"I Will Not Be Swallowed Up Into The Constitution": Rosalie Kunoth-Monks

Way to go you mob. 

The group has also called for the handpicked Indigenous Advisory Council (IAC) to resign, labelling it a “farce”.

A truer never spoken. The hand picked IAC, should hang thier collective heads in shame.

Let's take to the streets.

I've recently come back from working with people in the Pilbara so I know the thruth of Rosalie's words concerning the rate of death amongst young people in those communities. I also spent a year and a half in Alice a while ago in the mid 2000s and it was no better there then. It's a disgrace and we non-Aboriginal people should be ashamed and as distraught as our Aboriginal brothers and sisters who are at the sharp end of the pain and mistreament we continue to dish out decade after decade with seemingly no remorse and very little thought. I often muse it is a result of our unsophisticated and unevolved social structures which, under the flag of capitalism and industrialisation, allows us to ignore the wisdom of a related set of cultural systems which have survived in relative peace and sustainability for tens of thousands of years. In any case, I too don't think the problem lies with Aboriginal people not being able to see themselves on the constitution or not being able to relate, through the constitution, to a flag that carries the 'butcher's apron' of the Union Jack upon it. From my perspective, the problem lies in non-Aboriginal Australia's wilfull refusal to first really acknowledge the prior enitilement of Aboriginal people to country and to second recognise these entitlements formally in a robust formal declaration which gives them real rights and interests which are exclusive and inalienable.

I'm a whitey, who's listening to, and receptive to, and endorse, all of Rosalie's comments. I have been working and living with indigenous people in North Queensland for 45 years and I know that the big things we mainstream Caucasian people can offer our First Nations is respect, a listening ear, and an accommodating "we're all in this together" philosophy.

Our flag is a symbol - it is only a symbol, and at the same time it is a powerful symbol - and we make our symbols fit our values, not the other way round. If we have to have a flag (and I don't care whether we have an Aussie flag or not - I'm a human being before I'm an Australian), I would want a flag which removes the union jack, and replaces it with stuff which reflects the culture of all of us, not the ones who arrived only 230 years ago. How presumptuous and morally bankrupt of me to insist on a flag which studiously ignores our 60,000 year First Nations culture!

To me sovereignty means a governing body with the full right and power to govern itself without any interference from outside sources.

While I acknowledge how badly you were and are treated and really do know how it feels as there are many of us 'whites' who suffered under the class system. Yes I know it's not as bad, but we lower classes had to fight our way through by integrating and learning from the 'upper classes' :) and picking out the best bits so we can live in comfort too, although never as wealthy  :)

To paraphrase -

Are you really asking to be set aside from the general population of Australia in your own State or Territory? Where you can live with an education system that ignores 'whiteness' that you feel alienates your children from their cultural background with the security and safety of that – however fragmented it is – it still is in existence in some parts of Australia?

I'm sorry to be the one to say this as I have a lot of respect for the Aborigines and the culture but as long as you feel we alienate you there will never be any progress because the whites and their whiteness are not going anywhere.

In this period of our evolution it is vital for every child in the world to be educated in the 'white man's way' if they want even some of the comforts, security and safety.

If you really want to live as your ancestors did I don't really see anything stopping you now. Just as some white people live a simple life without electricity, computers and mobile phones.

If that is what you want then I applaud you but surely people should be given an educated choice?

Personally I never want to go back to the way my ancestors did (and that includes the Aboriginal part however small). I don't even want to go back to living as I did as a child of the 'Englisness'. I like most of the trappings that comes with integration  :)

And it is my choice what part of those trappings I use or discard :)

I don't want to seem mean and nasty but this is the same as I have been hearing for over 60 years and it just goes round and round with some wanting bits of the whiteness and some wanting none and some wanting all whites gone. It is not going to happen, sorry.

I haven't seen anything that excludes Aboriginal culture just as I haven't seen anything that excludes any other of Australia's multiculturism.

In fact I have seen Aboriginal culture welcomed everywhere and people asking for more of it but I and many others feel alienated from you by you.

We loved playing and learning from the Aborigine kids in East Gippsland and I know my own kids would have appreciated the opportunity to see some of their Aboriginal heritage as well as their Irish, Scots etc bits, however small :) just as they do their father's European side.

 We are all people of the World now and we really aren't that bad when you get to know us :) and we really do want to get to know you but can't when you keep to yourselves.

PS.

"We are not white. We can’t shed our skins."

Personally I have never seen or heard anybody demanding or even asking that you do, just as they don't ask the Africans, Indians etc who live here now to shed their 'blackness'.

Times have changed.

Much to agree with in your comment here Kaye Makovec

If you really want to live as your ancestors did I don't really see anything stopping you now. Just as some white people live a simple life without electricity, computers and mobile phones.

If that is what you want then I applaud you but surely people should be given an educated choice?

Personally I never want to go back to the way my ancestors did (and that includes the Aboriginal part however small). I don't even want to go back to living as I did as a child of the 'Englisness'. I like most of the trappings that comes with integration  :)

And it is my choice what part of those trappings I use or discard :)

I don't want to seem mean and nasty but this is the same as I have been hearing for over 60 years and it just goes round and round with some wanting bits of the whiteness and some wanting none and some wanting all whites gone. It is not going to happen, sorry.

I haven't seen anything that excludes Aboriginal culture just as I haven't seen anything that excludes any other of Australia's multiculturism.

Sadly the usual suspects will chime in and insist that any criticism is made from the most base inspirations

In fact I have seen Aboriginal culture welcomed everywhere and people asking for more of it but I and many others feel alienated from you by you.

As I have said elsewhere there is an incredible amount of good will out there towards indigenous people and I just hope it isn't squandered with more of what I call the "poor bugger me" thinking that spends too much time concerned with past injustices rather than trying to build a better future

Hall's comment in the context of record incarceration (historically and globally),record child theft, ethnic cleansing from the homelands and general vilification in the MSM is, I believe, typically despicable. For any 'goodwill' that exists there is an equal amount at least of raw and genocidal hatred, expressed these days as a fanatical drive to achieve cultural genocide by forcing assimilation, at the bottom of the social dung-heap of course, on the indigenous. And the infamous troika in my opinion are best described as sonderkommandoes.

On a much broader level, what we need is a constitutional provision that's nearly identical to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. All we'd need to change would be a few place names and those bits about English & French language equality.

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html#h-39

That would go a long way toward addressing the issues raised here- and a great many more.

Unfortunately, the LNP and the right wing faction of Labor would never allow nor promote such a referrendum- and even if they did, the vast majority of the so called "mainstream" media would toss a such a tantrum as to make their dishonest rants about carbon pricing look like a petty schoolyard squabble.

Background to 'The Freedom Summit': Alice Springs 27 - 28 November 2014

https://indymedia.org.au/2014/11/29/background-to-the-freedom-summit-alice-springs-27-28-november-2014

jungney, I agree whole-heartedly about Hall, but I just scroll on by once I see his name, save when it's brief. Even that is masochistic and feeds his lust for attention. As for this excellent meeting of real indigenous leaders, not the coterie of collaborators fostered by 'The Australian' and the rest of the Rightwing MSM sewer and shit-holes like the Bennelong Society (now deceased, I see), home of a creature who is, in my opinion, perhaps the vilest anti-indigenous racist of them all, ex-Labor Minister( can you believe it?), Gary Johns, I strongly recommend that they go to the UN and garner overseas support for what is clearly now a life and death struggle for the survival of indigenous society and culture. Their enemies, I believe, represent absolute evil, evil on a par in intent with any other pack of genocidists in history. I further think that organising a BDS campaign against this country, along the lines of those waged against those other racist societies Afrikaaner South Africa and Zionist Israel, is appropriate and overdue.

"Ms Kunoth-Monks says it is time to turn away from working within the system. The communiqué calls for a return to mass protest."

But if you scrap "western" education for the next generation how do you expect to take the struggle forward? By sovereignty are you suggesting black initiated apartheid?

@MJoanneS

We are certainly having the wrong constitutional debate and I don't blame the Freedom Summit for rejecting it.  

The tyranny of Canberra is not good for the Nation black or white.

Now if we moved to a Conferation of Sovereign States we would save a fortune, diversify, progess/"develop" at a pace according to the constituents wishes and incorporate the Ambitions of the "freedom summit" for indepent management of their own affairs.

There i will happily accept that Nobel Peace Prize nomination!

Mulga Mumblebrain
 

Hall's comment in the context of record incarceration (historically and globally),record child theft, ethnic cleansing from the homelands and general vilification in the MSM is, I believe, typically despicable.

What people like you seem to forget or willfully ignore is that for indigenous people to be arrested or jailed offenses have to first be committed. Sadly most of those offenses are very often committed against other indigenous people, Secondly all children are precious so I gather that when it comes to those who are neglected or abused you want nothing done if those children are indigenous. Finally please point us to any instances of either "ethnic cleansing from the homelands and general vilification in the MSM" because if it was true (which it isn't) then I would be condemning it as well, if not louder than you do.

For any 'goodwill' that exists there is an equal amount at least of raw and genocidal hatred, expressed these days as a fanatical drive to achieve cultural genocide by forcing assimilation, at the bottom of the social dung-heap of course, on the indigenous. And the infamous troika in my opinion are best described as sonderkommandoes.

Really please show us some examples of "raw and genocidal hatred" because I don't see it in evidence at all, as for your claims of a fanatical drive to achieve cultural genocide by forcing assimilation, you are kidding yourself because of your ridiculous and silly prejudices. 

jungney
 

Mulga Mumblebrain Hall is special. I don't know what sewer of filth and bile he inhabits, but I note that he isn't game to have a go anymore posting at The Conversation, where he would be demolished and scorned in moments.

Guess what, I do actually have a life that means I can't be on every online forum as I recall it I think that I have posted their once or twice and it has not become one of my online locals because it has a rather clunky commenting system. That said surely you must have noticed that I don't scare easily? 

Every time I see his name I get a flash of an Aboriginal poster, featuring a cane toad, who is saying "I was born here. That makes me Australian, right?"

Hmm I am reminded of posters like this one where people express their racism with similar comparisons to vermin.  

Go back to wherever you cam from, Hall, you aren't wanted here.

Really? but when the threads are inhabited by hate filled  bigots like you and Mulga its clear that I am needed though.

Mulga Mumblebrain
 

jungney, I agree whole-heartedly about Hall, but I just scroll on by once I see his name, save when it's brief. Even that is masochistic and feeds his lust for attention.

Amusingly you never seem to take your own advice because not a thread escapes you making a similar plaintive cry denouncing me time after time reiterating the same empty claims. I won't work though as so many people over the last decade have found vilifying me is and  utterly ineffective way to compensate for your limp debating skills.  

 As for this excellent meeting of real indigenous leaders, not the coterie of collaborators fostered by 'The Australian' and the rest of the Rightwing MSM sewer and shit-holes like the Bennelong Society (now deceased, I see), home of a creature who is, in my opinion, perhaps the vilest anti-indigenous racist of them all, ex-Labor Minister( can you believe it?), Gary Johns,

 Your obvious wish here is to see indigenous people  as some kind of cultural museum exhibits where they exist only to justify your many and various ingrained hatred for any and all people who mange to make a decent life for themselves or their families. Your hatred makes you the most vile sort of racist and we can ad that to your  Anti Semitism  

I strongly recommend that they go to the UN and garner overseas support for what is clearly now a life and death struggle for the survival of indigenous society and culture. Their enemies, I believe, represent absolute evil, evil on a par in intent with any other pack of genocidists in history. I further think that organising a BDS campaign against this country, along the lines of those waged against those other racist societies Afrikaaner South Africa and Zionist Israel, is appropriate and overdue.

You see this is where haters like you go wrong, you claim to be an admirer of the late Doctor King and Mahatma Gandhi yet everything you sprout is utterly at odds with the messages they each gave their lives to spread. Hatred such as yours just creates more hatred. So I say to you that you should go back to the fine words of Dr King and try, instead of spreading your usual brand of hate,to live his fine sentiments and then maybe you might possibly become the better man that you keep claiming to be.

Yes Lakesentrance that would have been fine if that had happened but it didn’t and although I understand the obviously still raw feelings I will not be held responsible for what others did before I was born.

All we can do now is move forward and the first step is for people wanting change to agree on what it is they actually want. As I said, this ‘wanting’ has been going on for over a hundred years because the people themselves cannot decide on exactly what they want. I busted my guts both financially and physically to promote the Recognise program only to come here and be told by Amy McGuire that is not what the Aborigines want. And that’s not the first time I have put myself out. Whatever many of us do it is always considered the ‘wrong’ thing by some.

You state “Just like you Kate, you like them, but you can't understand how we can live together, and retain both our cultures.”

But if you had bothered to read what I actually wrote you would see that is precisely what I said, and probably what everybody else wants too.

Time I followed Plato's advice -

"Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns."

One can't keep on doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results as they say that is the road to insanity :)

Kaye, you're not the only working class person in Australia. I'm one too and I grew up poor as well - like many other people - but I don't feel like giving you my life story to validate myself to you. The fact that you can make the statements you do means you really need to go have a look for yourself. Go to Onslow, go to Roebourne, go to Amata, go and spend time in remote area communities or with Aboriginal people in the major cities and sit down and talk to them. That might open your eyes. I'm not attacking you, I'm just asking you to educate yourself.

Listening to Philip Adams and Fred Chaney last night, you could have gotten carried away with admiration for the two old poseurs until two things crossed your mind. First that despite all the good words and intentions of 'non-racist' bien-pensants in this country, the situation of the indigenous has gone backwards, at ferocious and increasing pace since the Right under Howard moved decisively to utilise race hatred against the indigenous as a means to garner votes from the verminous fraction of Australian society. That campaign really commenced with Mabo and Wik, which drove the racists wild, and which they have steadily been eviscerating ever since. And then the conspiracy against the Ngarrindjeri woman over their sacred beliefs, combing race hatred, misogyny and Greenie-bashing in a veritable wet dream for scum like Christopher Pearson and the rest of 'The Australian's vipers'next of racists, plus a rigged Royal Commission (such a feature of recent life here), then the insanely evil and villainous reaction to the Stolen Generations Report, signalled a real unfolding disaster. And all the 'good intentions' of the 'Meanswells' have impeded the race hate campaign not one iota.

Yet it has only gotten worse since the 'secret women's business'  became a standing joke for racist misogynists. The Doomadgee killing and all the other deaths in custody, the increasing incarceration rate, the world's worst, the new, much greater, Stolen Generation, the steady moves to remove services from remote communities, based on race alone (remote cockies need never fear such maliciousness)the villainy of the Intervention and the campaign of demonisation that preceded it, Rudd's filthy hypocrisy in saying 'Sorry' but immediately ruling compensation out, and keeping all Howardite policy intact, the destruction of ATSIC, the cultivation of a tiny coterie of indigenous collaborators, and now, the Abbott debacle. Yet the two old duffers, too gutless to 'speak truth to power', mumbled some garbage about Abbott's 'heart being in the right place'. All the evidence, of vicious cuts to programs. of complicity in the ethnic cleansing of remote communities etc, is of the exact opposite, of a man who lies about everything, who lied about this, too, and, in fact, despises the indigenous as deeply as any other Rightwing thug in this country full to overflowing with racist thugs. Adams sold out so comprehensively so long ago that I expect nothing else from him, but Chaney went down numerous notches in my estimation.

aussies4firstnations.wordpress.com

If you're deadly, and serious about supporting, join us.

Mokane  - “The fact that you can make the statements you do means you really need to go have a look for yourself. Go to Onslow, go to Roebourne, go to Amata, go and spend time in remote area communities or with Aboriginal people in the major cities and sit down and talk to them. That might open your eyes. I'm not attacking you, I'm just asking you to educate yourself.”

What statements did I make that are so terrible?

I agree that their past and present treatment is atrocious, and not once did I say Aborigines deserve the treatment they get, not once did I say they don’t have rights, not once was I derogatory, mean, racist or bigoted, not once did I say the youths should not have burned the flag, not once did I say they deserve the deaths in custody, not once did I say they have a wonderful life in Roebourne or Amata or anywhere else.

All I did was ASK if they really wanted Sovereignty which means exclusion from the ‘whiteness’, which is not my word but quoted from Ms Kunoth-Monks.  (Quote – “Even the education system is wrong. It implants whiteness and alienates our children from their cultural background”)

I fully understand their feelings because I know what it feels like to be alienated and why I have always supported their actions.  I agree that the structures that are set up to assist are the structures that are destroying them but I repeat, nobody can help (not just saying yes we agree as that is not helping), but give proper assistance until it is known what they actually want. If they  want to go back to the traditional ways that’s fine, if they want to live with and mix with ‘whites’ that’s fine and as I wrote before, I and many others are willing to help, just tell us HOW.

And for yours and everybody else’s information I happen to be well educated on their plight but it is difficult to support the various groups when the different groups want different things and those who try to help get abused by other supporters of a different group for doing the wrong thing according to THEIR idea of what Aboriginals want. I want to know what the people themselves really, really want.

And that is all I said so go and have a look at your own comprehension of what I wrote, not what you think I meant.

If on the other hand you are all just willing to say yes it’s terrible and something must be done by somebody, somehow, sometime, then I agree.

It won’t help though whereas a full and frank discussion possibly/probably would.