An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
29 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
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Remind me to tell the story of Raymonds day out.
Second!
Just picked Daughter up after a party, all OK, no one lying in gutters and Corey Worthington conspicuously absent.
If Corey Worthington ever gets married, will his wife ever put their daughter on the stage?
Sorry. I’ll get my hat and my coat and leave now.
Kim
Hope your talk @ ANZCA09 went well. As was my lot all conference, there were two other things I was needed at, so I couldn’t get in. The mix of papers in that session looked great.
LOL@ Terangeree
Gale force winds here in Melbourne now. Expect reports of peoples roofs being blown off, falling trees etc
Found that there is a fan page for perth’s greatest personality The growling Man with over six thousand members. Also that there is giant rocking horse in South Australia.
http://theworstofperth.com/2009/07/11/wekkend-worstoff-64/
Have to prepare a brief talk on the connection between history and politics for forthcoming Socialist Alliance State Conference in early August.
Thinking of looking at the connection between Australian nationalism and history (eg, Don Bradman, the Anzac myth, and Australia Day) and the current historical debate about whether what took place in colonial Australia was genocide of Indigenous people or not.
Have time to cover only two topics at the most.
Any suggestions as to topics?
Having a discussion with a friend from Victoria who informs me George Megalogenis was married to a QLD politician. Don’t know why but I doubted it and I am quite surprised. Can anyone verify? If so who?
@8 – Annastacia Palaszczuk, Member for Inala and Minister for Disability Services and Multicultural Affairs. Though she wasn’t in parliament when they were married.
@4 – Terry, you’ve got the wrong Kim, I think.
Paul @ 7.
Any consideration of the inability of the europeans to make any attempts to commence a dialogue with the original inhabitants of this country, the frenetic charge into and the destruction of people, land and culture, cannot be described as anything less than “genocide”.
I fail to see why you would need to start arguing the validity of that, as it existed, and as it still remains forever in the minds of many whites and indigenous people today.
I would, however, argue that there is / was no “stolen generation” – as it is euphemistically referred to. There was – and still remains today – generation after generation after generation after generation of people forcibly stolen from their shattered families, usurped lands, forbidden languages and culture – and their own, rightful future.
I know very little about the Socialist Alliance, but unless they’ve all been somewhere far removed from Australia in the past 25 years, surely you can pick up the debate a bit beyond the starting point you’ve put up. They’re not as intellectually ignorant and bigoted as the League of Rights or Pauline Hanson’s One Notion, etc – surely to golly!
But maybe I’m missing your point. Are you saying that genocide denial is a given of contemporary, jingoistic nationalism? Now I see where you’re coming from – and mate, it’s bedrock to nationalistic fundamentalists. Absolutely bedrock.
There’s often a fine line between waving a green and gold flag at a sporting match and the fundamentalist mentality that sees thousands out on the streets of Cronulla looking for a fight.
It can be a fine line – but it can also be worlds apart. It can be a bit of fun, or it can be a serious game – with only one winner left standing.
I’ve met people who, still in the 1930’s, were involved in night-time raiding parties, shooting “myalls”.
The guilt of that drove their christian hatred of themselves – and everyone and everything. And it still lives on – not far below the surface of this luscious country. Lurking, waiting…….
Well said Mervyn.
Xavier Herbert proudly partook of much “Black Velvet” and wrote about NT/Torres Strait white pearlers throwing pregnant Aboriginal women off pearling boats like so much superfluous jetsam.
You do wonder whether the resurgence of nationalism in recent years evidenced by anti-immigration sentiment, ANZAC Day bollocks, asylum seeker paranoia has a reciprocal connection to the worsening state of affairs in many Aboriginal communities.
Paul. You said a ‘brief’ talk and my fear is your suggested outline is overwelming. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so my suggestion is grab a copy of ‘Blood on the Wattle’ and search out an early colonial photo showing a young white squatter in front of his wattle and daub slab hut. Alongside him is his ‘wife’ and in the background some hired help – all indigenous. The power relationship is palpable as other posts have suggested, certainly a conversation starter. Can’t recall the author but you could google that. Bruce Elder?
I’m in Melbourne…and it’s blowing a gale…damn the wind, it must have hitched a ride with me from Adelaide. I went to see the wonderful Vic Chesnutt at the East in Brunswick on Thurs and decided to stick around for the weekend – what a beautiful, honest show it was. I went to the see the Bracks and Dali exhibits at Ian Potter and NGV respectively. I’ve never liked either artists work but nonetheless, it’s too easy to see only what I know I’ll like. I was really surprised by Dali’s drawings and could have spent a bit more time with them if it weren’t for the jostling crowds. I doubt I’ll bother with these blockbuster winter shows again, NGV just packs people in, the same thing happened at the Deco exhibit, it’s impossible to move and taking some time with the work seems like an act of selfishness because it holds everyone up, or you get in people’s way. It’s not a great way to see art, and it’s a pity because it’s so rare to have the chance to see shows like this. The Bracks show was a bit of a revelation, I guess I’ve only known his most famous works [and hated them], but his less known stuff I really enjoyed, particularly the small suburban paintings – like something you might see from the tram – bloody incongruous colour choices though – I wonder what he was motivated by with some of them. I’m glad I went. I also caught Bastardy at the kino on Collins, it’s a wonderful portrait and I really recommend seeing it. I drive back home tomorrow, was hoping to follow the Murray, but work and responsibility beckons – [I should use the other thread to condemn myself for reading emails whilst on a break], so I will have to take the shortest route instead…although I packed the tent, so ya never know, I might just say ’stuff it’ and do whatever I please….if the wind stops blowing, that is.
Phil @ 11. I don’t know about Xavier Herbert’s personal “indiscretions”. Throwing pregnant women overboard – once you have got them pregnant – highlights the refusal of our society to acknowledge that non-whites were even human.
We have jettisoned overboard this countries entire 100,000 years of history – literally and figuratively. And do I remember an election campaign based on “children overboard”?
I’m not sure that I could help you divine the reciprocity that you wonder about. I’d suspect that we are seeing the end results of the systemic unravelling of indigenous communities. And that it follows the same path in all indigenous cultures that have been ransacked by invading gun-toting, settler communities.
From when it was first realised (+/- 1927) that the original inhabitants of this land were not going to succumb to the genocidal barrage of the previous 140 years, and that “soothing the dying pillow” was no longer a plausible winner’s solution; through to the misadventures called “assimilation” and “integration”, we have witnessed unworkable and absurd interventions and policies.
[In Queensland, even in the 1960's aboriginal affairs were directed by the Department of Fauna, Flora and Native Affairs - an indication of just where on the evolutionary scale indigenous people were posited?]
I do know that some of the most racist people I have ever met were working on aboriginal communities, or lived very close to one – together with a smattering of genuine and conscientious people.
That an overwhelming percentage of all monies ever allocated for “aboriginal affairs” have always gone into the pockets of white bureaucrats and business people.
That many policies have annihilated a people’s raison d’etre, belief systems, self-respect and personal hopes for a meaningful future.
That despite all odds, we have then expected “them” to be able to get a grip, grow up, understand how life works and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, in a completely alien, unforgiving and stilted world order – a world order that is patently showing signs of collapsing under the weight of our rapacious stupidity.
That so few people in mainstream Australia even know, let alone have the possible pleasure of having aboriginal friends, has to be one of the most lamentable, on-going tragedies of the Australian genocide.
Nothing to do with genocide, but this overhearing tonight has me intrigued and perplexed:
Woman arguing to man on corner of Albert and Elizabeth Streets, Brisbane:
“Me? But you’re the one who threw him off of the 23rd floor!”
Mervyn, I think its still about landrights for the simple reason that Aborigines continue to use the land to define their personal identity, and hence their culture. The white culture has denied them their most basic cultural asset which then undermines any self determination. A white man’s court ruling that native title can be extinguished might be convenient for white society but if we were serious about improving the lot of our fellow Australians then we should look at restoring some wide ranging and general land rights, perhaps some form of ceremonial visitation privilege. Just my 2c
http://www.newsweek.com/id/206300
To mix metaphors, that would put the cat amongst the Republican howler monkeys. (Looking forward in that case to Hannity, BillO ad nauseam and some considerable apoplectic foaming at the mouth.)
Noscitur a sociis (A word is known by the company it keeps) Likewise the torturers.
Cheney as I’d like to see him.
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6175/90151073.jpg
Mervyn and David H, I am lucky enough to have had an Aboriginal friend. As one of his sisters said at his funeral, he was a big beautiful man.
He had been a Sargeant and forward scout in the Vietnam war. Even 20 yrs after the war, he had the uncanny ability to wake from a roof shaking snore and from the inside of his tent or room, instantly identify a person who was moving about in the night for the toilet or a drink, with “that you bill?” or tom or whoever. He never make a mistake.
He loved the stretch of the Murray between Wentworth and Renmark which is still in its relatively natural state with lots of redgums and snags, and very few people. On the odd occasion we would see some idiots waterskiing out there miles from civilization and he would run to the waters edge and shake his fist at them. I reckon he would have thrown a spear if he had one.
I never talked about aboriginal culture and history with him much and only found out at his funeral he was one of the ’stolen’ and separated from his sisters when a kid.
I do know one thing for sure though. Aboriginals need some land of their own, good land and lots of it. Not just out in the outback or some other little corner which we whites have decided is probably not worth exploiting, but large tracts of good country, prime farmland bought back by the government which they can do with what they want.
Probably, much of it would be restored to it’s natural state and they will charge us whiteys a motza to camp there.
“……Ah White Man! I am searching for the sites – so Sacred unto you
Where you walk is silent worship, and you whisper poems too.
And you tread, like me, in wonder, and your eyes are filled with tears.
As you gaze upon the tracks you’ve trod – down your 100,000 years……..
White Man! I am searching round this country.
I am searching night and day – for the sites to you so Sacred –
That you won’t give them away.
What is Sacred to you White Man? What is Sacred to your Clan?
Are your totems rainbow feathered? Is there dreaming in you man?……”
(Denis Kevans, RIP)
Out to dinner last night. When we got there, the place we intended to eat at was closed due to the footpath out the front being ripped up by the Council. So we headed to the local KFC for a salt ‘n grease fest.
Paid off the calories of one piece of fried this morning by weeding in the garden. Delightful weather to be outdoors.
Mervyn L @ 10,
The historical debate about genocide (ie the debate being conducted by historians) as I understand it, is one concerned with colonial history. I don’t think anyone debates that what happened in trhe 20 C was anything but cultural genocide and, in relation to assimilationist policies a variant of physical genocide, (Not that I’ve read anyway.)
The colonial debate runs something like this: Genocide requires mass extermination of a people by a state.
From about 1860 to c.1915, apart from the activities of the various Native Police organisations, who disguised their massacres of aboriginal people as police actions, when they were in fact massacres, state-organised extermination of Aboriginal people was minimal. Indeed, there is evidence in WA, for example, that by about the 1890s, state governments forbade the killing of Aboriginal people. This didn’t mean state agencies did not engage in massacres, but they weren’t supposed to.
OTOH, the number of Aborigines killed by privately organised settler parties was massive, and, especially in Queensland and WA, such killing sprees seem to be beyond control of state authorities and frequently ignored by local bush magistrates when it was brought to their attention. Though there were one or two magistrates who did prosecute. It is estimated that 10,000 or more Aboriginal people were massacred in the period about 1870-1890 in Queensland alone. Figures are hard to come by, because the settler-murderers almost always tried to destroy the evidence of their crimes by burning or burying the bodies.
There seems to be no debate that there was murder on a massive scale by private citizens in contravention of state laws, or that those privately organised punitive expeditions were often silently condoned by lower level representatives of the state. However, except in the case of the Native Police they were not state-organised. Compared to the action taken by settlers, the murders committed by t Native police were, comparatively, fewer.
Now, that’s the historical debate, which attempts to answer the question re 19C genocide.
To me it all seems a bit of a pointless furphy. Mass murder is mass murder, whatever you label it.. It doesn’t deny what happened, simply questions how its named and defined. its also worth bearing in mind that the actual question of whether it was genocide or not was origunally brought up by RWDBs like Windschuttle, and like it or not, the profession has had to respond to his assertions, and the debate has developed from that. You will be relieved to know that Windschuttle’s arguments have been utterly rejected by almost all worthwhile historians. He is considered to be lacking in humanity.
Thanks to all of you for your suggestions. I’m taking them on board.
Thanks Mervyn for that piece of verse. I had to read the rest of it and found it here if others should feel likewise.
http://www.nowwethepeople.org/poetry_sacredsites.html
Peter Kemp @ 17 and 18, I reckon that’d be wonderful to see. The Rethugs would finally forget how angry they’ve been about Nixon getting “hounded” out of office …
The fallout could be pretty ugly, though – the fuckers have still got teeth.
Just finished the JJJ Hotest 100. Somebody please tell me I left the room everytime a woman got a place, otherwise, the entire Top 100 seems not to have even one woman in it. WTF?
Adrienne, sorry, I didn’t see this and posted the same thing under Sunday! : )
To quote a friend of mine on Facebook:
What about science’s hottest 100? You have to read about Ada Lovelace’s Adventures in Steampunk Computing. Hat tip Eli Rabbett
Seems the Australian has declared the History Wars are at an end.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25763534-5001986,00.html
Funny, I thought they were over ages ago, and that we’d long got back to the normal civilized discourse that constitutes historical debate. Ah, well.