onto indigenous reality, in so doing dismissing and nullifying contemporary indigenous knowledge.

Beyond the specific details of land management and ecology, there is a cultural and anthropological reality that Lines, on the one hand appears ignorant of and on the other hand has accurately represented in his article. That is the one-dimensional literary culture of European colonialism. One based on scientific theories and processes including the developmental hierarchy of hypothesis, theory, law. As a society we institutionalize knowledge on the basis of where the scientists are up to on this continuum. If we have very little knowledge of reality, e.g. the creation of the universe, then the best hypothesis is institutionalized, such as the big bang theory and before that creationism. A similar phenomenon is the flat earth hypothesis and the sun revolves around the Earth hypothesis, for which many heretics were burnt for daring to challenge.

Once patterns and confluences appear in experiments testing the hypothesis, if such experiments are allowed, then the hypothesis graduates to theory, such as Einstein’s theory of relativity, which has been found by string theory to be limited by Einstein’s cultural preconceptions about the nature of the universe being imposed onto his enquiries and conclusions. I have no doubt string theory will be similarly challenged in due course.

Once a theory has been rigorously tested and approved by the highest scientific authorities in the world, it becomes a law, eg. Matter and energy can be changed but never created or destroyed. Yet the mathematics of nuclear fusion and subatomic physics identifies energy that appears to come from nowhere. So a new law is that there are always exceptions to the law. A scientific paradigm not unlike its social science counterpart, post modernism.

Juxtaposed to this is Aboriginal knowledge. Let it be clear, I am an Irish Australian not an Australian Aborigine. But I can speak with some limited authority on this matter because I have – participated in – Aboriginal knowledge. There are things that I know through direct experience of reality, holistic understandings including subconscious, that have then, later, been given the vocabulary, in English in my case, to explain that experience of reality, whether it be a particular place, social relationship, health strategy, political organization etc. The pedagogy of Aboriginal education is of direct experience of reality. The colonial pedagogy is of monotonous experience of representations of reality. Primarily through text and lecturing inside education institutions from preschool to professor.

Institutionalised colonial hypothesis is juxtaposed with dreamtime stories, that even a child (or a white fella) can understand. A basic understanding at first, such as the bunyip in the waterhole to a more mature understanding in later life of the dangers of drowning in that particular water hole. The story unfolds with the person’s development. The closest thing to this in colonial culture is the Santa Clause myth, supposedly to instill an ethos of good will in children. But the myth dies with the revelation that Santa Claus is not true in any way shape or form. The bunyip is still, in adult life, the best way to explain unexplained drownings.

Dreamtime spirits represented in painting and dance give accurate cosmological knowledge including identifying and naming stars, planets, constellations and galaxies and their movements. Such astronomical expertise is just common knowledge for those who participate in the corroboree. Then there are the doctors of high degree who know even more.

Within these mythical frameworks is a key to weather patterns with not only greater accuracy than meteorological science, but with an indigenous meteorology bureau with weather records dating back several ice ages.

Colonial science is fascinated by the finding of a fossil. The process is to dig it up and take it to an academic institution to study to see what can be learnt from it. yet that fossil in the place where it had been for millions of years is a sacred object in a sacred story place that tells a more accurate history of many dimensions and understandings of what that fossil is and what happened and is happening in that place.

Lines' article tries to exploit a contradiction between high human impact on the environment and sustainable land management, obviously missing the point of Langton and others that such a contradiction only exists within colonial notions of wilderness, not indigenous perceptions of social ecology.

It will only be through transcending colonial notions of ecological "preservation" to indigenouse notions of active "engagement" with the environment that Australia as a whole can begin to deal with our current ecological disasters.

Lines' ignorant assertion “there are no models, no templates for living sustainably on this continent or on this planet. We're on our own and must make our own way.” is a clear example of the colonial attitude that there is no other real knowledge than our own. All else is myth, either ancient or contemporary. This cultural restriction is the very reason that Line and those who have similar opinions to him will not be able to achieve the sense of connection to this country that they seem to yearn for so desperately.


see also
"Terra Nullius and Ecology" by John Tracey.

and Senator Andrew Bartlets
response to "Black and White Lies"

Aboriginal Housing

image "HUMPY GUNYA" by Baganan Baganan's bio
These two reports on Aboriginal Housing are from kalkadoon.org
I was a research assistant and the scribe for both reports.
Report on housing in Palm Island March 2006 and
"Out of the Box; Housing as a lifestyle, not a building." July 2006