13th February 2008, 01:36 PM
Look I can't say it often enough. This is about racism not anti-Australian.
We all know that the UK and everywhere has the same problems.
No one should dare to think their country immune.
But I live here, this is my country.
The answers are unfolding now.
Rudd has actually done a wonderful thing it is a real start.
I cannot think of a situation where a politician any politician has done such a good thing and moved me to tears.
And yes I'm a cynic but today was one of the best days of my life.
The answers here are easy enough, we just need to copy New Zealand, Canada and the USA (Yes the USA)on Indigenous health.
And there are specific easy answers for a start for WA.
I'm not just a person who rants.
Below is a letter I hope to get published in a West Australian Newspaper
------------
Why Not Build on the Apology to the Stolen Generation with Methods of Practical Reconciliation
Dear Sir,
To build on the Federal Governments apology to the Stolen Generation I believe that the WA Government and Perth City Council needs to be honest about the past and take action to educate all about West Australiaâs wonderful Indigenous history; which would have the result of providing Indigenous youth with heroic role models to look up to.
In Perth and WA, I can find little celebration of West Australiaâs 60,000 years of Aboriginal history, the remarkable achievements of recent and contemporary Aboriginal people and an honest and visible portrayal of the many horrors of colonisation.
How many people realise that WA has the oldest human occupation sites in Australia and some of the oldest securely dated art in the world?
Do school children and tourists learn that Rottnest Island was a terrible prison camp where 2000 Indigenous men died of influenza and 12 were executed in what is now the luxury hotel where the rich now sleep in the former condemned cells? In addition, who know that the entire Aboriginal population of Cue were interned in a police camp during World War II?
Moreover, where are the respectful memorials to these atrocities and why no memorial in Kings Park to the Indigenous service men who fought in all of Australiaâs wars?
In fact, Perth is now crammed with plaques and statues celebrating white people such as the one on Adelaide Terrace to Daisy Bates titled âA Friend to the aborigines [sic]â. A woman who in fact was infamous for boasting that she made sure that no light skinned babies survived in her camp and wrote approvingly of how they were thrown down rabbit holes.
So come on WA politicians commission Aboriginal artists (and the best in Australia live in WA) to produce statues of Jimmy Pike, Sally Morgan and the Aboriginal soldiers who died on the Kokoda trail.
Stephen Arthur.
-------------
But I remain angry partly because perhaps of my experiences from working in a gaol
and here is a reply I wrote to someone on the Australian arch web site, a sympathetic person.
-------------
Actually, I was thinking of spearing one of the statues of Stirling here. The bronze skin is very thin. One good hit with a spike and lump hamer, metal spear in, lots of industrial super glue, red paint, digi snap....
But I told too many people.
So I wrote a soft letter to the West Australian.
Yagans Statue stands on Herrison Island, hidden away like Sally Morgans painting 'Welcome to Rottnest', about every two years some one cuts his head off with a chain saw.
As a none Australian born Australian citizen people should consider who it is that gave me my education when I arrived in Australia in about 1997.
Two weeks after arriving I was working on a ward in the Top Security hospital within Long Bay Gaol.
A short time after that I was cutting my first Aboriginal patient down.
He lived, they were going to send him 800 KM away from his family.
He like most was of course stolen, abused in homes, multiply raped by welfare officers.
His birthday and age the same as mine.
Oh, and no happy endings he was also a rapist and child abuser.
Common enough when thats all you've known from 6 to 19....
And I wasn't soft on him either.
Too many really bad memories from Long Bay.
Every horrible things you see in the films about gaols is true.
do people know the prisioners (A class) are put in orange gear and double shackled when transported across NSW, often no air-con and no toilet breaks.
But many good memories, Tony K (killed a man when drunk, unlucky not evil or mad) a founder of the Tent Embassy etc, etc.
So I make no excuse for my anger and my language use.
I usually check stuff out with Aboriginal friends anyway.
But give me a drunk, drugged up man telling me to f off and he's going to kill me, down from NT any day compared to some (not all) of the staff and students at UWA.
snobby places are the worst
Arthus
We all know that the UK and everywhere has the same problems.
No one should dare to think their country immune.
But I live here, this is my country.
The answers are unfolding now.
Rudd has actually done a wonderful thing it is a real start.
I cannot think of a situation where a politician any politician has done such a good thing and moved me to tears.
And yes I'm a cynic but today was one of the best days of my life.
The answers here are easy enough, we just need to copy New Zealand, Canada and the USA (Yes the USA)on Indigenous health.
And there are specific easy answers for a start for WA.
I'm not just a person who rants.
Below is a letter I hope to get published in a West Australian Newspaper
------------
Why Not Build on the Apology to the Stolen Generation with Methods of Practical Reconciliation
Dear Sir,
To build on the Federal Governments apology to the Stolen Generation I believe that the WA Government and Perth City Council needs to be honest about the past and take action to educate all about West Australiaâs wonderful Indigenous history; which would have the result of providing Indigenous youth with heroic role models to look up to.
In Perth and WA, I can find little celebration of West Australiaâs 60,000 years of Aboriginal history, the remarkable achievements of recent and contemporary Aboriginal people and an honest and visible portrayal of the many horrors of colonisation.
How many people realise that WA has the oldest human occupation sites in Australia and some of the oldest securely dated art in the world?
Do school children and tourists learn that Rottnest Island was a terrible prison camp where 2000 Indigenous men died of influenza and 12 were executed in what is now the luxury hotel where the rich now sleep in the former condemned cells? In addition, who know that the entire Aboriginal population of Cue were interned in a police camp during World War II?
Moreover, where are the respectful memorials to these atrocities and why no memorial in Kings Park to the Indigenous service men who fought in all of Australiaâs wars?
In fact, Perth is now crammed with plaques and statues celebrating white people such as the one on Adelaide Terrace to Daisy Bates titled âA Friend to the aborigines [sic]â. A woman who in fact was infamous for boasting that she made sure that no light skinned babies survived in her camp and wrote approvingly of how they were thrown down rabbit holes.
So come on WA politicians commission Aboriginal artists (and the best in Australia live in WA) to produce statues of Jimmy Pike, Sally Morgan and the Aboriginal soldiers who died on the Kokoda trail.
Stephen Arthur.
-------------
But I remain angry partly because perhaps of my experiences from working in a gaol
and here is a reply I wrote to someone on the Australian arch web site, a sympathetic person.
-------------
Actually, I was thinking of spearing one of the statues of Stirling here. The bronze skin is very thin. One good hit with a spike and lump hamer, metal spear in, lots of industrial super glue, red paint, digi snap....
But I told too many people.
So I wrote a soft letter to the West Australian.
Yagans Statue stands on Herrison Island, hidden away like Sally Morgans painting 'Welcome to Rottnest', about every two years some one cuts his head off with a chain saw.
As a none Australian born Australian citizen people should consider who it is that gave me my education when I arrived in Australia in about 1997.
Two weeks after arriving I was working on a ward in the Top Security hospital within Long Bay Gaol.
A short time after that I was cutting my first Aboriginal patient down.
He lived, they were going to send him 800 KM away from his family.
He like most was of course stolen, abused in homes, multiply raped by welfare officers.
His birthday and age the same as mine.
Oh, and no happy endings he was also a rapist and child abuser.
Common enough when thats all you've known from 6 to 19....
And I wasn't soft on him either.
Too many really bad memories from Long Bay.
Every horrible things you see in the films about gaols is true.
do people know the prisioners (A class) are put in orange gear and double shackled when transported across NSW, often no air-con and no toilet breaks.
But many good memories, Tony K (killed a man when drunk, unlucky not evil or mad) a founder of the Tent Embassy etc, etc.
So I make no excuse for my anger and my language use.
I usually check stuff out with Aboriginal friends anyway.
But give me a drunk, drugged up man telling me to f off and he's going to kill me, down from NT any day compared to some (not all) of the staff and students at UWA.
snobby places are the worst
Arthus