Dear all,
below is an article on the life of Murri activist Sam Watson. Sam has
campaigned for Indigenous rights since the 60's and is currently involved in
helping co-ordinate the People's March at CHOGM (9am Roma St, Sat Oct 6),
which will be lead by the Murri community.
Sam has recently been pre-selected as a Socialist Alliance senate candidate
for QUEENSLAND. He joins two other well-known Indigenous activists -
Yaluritja (Clarrie)Issacs, who has just returned from the Durban UN
Anti-racism conference & who will stand as a Socialist Alliance senate
candidate in WESTERN AUSTRALIA & Larrikiah elder June Mills who will stand
as a Socialist Alliance senate candidate in the NORTHERN TERRITORY.
in solidarity,
Kim B
***************************************
Sam Watson: a life-long fighter against racism
BY KAREN FLETCHER -www.greenleft.org.au
BRISBANE - Anti-racist activist Sam Watson is running for the Senate in
Queensland as a Socialist Alliance candidate. He is a life-long campaigner
for the rights of indigenous people. Green Left Weekly caught up with him
to find out his story.
Watson grew up with tales of indigenous resistance that never made it into
the history books. "Grandfather [the first Sam Watson] was a senior man of
the Birigubba tribe, in Bowen Basin country. Right back to his generation,
our family have been the sort of people who wouldn't accept the sort of
bullshit that Aboriginal people have been
expected to live with."
When he was five, grandfather Watson was sold into bondage to a white
station owner in central Queensland. "After his day's work, he was chained
up like a dog under the station house and fed on a tin plate."
Fleeing this treatment, he worked in ring-barking camps until he had
enough money to hire a lawyer who had him freed from the Aboriginal
Protection Act, one of the first Aboriginal people to do so.
Many of Sam Watson's relatives worked on Palm Island. "Palm Island was
called `Punishment Island'. Any Aboriginal dissident in Queensland who
questioned the white managers on the reserves or missions, or who played up
in the white towns, was shunted off [to Palm Island] in chains."
In 1957, Aborigines on the island went on strike for equal wages and
conditions. Two of Watson's uncles were involved: "The police naturally put
them in chains and took them off in the government boat to other reserves."
During the 1960s, the indigenous rights movement gained wider support
than ever before. It is a time Watson remembers with affection. "In 1965,
when Uncle Charlie Perkins lead the `Freedom Rides' with his non-indigenous
comrades from Sydney University, it was a huge morale boost for all of us.
"We were battling against the dying stages of the White Australia
Policy because we saw that as something that had to be confronted and
exposed for what it was. We fought for the referendum that was eventually
held in 1967."
On referendum day, Watson, who was still in high school and a member of
the underground Students for Democratic Action, spent the day on a polling
booth campaigning for a yes vote. "That was my first experience of
electioneering. Everyone that came past thanked me for the how-to-vote card
and spoke kindly to me - these were white people that I didn't even know!
"The next morning the Sunday Truth had this huge banner headline saying
that 92.5% of the Australian population had voted yes. That was just an
incredible experience for us all and it showed what could be achieved
through a political campaign."
The Vietnam War radicalised Watson further. He told Green Left Weekly
that he would go out in the car with his father to pick up African-American
soldiers who trying to hitchhike from Brisbane to the Gold Coast. "White
drivers would stop for the white soldiers but they wouldn't take the black
troops. The [black soldiers] told us about the great leaders of the US civil
rights movement, about the big marches they had been on and about being
forced out of the ghettos in New York into fighting a war they really didn't
want to fight."
Encouraged by his family to become a lawyer, Watson enrolled at the
University of Queensland in 1971, the only indigenous student amongst
thousands of whites.
"I was called into a big meeting with the state director of Native
Affairs and his staff. There must have been about a dozen senior white
public servants there. He gave me a pep talk on how I had to stay away from
the radicals and ratbags of the anti-war movement because they would `lead
me astray'."
"It only took me about six months to link up with the radicals", Watson
admitted. "The next time I saw [Native Affairs officials] we were all
marching on them."
In 1971, the tour of apartheid South Africa's Springbok rugby team
provided a focus for anti-racist activism. Queensland Premier Joh
Bjelke-Peterson declared a state of emergency for the Brisbane match.
"We declared the university a peoples' university and closed down the
formal lecture program. We invited Aboriginal people into the lecture rooms
and the tutorial rooms to discuss racism."
Strong bonds were formed between student activists, trade unionists,
church leaders and political leaders from the broader community and the
Aboriginal political leadership.
"People like Dan O'Neil and Carol Ferrier are still very close comrades
of mine. Every time I see them I kind of get a bit of a choke in the throat
remembering the good old days of the 1970s."
Now a lecturer in black Australian literature, Watson is still involved
in local struggles. Most recently, he has been a central organiser of the
People's March on CHOGM.
"In the Brisbane Murri community I am a link with the white left. For a
long time, the Murri leadership was very suspicious of the white political
movement and always insisted that Aboriginal politics should play a
predominant role in joint activities. But over the years, Aboriginal leaders
have become far more accepting of our white comrades.
"It's still going to take work to take it further, to really bond the
way I'd like to see it. The majority of Aboriginal families are struggling
every day just to put food on the table and keep the landlord off their
backs, so they've got other priorities. But on the big issues, they will
mobilise. That's what CHOGM is going to be and the major issue is going to
be the demand for a Treaty."
[To get involved in the Queensland Socialist Alliance election campaign,
email
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Visit <http://www.socialist-alliance.org>.]
--
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