En Passant

A treaty, recognising prior ownership and sovereignty, paying the rent to the indigenous owners of the land and allowing Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to run their own affairs is a set of systemic solutions to the systemic problems of dispossession and disempowerment, systemic solutions to the past and ongoing genocide against the indigenous peoples of this country.

That would require an attack on capital in Australia and its interests. Labor won’t do that. Far better from the point of view of Gillard as the captain of the second level of capital to pick Nova Peris to open the batting in the battle for the Senate than actually take on capital to address the real issues. Nova Peris will be a willing accomplice to Gillard’s anti-Aboriginal agenda.

The Invasion Day protests, the burgeoning Idle No More indigenous peoples’ movement in Canada which is spreading across the globe, the campaigns against the Intervention and deaths in custody, all offer an alternative approach to winning better lives for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. They are movements from below, not machinations from above. That way lies the future, not one bum on one seat for a Gillard puppet in the Senate.

Damien Hooper, whether he realises it or not, has given us a glimpse of an alternative future where our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters can be proud of their history and their resistance and join with the exploited working class in a new society of freedom and equity where their history and culture is celebrated and respected, not repressed and hidden away.

Now is the time for the Greens to mobilise their millions of supporters to fight for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and refugees against the two racist parties, Labor and the Liberals.

You can’t play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules when fighting racists, racists who are implanting the seeds of systemic racism and watering its shoots every day. Let’s cut down the seedlings before they become an impenetrable forest.

Call us out. Lead us in demonstrations against the racists and for Aboriginal empowerment, for sovereignty. Combine that with the struggle for refugees.

For God’s sake Greens, give focus to our anger. Lives depend on it.

The only remarkable thing about the protest, if you consider the sheer scale of the inequality and hardship and lies suffered by Aboriginal people, is actually how peaceful it was, besides the actions of police. Channel 9 recorded Tony Abbott as saying from the inside, “I think it would be very easy for that glass to be smashed”. I must admit, the same thought crossed my mind and probably a few others. But it never actually happened. The only damage done was to Gillard and Abbott’s pride, and the sanctimonious propaganda of “Australia Day”. Seeing Gillard flee in shame was one of the highlights of my life, and a general feeling of jubilation was in the air as Gillard’s shoe was displayed as a symbol of our victory. This is the kind of reception which should greet Gillard wherever she goes.

If all this setting upon and intimidation and violence at the Invasion Day demonstration are true, why have there been no arrests? Maybe because the police on the ground – not liars sitting hundreds of miles away – know the truth. There was no violence by protesters. If all this setting upon and intimidation and violence at the Invasion Day demonstration are true, why have there been no arrests? Maybe because the police on the ground – not liars sitting hundreds of miles away – know the truth. There was no violence by protesters.

But don’t let racist stories as part of a racist agenda of continued dispossession and genocide of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders stand in the way of the truth.

These two disgraceful articles are just a further indication to me that racism is systemic and entrenched in Australian society and its institutions, including the media.

A good first step is telling the truth. As George Orwell put it, that is a revolutionary act.

But in the end only a mass struggle of Aboriginal people and their millions of supporters can challenge the systemic racism of Australian capitalism.

The duality of racism in Australia means that when Abbott inflames racist tensions by attacking refugees he lays the groundwork for more and more brutal attacks on our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters, including the Tent Embassy.

John Howard, Mal Brough, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbot and Jenny Macklin should be sent to the Hague to face genocide charges or put on trial here.

We need more and bigger demonstrations for Aboriginal sovereignty and land rights to make the point that they are central to addressing Aboriginal genocide and dispossession. It is time for a treaty.

It is time for a real fight back to shake the systemic racism of Australian capitalism to its core.

‘If you don’t fight you lose.’

Genocide is not only the mass killing of a people. The essence of genocide is acting with the intention to destroy the group, not the extent to which that intention has been achieved. A major intention of forcibly removing Indigenous children was to ‘absorb’, ‘merge’ or ‘assimilate’ them, so Aborigines as a distinct group would disappear. Authorities sincerely believed assimilation would be in the ‘best interests’ of the children, but this is irrelevant to a finding that their actions were genocidal.

It wasn’t a wild protest. It wasn’t a riot. It wasn’t thuggery.

Those false accusations are examples of the constant racist stereotyping by the one percent and their media and part of the wider agenda to deepen even further the oppression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.