And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1998 19:40:43 +1100 >From: Loraine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: [FN] "How A Tribe Was Lost" >Comments: To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >This is a mainstream view of the Aboriginal land rights movement here in >Australia, taken from the Herald Sun newspaper, Wednesday December 23, 1998 >(Melbourne), and written by Andrew Bolt, Staff Writer (my comments beneath >the article): > >Some 150 years ago, squatter Edward Curr found Aborigines fishing as he >paddled his canoe up the Murray. >They shrieked and fled from him - all except one. >A man Curr guessed was in his 90s stood upright and the spear in his hand >trembled with rage. >He screamed he would spear Curr, one of the first white settlers on Yorta >Yorta land. The white man had no right to the tribe's water, its fish and >its ducks. >The man's relatives yelled at him to run before he was shot. But it was a >girl aged about 10 who came back to get him. >Curr wrote that he raised his gun. "The child ... looked me full in the >face and, without altering her course, gathered her opossum rug tightly >about her and, with somewhat stately step, passed close before the gun, to >the gibbering old man." >She took his hand. "As if all recollection had suddenly left him, he >lowered his spear, his head sank down and, in silence, the girl led him >back to his descendants." >Even then, the Yorta Yorta knew they were beaten. >White man's smallpox had already decimated them. But as a sombre judgement >last week by Federal Court Justice Howard Olney reveals, the Yorta Yorta >were to suffer far more evil yet. >They were robbed of their land, where towns like Shepparton, Wangaratta and >Yarrawonga now stand. > >They were shunted onto reserves and missions, parted from their children >and ruled over by despotic do-gooders. >In 1881, 42 of the survivors petitioned the NSW government for help. They >said they had been left beggars, and their children were near starving. >All they wanted was enough land to raise animals and earn a living. >Crucially, it turned out last week, they added, "We .. feel that our old >mode of life is not in keeping with the instructions we have received and >we are earnestly desirous of settling down to more orderly habits of >industry, that we may form homes for our families." >Cruciall, because this desperately sad petition helps prove the Yorta Yorta >had by then abandoned customs and tribal laws which bound them to their land. >Which is largely why the Yorta Yorta claim for the return of up to 4000 sq >km of their land - one of the most divisive of all land rights bids - >finally collapsed in the Federal Court last week. >It was launched four years ago on behalf of 4500 people claiming Yorta >Yorta blood. >This was the big one - a claim for all Crown land in Australia's food bowl, >as well as the waters of the great Murray, Goulburn, Ovens and Edward rivers. >The fear it unleased was immense, as you can tell by the number of >respondents - more than 500, including three states, several shires, >farmers and water boards. >The legal bill was so collossal, Justice Olney called for another way to >resolve the 500-odd outstanding claims. >Yet this huge claimed failed for such simple reasons. >The eight Aborigines who lodged it said they were descended from 18 Yorta >Yorta whose names appear in records of last century. >But Justice Olney found 16 of them were not born on Yorta Yorta land, or >had no provable bond to it. > >Anyway, he said the Yorta Yorta had for more than a century not occupied >their land or kept traditional links with it. "The tide of history" had >tragically washed it all away. >Millions of dollars were spent to reach this bleak finding - millions that >could have bought the Yorta Yorta farms, businesses or scholarships. Such >waste. >I see only one gain - that people will read the decision and see the >dangers of the land rights movement. >The decision shows a new Aboriginal identity is being fabricated. An >identity false to the past and the future. >The Yorta Yorta argued they had kept traditional links with the land by >guarding it and its sacred sites. >This echoes a claim often made by Aboriginal activists - that their >ancestors lived in harmony with nature and each other. >So much so, that some Yorta Yorta elders say they hope their children can >be lured back to life in the forests. Away, that is, from the cities that >offer jobs. >But what did Justice Olney find? That far from being careful with the >land, Yorta Yorta killed far more fish than they ate, and "never spared a >young animal with a view to its growing bigger". >That men owned some land individually and might kill trespassers from their >own tribe. >That today's Yorta Yorta made sacred sites of bush ovens and mounds of >discarded shells which had no spiritual valule to the Aborigines who had >left them. >That a senior claimant, Colin Walker, told "deliberate lies" when he said >one site was a ceremonial ground barred to women. >That younger Yorta Yorta witnesses embellished their oral traditions. >It is time to take stock of the land rights juggernaut. >As the Yorta Yorta case shows, it eats money. It frays the goodwill of >non-Aborigines. It fuels black anger by selling wild hopes. And it >betrays young Aborigines by feeding them visions of of a noble past that >never was nor can be. >But this case also confronts us with the deep, deep injustice done to >Aborigines. If only we could undo what was done. If only. >We can't, of course. All we can do now is build a better future. > >***** > >And are the views expressed by Justice Olney and Andrew Bolt, etc supposed >to make history OK, make it look different from what it was? How do they >propose to make it OK that the invaders moved onto the land, split >families, stole babies? How do they propose to make it OK that this tribe >is lost - not by their own choice, but because they HAD no choices!? > > > >Loraine <<<<=-=-=FREE LEONARD PELTIER=-=-=>>>> If you think you are too small to make a difference; try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito.... African Proverb <<<<=-=http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ =-=>>>> IF it says: "PASS THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW...." Please Check it before you send it at: http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blhoax.htm
