Taken from ‘Who Made Me Who I Am?‘ By Richard Frankland and Magic Dirt.
What is the identity of Australia? Who are we?
Are we the five hundred Aboriginal Nations?
Are we the many nations that are here now?
Are all that and more?
Who are we as Australians?
What is our identity?
Fosters? 4 and 20 Pies? Cricket? Footy?
Who are we? What is Australia? What is our culture?When I was born I was not a citizen of this country. When I grew up, I grew up under the assimilation policies. I’ve seen Australians rape Australians. I’ve seen people spit on Aboriginal people. When I won an award in Hollywood I was called a ‘boong’ when I set foot back in Australia.
Who is Australia?
What makes the Australian identity? What controls the attitudes that perpetuate legislation and policy? Who controls the attitude that creates the access points to create wealth and power? And who owns the wealth and power in Australia? Who is the voice of Australia? What is being Australia? Is it 4 and 20 pies?
Who are we as a nation?
Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poetic Aboriginal Charter of Rights from 1962. Sounds fair and reasonable to me.
When I was in the National Museum, in the rotating theatre, I got annoyed, enough to say “shutup” at the screen. It is typical of both sides of the political spectrum. All Australia does is talk about itself - constantly, incessantly and for no positive purpose. Australia’s favourite subject is itself. Greg Egan called those like that Professional Australians.
I like Noonuccal’s charter as it is based on dignity and respect between equals. It sidesteps the whole “are we Australian enough” rubbish.
I have been fortunate enough to see a bit of the world, my accent is still thick, I fly boxing matilda off the front of my house amongst all the stars and stripes flags - I am a proud Australian. But I have seen enough to know that freedom, liberty, respect, dignity and equality arent uniquely Australian, and that myopic, naval-gazing, self-indulgant nationalism does nothing but get in the way of positive social relationships.
It is cultural bacchanalia, and all sides of the political spectrum are guilty of it.
“Hey, true blue…”
Right now, we are a nation of selfish, smug, greedy, internationally abysmally ignorant morons who voted in the divisive Johnny Howard for a decade. We are well on the way to destroying the social contract thereby creating the biggest poverty stricken underclass in the developed world apart from the USA.
Our national motto is in reality ”Ignorance is Bliss” -that’s most probably why 5% of our nation (yes one million of us) work and live abroad—if we were geographically in Europe, it would probably be 20%.
We live in a so called ‘rational actor’ transactional economy, not a society, with our foreign policy makers stuck firmly up George Bush’s arse, and culture not far removed from that.