Chicago Tribune http://www.chicago.tribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,SAV-0009060232,00.html ABORIGINES WANT SHARE OF OLYMPIC STAGE By Uli Schmetzer Tribune Foreign Correspondent September 06, 2000 BOTANY BAY, Australia By the eucalyptus trees on the bay where the first white man landed to claim Australia for the British Crown, Kevin Buzzacott of the Arabunna people fueled a fire that has been smoldering Down Under for two centuries. His flames have kindled the passion of tens of thousands of aboriginal people, moderates and radicals alike, who want to turn the Olympics that start next week into a platform for lost land rights and better treatment. They also demand an apology for past crimes white Australia committed against its indigenous population. The Sydney Games, already lambasted for their exorbitant corporate sponsorship and commercial greed, may become the Games during which a forgotten native people moves into the limelight along with the gold medal winners. In the beginning "Uncle Kevin's" fire was only a symbolic gesture for reconciliation between white and black Australia. Today it has become a rallying cry for the remnants of an Aborigine population whose voice rarely is heard or taken seriously in world forums. The flame, carried in a long-burning native hardwood, was lit in early June during a ritual ceremony of tribal elders at central Lake Eyre and carried on foot by the 68-year-old Buzzacott for 86 days and 1,500 miles across the continent to this lush National Park an hour's drive south of Sydney. There it flickers as a log fire, a reminder of precolonial days when tribal messengers walked across the country, sometimes for years, to carry the fire of peace and friendship to other tribes. It was a time, Buzzacott says, when "fire was our totem, our peace offering. It warmed our hearts, our souls and stilled our pains. With fire we called on our ancient spirits, and fire overcame hard times." Ferried into towns by police escorts, his walkabout almost came to the same dramatic end many of his ancestors experienced when they crossed tribal lands seized by white settlers. At Farms Downs Station at Mulyungary, a farm half the size of Switzerland, he claimed the station managers threatened to shoot him and set the dogs on him and his companions if they tried to cross their property. "Of course I made a detour. Mate, these were the kind of people who would've pulled the trigger," he said. Today the fire he lit is also burning at an aboriginal tent camp outside Parliament in Canberra and in Victoria Park, next to Sydney University, places he visited to spread the flame. In Sydney nearly 100 Aborigines are living in igloo-type tents and hovels under a sign: "Aboriginal Tent Embassy." A totem pole pays tribute to the heroic Eora people whose land was what is now Sydney. Their chief, Pemulwuy, fought a guerrilla war against the British settlers from 1788 until 1802, before he was caught and killed. The campers are the vanguard of an expected 100,000 Aborigines and their supporters who are determined to make their voices heard during the Olympics, one way or the other. "Our country is sick, and the healing should be done here, right on this spot where it all started," said Buzzacott, a tribal elder who is famous as a healer. "From the time of [white] landing the country became sick. They took away our kids. They knocked off our medicine and our bush trees and replaced them with their own plants. They cut our land open for their mines, dumped waste in our deserts. Oh, mate, there's a lot of sickness out there, and all I want is people to think about that and talk about it." But fires can burn out of control. The government has given the Aborigines a permit to protest near Sydney's airport, but radicals want to take their cause right into the Olympic Village. "To really protest you need to do it in an illegal manner and not one that's totally coordinated by police and nice and clean," said activist Murrandoo Yanner. As Australia made the final preparations for the Sept. 15 Olympics, the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination added fuel to Buzzacott's fire of peace by criticizing Canberra for its treatment of aborigines and asylum seekers. The unexpected criticism was a cold shower for a nation brimming with confidence after weathering the Asian economic meltdown without major damage. Australians today seek a global role after their nation's troops successfully led a UN peacekeeping mission in East Timor. The Olympics are the crown jewel in the country's newly acquired self-confidence. "Right now we might act like a mob of 5-year-olds at a party. I just hope the present government has enough sense not to let things get out of hand," said Richard Laidlaw, a senior political adviser for the opposition party. The opposite may be happening. Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government, already notorious for refusing to apologize to Aborigines for the Stolen Generation debacle that started in the 1930s and continued through the '70s, during which aboriginal children were taken from their parents, bluntly told the UN it was meddling in Canberra's internal affairs. UN human-rights committees no longer would be welcome in Australia, the government said. "We'll only agree to visits to Australia by UN treaty committees and requests for information where there is a compelling reason to do so," said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. This was a few days before Downer joined Western nations in condemning the Myanmar government for rights violations against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The dilemma of how to deal with native anger has divided the country. Intellectuals attacked Canberra's double standards in decrying rights violations in other countries while rejecting criticism at home. Others applauded the government for rejecting UN criticism of what they called minor rights violations. "Its time someone told the UN, `You go off and lecture North Korea and other members who have no rule of law. Then come back to us,'" said Laidlaw. Canberra's newly acquired bunker mentality became even more evident when the government proposed a law authorizing the prime minister to call in troops to shoot and kill unauthorized protesters, a pointed warning for those who see the Olympics as a launching pad for expressing their grievances. In the early days, as in America, settlers simply killed or scared away the animist nomads who had lived thousands of years in symbiosis with the vast continent. Today Australia's remaining 430,000 Aborigines make up only 2.3 percent of the population. Many of them consider the Olympics their last chance to lobby the world for their survival, their rights and redress. Once considered part of the country's flora and fauna and thus worth preserving--like kangaroos, koalas and wattle trees--Aborigines were granted full citizenship in 1969. This included the right to vote and the right to be served alcohol in bars, called pubs in Australia. The prone bodies of drunken natives in parks and outside pubs have reinforced white racial prejudice. To overcome a plethora of minor thefts, often inspired by inebriation, judges were ordered to impose mandatory jail sentences for all offenses against property. Nearly all the offenders were Aborigines, and many of those imprisoned hanged themselves in their cells because, accustomed to open spaces, they couldn't bear being locked up. Both the UN and international human-rights organizations have lobbied Australia for years to scrap the mandatory sentencing practice, which contravenes international legal norms that specify there must be equality before the law. Amid the pre-Olympic hype, Sydney columnist Mike Carlton probably summed up the case of Australia's black population when he wrote: "Our record on aboriginal human rights is appalling . . . It is a plain fact that in 2000, a prosperous nation which can find $2 billion-plus for Olympic sporting facilities cannot guarantee even a clean water supply to many black communities." ------------------------------------------------------ RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
