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News & ArtsThursday, July 16, 2009
Visual Art No Looking: A Little More Info on SAM's Voluntary Return of the Australian Aboriginal Object
Posted by Jen Graves on Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:03 AM
Two weeks ago, I fell into a black hole called strep throat and sinus infection at the same time. Just before that I did an interview with SAM curator Pam McClusky about the museum having initiated the repatriation of an aboriginal Australian object to that country.
But then several news outlets reported on it, and I figured I had nothing to add.
I might have a little to add. I had this email exchange yesterday with Slog reader Eric Meltzer:
Eric:
You posted on Slog about SAM's impending repatriation of Australian Aboriginal art a few days ago and promised to follow up: did I miss it? I've long felt that SAM's Aboriginal collection is a great strength (and that Emily Kame Kngwarreye's "Anooralya (Wild Yam Dreaming)" is perhaps SAM's best single piece on display), but the only news I can find on the web reads like regurgitations of the press release.
Me:
So sorry to keep you waiting. ... The piece in question is not a painting or a contemporary object; it is a carved stone sacred object about 40 centimeters across that has never been shown (it was collected by museum founder Dr. Richard Fuller in 1970). The museum's act was notable because the museum itself (specifically curator Pamela McClusky) initiated the return. The stone has gone back to a site in Canberra, where it will sit in storage, unseen, until its community of origin is determined and it can be returned.
Eric:
As I wrote in my email, I read most of the other coverage about the stone, but it struck me as an oddly inspirational and "correct" for an issue usually fraught with, well, greed and anger, along with legal threats and challenging negotiations. That's not to say that the story isn't accurate (and, although I have not met her, I do think Pamela McClusky is a terrific curator), but just that its coverage lacked any analysis and left several questions unanswered. For example, how did Richard Fuller get it? Was he aware of what it was, and if so, why would he purchase or agree to store something that could never be displayed? ...Are there other objects in the Australian Aboriginal and Oceanic Art collection that are now being considered for repatriation? Are there objects in the Native and Mesoamerican Art collection or in any other part of the permanent collection being considered for repatriation? What is SAM's policy on repatriation, including voluntary repatriation? Does the Board hold final approval authority or do curators have control over their collection?
If Ms. McClusky was not pressured in any way to return the object, why was she asking if Australians wanted to come down to SAM's storage space and look at material not on display, as reported by ABC Canberra? Can anyone visit SAM's storage for review? If the stone's ultimate community origins haven't been determined yet but will be by the National Museum of Australia, how does this process work? Has it done this before?
Okay, those are good questions, and I do have some answers.
1. Richard Fuller bought it from a dealer based in Melbourne. He was here when he purchased it, most likely unseen except perhaps by reproduction. This is not documented in the museum's records.
2. It's unclear whether Fuller knew what it was, curator McClusky told me, but, "It had no provenance, no documentation, no date, nothing that would give you the credibility to display it or even write a beginning label."
3. No, there are no other objects in the Australian/Oceanic collection currently under consideration for repatriation.
4. Yes, there are objects in the Native American art collection that are being considered: "We do have NAGPRA claims that we're processing," McClusky said.
5. SAM's policy on repatriation is much like other museums: to consider each case. But SAM is the first American museum to voluntarily return Australian aboriginal material to the country, McClusky said, although several American museums hold this material.
6. The board of trustees holds final approval, though curators initiate the processes and advise on their collections.
7. SAM's storage is not open; only scholars can visit. But that's not how Australian experts began giving McClusky their opinion on SAM's stone. When SAM started showing Australian aboriginal art in 1996, "curators and academics came through and would say, 'What do you have?' I'd say, 'Well, we've got one of those stones' that I'd heard about, and they'd say, 'You really shouldn't be dealing with that in public,'" she said.
8. The stone will remain in a closed room in the National Museum in Canberra until agents working with the museum's repatriation program (directed by Michael Pickering) determine where it came from. The two possible communities are the Yuendemu and Papunya.
1
is this actually an artwork -- the writer's thoughts and physical condition in real time without editing, getting to the point, etc., making a subtle mockery of the Strunkian edict, "omit needless words," a kind of lohorrheaic grafitti?
Wow, I get it.
Wow, I get it.
2
Papunya isn't really a community; it was set up by the government to minister to the needs of SEVERAL unrelated communities, as they were brought in from country, and is situated roughly where those communities overlap. It's unlikely, but I suppose possible, that the stone is from there; but that still doesn't answer the question of whether it's Walpiri, Pintupi, Luritja, or some other group. Indigenous Australians, like American Indians, don't really think of themselves as generic "Aborigines", but as members of their specific kinship groups. And they frequently don't like each other much.
Yuendemu is, I believe, strictly Warlpiri.
But if they can figure out what group theoretically holds possession of the item, the extremely complicated ownership rules of their societies, and the tragic destruction of their cultural lineage, means that there's no possible way to establish what person or family is responsible for maintaining and teaching the stone's motifs (which are the important thing here, not the stone itself; or will be, if they haven't destroyed the knowledge). Hopefully, they'll let the kinship groups figure this out for themselves; but they don't have a good track record, even recently.
Australian rules, unlike Amerindian, have an added layer of complexity, in the various forms of secrecy involved -- kinship secrets, men's secrets, women's secrets. All these people having seen the stone may have killed its story, along with the purposeful destruction of memory.
Good to see them give it back. It should never have been taken. Even as late as 1970, though, the official Australian policy was deliberate and total cultural genocide -- destroying all traces of "unecessary" Aboriginal culture as a step towards integration into white society. The very existence of Papunya is a totem of that attempted extinction; though, ironically, it is where the modern "art" idea was first promulgated as well, giving the people a new technique for preserving culture in a commodified, Western way.
Incidentally, I like Eric Meltzer's appreciation, though I would myself point to Dorothy Napangardi's Mina Mina painting as the single best artwork on display not just at SAM but in Seattle.
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Yuendemu is, I believe, strictly Warlpiri.
But if they can figure out what group theoretically holds possession of the item, the extremely complicated ownership rules of their societies, and the tragic destruction of their cultural lineage, means that there's no possible way to establish what person or family is responsible for maintaining and teaching the stone's motifs (which are the important thing here, not the stone itself; or will be, if they haven't destroyed the knowledge). Hopefully, they'll let the kinship groups figure this out for themselves; but they don't have a good track record, even recently.
Australian rules, unlike Amerindian, have an added layer of complexity, in the various forms of secrecy involved -- kinship secrets, men's secrets, women's secrets. All these people having seen the stone may have killed its story, along with the purposeful destruction of memory.
Good to see them give it back. It should never have been taken. Even as late as 1970, though, the official Australian policy was deliberate and total cultural genocide -- destroying all traces of "unecessary" Aboriginal culture as a step towards integration into white society. The very existence of Papunya is a totem of that attempted extinction; though, ironically, it is where the modern "art" idea was first promulgated as well, giving the people a new technique for preserving culture in a commodified, Western way.
Incidentally, I like Eric Meltzer's appreciation, though I would myself point to Dorothy Napangardi's Mina Mina painting as the single best artwork on display not just at SAM but in Seattle.
4
Fnarf does make an interesting observation when he states that Australian Aborigines like native americans don't see themselves as members of a collective group even though they share the same, ethnicity and history in term of their contacts and treatment by colonizers. It's no wonder then how effective the theft and killing of indigenous cultures has worked when the first to continue with the same divisions that left them vulnerable for others to take advantage of them are indigenous people themselves. Instead of embracing the sacred object as such regardless of what tribe made it and looking at it as an aborigine sacred object, its hidden away until the old tribal identifications (that led them to their demise) are determined and so go on with the vicious cycle of divisions amongst themselves.
5
Loveschild, you don't know the first thing about what you're talking about. Seriously, just go away. At least read something, anything, first.
These "divisions that left them vulnerable" are the key to their survival for more than 50,000 years -- earth's longest continuous culture. God only knows what kind of brainless plan YOU have for them, but it sounds like you're advocating genocide. Don't think so? That's because you DON'T KNOW ANYTHING.
There's NO SUCH THING as an "Aboriginal sacred object" outside of the context of their culture. It's just a rock. What matters is the Law, but you want them to throw away the Law, just like the white bastards who tried to wipe them out. Sweet. It's exciting to see oppressed people (you're black, right?) cheerleading for the oppression of others. You do it ALL THE FREAKING TIME.
These "divisions that left them vulnerable" are the key to their survival for more than 50,000 years -- earth's longest continuous culture. God only knows what kind of brainless plan YOU have for them, but it sounds like you're advocating genocide. Don't think so? That's because you DON'T KNOW ANYTHING.
There's NO SUCH THING as an "Aboriginal sacred object" outside of the context of their culture. It's just a rock. What matters is the Law, but you want them to throw away the Law, just like the white bastards who tried to wipe them out. Sweet. It's exciting to see oppressed people (you're black, right?) cheerleading for the oppression of others. You do it ALL THE FREAKING TIME.
6
You truly are a stupid and dishonest person Fnarf, if you believe that the tribal groupings which sustained them before the invasion of their lands by european colonizers are beneficial for them today. Look at picture you dumbass, you see the case covered by the Aboriginal flag, that flag represents a collective identity on the part of those Australian Aboriginies who have seen that they share a common ethnicity and history of abuse perpetrated against them by european australians. When colonizers or current white australians for that matter, see an Aboriginie they do not see a Walpiri or a Tjapukai or a Yolngu or a Ngaanyatjarra, no they see an aborigine, they see the other. As such much like (even more) native americans, Australian Aborigines consciousness has developed both in the outback and in the inner cities of the austalian continent.
7
Here's the thing, Loveschild: YOU ARE PIG IGNORANT.
I know you were able to google up some Aboriginal names there, but you DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
Yes, there is a political pan-Aboriginal movement, as represented by that flag. But that does not mean, as you demand, that their cultural traditions should be destroyed in the name of "consciousness". You seem to be unaware that THEY TRIED THAT, and the result is a catalog of misery. Aboriginal people, like all people, have the right to take possession of their own culture. People like you don't even know what culture is, though.
Perhaps you could try reading something about Yuendemu and Papunya, and find out what people with actual experience on the ground, both white and black, think.
It's unbelievable to be arguing for the self-determination of oppressed racial minorities with AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN. How fucking stupid can you be? Are you one of those people who thinks slavery was the best thing that ever happened to your people? I'll bet you don't know anything about slavery, either. God DAMN, woman. Get a fucking clue.
And if you are suggesting that American Indians gain by ignoring their tribal identities, you are DEEPLY CONFUSED. Quite the opposite is true. I suggest you head on down to the Duwamish Longhouse and tell them that they should give up this "Duwamish" crap and start acting like whitefellas. You might want to have "911" cued up and ready to go on your phone.
I know you were able to google up some Aboriginal names there, but you DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
Yes, there is a political pan-Aboriginal movement, as represented by that flag. But that does not mean, as you demand, that their cultural traditions should be destroyed in the name of "consciousness". You seem to be unaware that THEY TRIED THAT, and the result is a catalog of misery. Aboriginal people, like all people, have the right to take possession of their own culture. People like you don't even know what culture is, though.
Perhaps you could try reading something about Yuendemu and Papunya, and find out what people with actual experience on the ground, both white and black, think.
It's unbelievable to be arguing for the self-determination of oppressed racial minorities with AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN. How fucking stupid can you be? Are you one of those people who thinks slavery was the best thing that ever happened to your people? I'll bet you don't know anything about slavery, either. God DAMN, woman. Get a fucking clue.
And if you are suggesting that American Indians gain by ignoring their tribal identities, you are DEEPLY CONFUSED. Quite the opposite is true. I suggest you head on down to the Duwamish Longhouse and tell them that they should give up this "Duwamish" crap and start acting like whitefellas. You might want to have "911" cued up and ready to go on your phone.
8
You would love them remaining divided so that repulsive idiots like you can indulge yourselves in your little anthrophological fetishes. Well tough luck you intellectual bigot cause this is the 21st century and indigenous peoples throughout the world no longer have to parade in customes for your delight. Creating ethnic consciousness in no way destroys their culture, it instead enriches it by acknowledging that of their fellow aboriginal brothers and sisters and the current realities that all Australian Aborigines face regardless of tribe. Also it's interesting how vultures like you omit the fact that there has been marriages and intensive tribal interactions going on between all aboriginal groups way before the arrival of white thieves and killers to the Australian continent. But reading putrid comments like yours one would get the impression that aborigines have not been interacting and seeing themselves separately from other ethnicities such as neighboring Polynesians or Indonesian seafarers who have been visiting their coasts for hundreds even thousands of years. No, jerks like you think that such consciousness evolved solely only through the examples given by those wretched African Americans who you love to blame for all that disrupts your little world view of how things and people should be and behave, and thats not true. Australian Aboriginal culture has been consolidated and strengthen by the examples of other peoples Civil Rights struggles but it has always existed and has not impeded the existence of distinctions, families (tribes) within them. But what would someone like you who cannot relate to their experience as an indigenous, persecuted people with a sense of pride and rich history know about such things. Keep reading your stupid books written by other snobs of european decent such as yourself. As for me I will listen, go to the websites and interact with the Aboriginal people and keep informing myself about what they have to say for themselves an not what outsiders (like you) who view them more as living museum pieces than as a proud separate ethnic modern people and enjoy categorizing them under different names, have to say of them through your little outdated anthropological pocket books.
Australian Aboriginal culture is not something that can be solely reduced to tribes, books, and nineteen and twentieth century studies made through eurocentric (often racist) lenses. Australian Aboriginal culture is an evolving one that reveres its past by aknowledging its separate family groups (tribes) while at the same time recognizing the bigger family unit that binds them all together, that is to say their ethnicity and culture, its present (what let them to were they're at now) and builds upon its future as they (Australian Aborigines) see fit and not as museum curators dictate.
And for the record you repulsive swine, I have known about those tribal groups that I cited for quite some time now, and no, unlike you I do not have to google them, I personally own a Warlpiri painting and have always been an admirer or Australian Aboriginal art and culture way before this post.
ps My apologies to any swine lover outhere for having compare such innocent creatures with Fnarf.
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Australian Aboriginal culture is not something that can be solely reduced to tribes, books, and nineteen and twentieth century studies made through eurocentric (often racist) lenses. Australian Aboriginal culture is an evolving one that reveres its past by aknowledging its separate family groups (tribes) while at the same time recognizing the bigger family unit that binds them all together, that is to say their ethnicity and culture, its present (what let them to were they're at now) and builds upon its future as they (Australian Aborigines) see fit and not as museum curators dictate.
And for the record you repulsive swine, I have known about those tribal groups that I cited for quite some time now, and no, unlike you I do not have to google them, I personally own a Warlpiri painting and have always been an admirer or Australian Aboriginal art and culture way before this post.
ps My apologies to any swine lover outhere for having compare such innocent creatures with Fnarf.
9
Go fuck yourself, Loveschild. Seriously. Eat shit and die. "Anthropological pocket books"? What the fuck are you talking about? At no point have I advocated an anthropological, ethnographical point of view.
Now all of a sudden you're "aknowledging its separate family groups" which is quite different than what you were saying at the beginning, isn't it? Isn't it?
You want it both ways.You started off saying they should just chuck all that shit out; you said that's WHY THEY WERE CONQUERED. Now you're singing a different tune. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? It's worse than arguing with Will. Are you mentally disturbed, or are you really that dishonest? I think you're probably just too stupid to know what your own positions are.
The question of how indigenous Australians enter the modern world and make it their own is a fascinating and important one, one which I've been thinking about for years. I'm familiar with your charges -- more familiar than you are -- which makes it disconcerting to see them flung back at me by someone who doesn't have a clue. Eric Mathews, in "Bad Aboriginal Art" raises many of the same points you do -- but doesn't reach the conclusion that "tribal identifications led to their demise" -- YOUR QUOTE -- or that teaching the Law somehow ruins them, when in fact it is the LOSS of the Law that has made them slaves in the first place.
Only when Aborigines are given control over their own cultural heritage and its expressions, without white people telling them what to do, will they be able to approach the modern world in fulfilling ways.
You seem to be under the impression that all Aborigines need to move to cities and start acting like whitefellas; there's really no other way to interpret your opening remarks here. But a lot of them don't want to, and even the ones that do don't want to throw away the old ways, like you started off wanting them to, but then changed your mind in comment 8.
But that's not the question here: here the question is, what to do about this carved stone. You think they should just forget about who made it and treat it as "an aborigine sacred object", but that formulation DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. That's YOU, projecting your own cultural illusions onto the object. The very words "sacred object" don't have any correlation in any Aboriginal culture; and to suggest that "hiding it away" -- again, YOUR WORDS -- is just some stupid superstition holding them back is suggests that you know NOTHING about Warlpiri, however many tourist paintings you bought at the airport.
Why don't they ask the Warlpiri elders what they should do with the stone? Oh, wait -- they are. But you think that's silly old-fashioned ethnography. Asking them. How silly.
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Now all of a sudden you're "aknowledging its separate family groups" which is quite different than what you were saying at the beginning, isn't it? Isn't it?
You want it both ways.You started off saying they should just chuck all that shit out; you said that's WHY THEY WERE CONQUERED. Now you're singing a different tune. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? It's worse than arguing with Will. Are you mentally disturbed, or are you really that dishonest? I think you're probably just too stupid to know what your own positions are.
The question of how indigenous Australians enter the modern world and make it their own is a fascinating and important one, one which I've been thinking about for years. I'm familiar with your charges -- more familiar than you are -- which makes it disconcerting to see them flung back at me by someone who doesn't have a clue. Eric Mathews, in "Bad Aboriginal Art" raises many of the same points you do -- but doesn't reach the conclusion that "tribal identifications led to their demise" -- YOUR QUOTE -- or that teaching the Law somehow ruins them, when in fact it is the LOSS of the Law that has made them slaves in the first place.
Only when Aborigines are given control over their own cultural heritage and its expressions, without white people telling them what to do, will they be able to approach the modern world in fulfilling ways.
You seem to be under the impression that all Aborigines need to move to cities and start acting like whitefellas; there's really no other way to interpret your opening remarks here. But a lot of them don't want to, and even the ones that do don't want to throw away the old ways, like you started off wanting them to, but then changed your mind in comment 8.
But that's not the question here: here the question is, what to do about this carved stone. You think they should just forget about who made it and treat it as "an aborigine sacred object", but that formulation DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. That's YOU, projecting your own cultural illusions onto the object. The very words "sacred object" don't have any correlation in any Aboriginal culture; and to suggest that "hiding it away" -- again, YOUR WORDS -- is just some stupid superstition holding them back is suggests that you know NOTHING about Warlpiri, however many tourist paintings you bought at the airport.
Why don't they ask the Warlpiri elders what they should do with the stone? Oh, wait -- they are. But you think that's silly old-fashioned ethnography. Asking them. How silly.
10
Also it's interesting how vultures like you omit the fact that there has been marriages and intensive tribal interactions going on between all aboriginal groups way before the arrival of white thieves and killers to the Australian continent.
I never said any such thing, or anything remotely like it.
No, jerks like you think that such consciousness evolved solely only through the examples given by those wretched African Americans who you love to blame for all that disrupts your little world view of how things and people should be and behave, and thats not true.
This doesn't make any sense at all, grammatically or semantically, but I've never blamed African Americans for anything, and you know it.
Australian Aboriginal culture is not something that can be solely reduced to tribes, books, and nineteen and twentieth century studies made through eurocentric (often racist) lenses.
Quite so. That's what I've been trying to say. It is YOU who is imposing a "Eurocentric" view, that they should chuck out that stupid cultural heritage -- or you were, at first, but when I called you on it you changed your position 180 degrees.
That's very weird, you know.
12
Good Lord, are you dishonest.
Hey you low-life, no where did I say they should disregard their family history, which is what the neo-snobs like you try to imply whenever an ethnic group tries to assert their collective identity, unite and become stronger to resist cultural and physical genocide. What I clearly wrote was that keeping the sacred object hidden away by some white museum curators just because the family who create it or draw spiritual inspiration from it has not been identified yet serves no purpose to current aborigines whose realities and interactions with each other are more closer, united and different than probably that which existed during the time in which that sacred object was worshiped solely by one family group. As such, instead it should be Aboriginal leaders, and the Aboriginal community of Australia (and yes they do exist outside of rural areas, where they bond and form families regardless of tribe) the ones who should make that decision. Because only they will take into account the different reality of today's aborigines, many of whom have come to see and embraced all things produced by aboriginal groups not as belonging to one sole tribe but belonging to all aborigines.
Hey you low-life, no where did I say they should disregard their family history, which is what the neo-snobs like you try to imply whenever an ethnic group tries to assert their collective identity, unite and become stronger to resist cultural and physical genocide. What I clearly wrote was that keeping the sacred object hidden away by some white museum curators just because the family who create it or draw spiritual inspiration from it has not been identified yet serves no purpose to current aborigines whose realities and interactions with each other are more closer, united and different than probably that which existed during the time in which that sacred object was worshiped solely by one family group. As such, instead it should be Aboriginal leaders, and the Aboriginal community of Australia (and yes they do exist outside of rural areas, where they bond and form families regardless of tribe) the ones who should make that decision. Because only they will take into account the different reality of today's aborigines, many of whom have come to see and embraced all things produced by aboriginal groups not as belonging to one sole tribe but belonging to all aborigines.
13
Your ignorance is astounding.
First of all, they don't "worship" objects of this type. That's a western concept. You're about as culturally aware as your spiritual forebear, Dana Carvey's Church Lady. Aboriginal culture is about places, not things; that's one of the survival mechanisms they developed that allowed them to survive for 50,000 years on a mostly-barren continent (which no whites could ever do, until modern technology). It is more correct to say that the object is part of a set of sacred ideas and activities, in a sacred place; to take it out of that context is to destroy the Law.
Bear in mind that this stone is not a modern art product, like the acrylic paintings, which are specifically designed to communicate cultural and personal ideas to (predominantly) white people, after a complex process of mediation to determine what's allowed and what's not, and how. (More than a few early acrylics from Pupunya Tula have later been determined to reveal too much, and asked to be recalled; artist colonies have even been physically attacked on occasion).
The objects are cultural and religious teaching tools, by which a portion of the Law (a Dreamtime story or similar) was recorded. That artifact has or had conditions attached to it, and the story was probably "owned" by one person in the tribe, or one moiety, kinship, sex, whose responsibility was two-fold: take care of it, and pass its story on, in the prescribed ways. It's a men's object, so only women can see it, for one thing.
If the article is not "hidden away", it's exposed in ways that are forbidden. You don't know what those ways are; the Australian curator DOES. The experts who repeatedly told the curator at SAM "You really shouldn't be dealing with that in public" KNEW WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT. I know this is a difficult concept for someone who has looked at some unidentified "website" to grasp, that someone might know what's what in the subject that is their life's work, but trust me: they're not stupid. Nor are they cultural imperialists.
Secondly, in the article (you DID read the article, right? Right?), it says "The museum will house the object in a restricted store while they consult with central Australian Elders to determine a culturally appropriate management and return of the object."
How does that not meet your criterion?
What you have done instead is what you usually do, which is release your pre-formulated arguments, as poorly thought out and contradictory as they obviously are, without taking five seconds to consider whether they match your opponent, in this case me. It's too bad, because it's a spectacularly ineffective debating technique, and it makes it impossible to find any common ground. All you're doing is shouting nonsense.
You really should read some books. You say "embraced all things" but your education is so shallow you don't know what those things are or what they mean.
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First of all, they don't "worship" objects of this type. That's a western concept. You're about as culturally aware as your spiritual forebear, Dana Carvey's Church Lady. Aboriginal culture is about places, not things; that's one of the survival mechanisms they developed that allowed them to survive for 50,000 years on a mostly-barren continent (which no whites could ever do, until modern technology). It is more correct to say that the object is part of a set of sacred ideas and activities, in a sacred place; to take it out of that context is to destroy the Law.
Bear in mind that this stone is not a modern art product, like the acrylic paintings, which are specifically designed to communicate cultural and personal ideas to (predominantly) white people, after a complex process of mediation to determine what's allowed and what's not, and how. (More than a few early acrylics from Pupunya Tula have later been determined to reveal too much, and asked to be recalled; artist colonies have even been physically attacked on occasion).
The objects are cultural and religious teaching tools, by which a portion of the Law (a Dreamtime story or similar) was recorded. That artifact has or had conditions attached to it, and the story was probably "owned" by one person in the tribe, or one moiety, kinship, sex, whose responsibility was two-fold: take care of it, and pass its story on, in the prescribed ways. It's a men's object, so only women can see it, for one thing.
If the article is not "hidden away", it's exposed in ways that are forbidden. You don't know what those ways are; the Australian curator DOES. The experts who repeatedly told the curator at SAM "You really shouldn't be dealing with that in public" KNEW WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT. I know this is a difficult concept for someone who has looked at some unidentified "website" to grasp, that someone might know what's what in the subject that is their life's work, but trust me: they're not stupid. Nor are they cultural imperialists.
Secondly, in the article (you DID read the article, right? Right?), it says "The museum will house the object in a restricted store while they consult with central Australian Elders to determine a culturally appropriate management and return of the object."
How does that not meet your criterion?
What you have done instead is what you usually do, which is release your pre-formulated arguments, as poorly thought out and contradictory as they obviously are, without taking five seconds to consider whether they match your opponent, in this case me. It's too bad, because it's a spectacularly ineffective debating technique, and it makes it impossible to find any common ground. All you're doing is shouting nonsense.
You really should read some books. You say "embraced all things" but your education is so shallow you don't know what those things are or what they mean.
14
Precisely, those objects hold a very sacred meaning to all aboriginal people, regardless of origin. But hey since a western museum "curator" has all the knowledge needed (in western culture) to handle and hide away in some vault those objects, I think that's respectful enough of them for people like you. For the sake of the aboriginal community I hope such artifacts are return promptly to them and that more aborigines become involved in this process instead of relying on outsiders to decide for them.
Keep on reading your books and feeling superior because you have done so, you swine. Like I previously said, I will instead go to the source (Aborigines) when I want to know about their culture and the way they see themselves, not a museum. I'm through with you.
Keep on reading your books and feeling superior because you have done so, you swine. Like I previously said, I will instead go to the source (Aborigines) when I want to know about their culture and the way they see themselves, not a museum. I'm through with you.
16
If you ever meet any Aborigines, Lovey, they'll just be laughing at you. You know NOTHING. and you can't read -- not my comments, not the article, not your precious "Aboriginal sources" -- you're a blockhead. You can't write, either; your sentences make no sense -- "since a western museum "curator" has all the knowledge needed (in western culture) to handle and hide away in some vault those objects, I think that's respectful enough of them for people like you" contains zero meaning.
More specifically, you have no idea what's going on here. They're not being hidden away in a vault; they're being repatriated in as respectful a manner as possible.
Your laughable airy-fairy "spirituality" is pretty sad, too. How can you possibly understand what the object means when you don't know what ANYTHING means?
More specifically, you have no idea what's going on here. They're not being hidden away in a vault; they're being repatriated in as respectful a manner as possible.
Your laughable airy-fairy "spirituality" is pretty sad, too. How can you possibly understand what the object means when you don't know what ANYTHING means?
17
Here's the deal, Loveschild: you find me one website -- ONE -- where an indigenous Australian of any standing says "fuck it, the old museum bastards were right, these secrets are holding us back as a people, let's show 'em everything", and I'll kiss your ass. Just one.
18
Aww you repulsive waste, how many like you have committed genocide and taken away land and children (the lost generation) from Aborigines and now have come out in favor of the good ol' pastime of divide and conquer under the guise of your anthropological preservation fetish?
Yes, scum like you both here and in the land down under know alot of aboriginal culture because it has been people like you (your forefathers) the ones who have killed the men, raped the women and taken away their children to be instructed under your western doctrines so that they would loose all sense of cultural worth and identity. Yes, the way I express myself is totally different from yours (thank God for that) just as I'm sure Aborigines have their own way of expressing themselves differently from that of your counterparts in the land down under, and I'm sure just like you, white Australians love to ridicule them for their speech. Keep pounding yourself on the chest swine. I know my worth, I know my history and I know I have way many things more in common with an Australian Aborigine than I'll ever have with your ilk. Thank goodness for the social awakening, a consciousness, happening within the aboriginal community, regardless of what scum like you try to do to disrupt it. The seed has been planted and aboriginal children will grow up with a sense of worth and pride of their heritage and collective community as ethnic Aborigines. No more will they be dictated what they're by the likes of you or accept that they're inferior to the progeny of those who have wrecked havoc in their lands.
Yes, scum like you both here and in the land down under know alot of aboriginal culture because it has been people like you (your forefathers) the ones who have killed the men, raped the women and taken away their children to be instructed under your western doctrines so that they would loose all sense of cultural worth and identity. Yes, the way I express myself is totally different from yours (thank God for that) just as I'm sure Aborigines have their own way of expressing themselves differently from that of your counterparts in the land down under, and I'm sure just like you, white Australians love to ridicule them for their speech. Keep pounding yourself on the chest swine. I know my worth, I know my history and I know I have way many things more in common with an Australian Aborigine than I'll ever have with your ilk. Thank goodness for the social awakening, a consciousness, happening within the aboriginal community, regardless of what scum like you try to do to disrupt it. The seed has been planted and aboriginal children will grow up with a sense of worth and pride of their heritage and collective community as ethnic Aborigines. No more will they be dictated what they're by the likes of you or accept that they're inferior to the progeny of those who have wrecked havoc in their lands.
19
You're rambling now. You're not talking about me, you're talking about some straw man. Better check under your bed. Ridiculing their speech? Where do you even get this idiotic garbage?
I have more respect for Aborigines than you do, and knowledge also. And I'm still learning; I expect I'll learn more in the next 24 hours than you will in the next 24 years. I'm just starting Fred Myers's "Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art". Read more here: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~frm1/ You don't know who he is, though, do you?
You pitiable wretch.
I have more respect for Aborigines than you do, and knowledge also. And I'm still learning; I expect I'll learn more in the next 24 hours than you will in the next 24 years. I'm just starting Fred Myers's "Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art". Read more here: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~frm1/ You don't know who he is, though, do you?
You pitiable wretch.
20
OK, I'll confess I TL/DR'd most of your fight, so this may be an old point, but I think Loveschild needs to realise that Australian Aboriginies are
1) NOT all of the same ethnicity, there have been many, many migratory waves. Some different aboriginal groups are as ethnically different from each other as they are from white people.
2) Share NO cultural history pre European invasion and even after that, different tribes experienced oppression in vastly differing waves, and many were wiped out entirely. They did not speak the same language, or share the same cultural origin stories, or religions, or social morays and values. What Loveschild is suggesting is like suggesting that Indians and Pakistanis and Africans and Polynesians should unite under one cultural banner because they've all been oppressed by white people and have dark brown skin.
1) NOT all of the same ethnicity, there have been many, many migratory waves. Some different aboriginal groups are as ethnically different from each other as they are from white people.
2) Share NO cultural history pre European invasion and even after that, different tribes experienced oppression in vastly differing waves, and many were wiped out entirely. They did not speak the same language, or share the same cultural origin stories, or religions, or social morays and values. What Loveschild is suggesting is like suggesting that Indians and Pakistanis and Africans and Polynesians should unite under one cultural banner because they've all been oppressed by white people and have dark brown skin.
21
Also, it's not the "lost generation" it's the "stolen generation". Anyone who knows even a little bit about the Aboriginal Rights movement in Australia knows that. And for someone who was yelling at Fnarf about being an imperialist western pig dog, it's pretty telling that you ascribed a very dark period in my country's history such a blame-nuetral name.
22
I'm going to try a different tack here, and lay off the insults, and take you at your word, and talk about what you're really saying.
I do not have an anthropological preservation fetish. The customs and voices I wish to preserve are those of actual Aboriginal people. You have somehow acquired the notion that paying attention to what Aboriginal people want for themselves is "divide and conquer", but nothing could be further than the truth. It is ABORIGINES who are demanding, quite rightfully, that their culture not be destroyed or stolen from them.
YOUR idea, that differences in language groups and tribes should be ignored, and subsumed under a pan-Aboriginal cod-spirituality, modeled no doubt on your own Western weak-tea unfocused spirituality (it sounds positively New Age), is the one that most closely resembles the genocide of those who stole the Stolen Generation; it's right out of their playbook. They believed that Aboriginalism was inevitably due to become extinct, and soon, and the quicker the stupid old customs and traditions could be driven from memory, the better.
That sounds like you, not me.
Ahem. My forefathers never went to Australia to do anything, let alone rape anyone -- although my grandfather did attend a lot of parties in Brisbane during WWII (a bit of a sore subject with his wife back home).
I'm not getting the connection between how rape, murder, and kidnapping leads to "know[ing] a lot of aboriginal culture", as you claim. Your sentence structure is difficult to follow at times. If you're suggesting that I in any way support the old policy of rape etc., you could not possibly be more wrong, and you're not being honest, either, because you and I both know you don't believe I do.
You're just making a point that rape etc. is bad. Bully for you. That's a really brave, controversial position, isn't it?
Every thinking person here and in Australia knows the old policies were bad, and in great detail. In Australia, public discussion of the Stolen Generation has been overwhelmingly extensive, and official government apologies have been made. If you are under the impression that you're taking a bold stand here, you are deluded.
Being horrified by the treatment of Aborigines in that time is of course IRRELEVANT to the question of what to do with stolen artifacts in Western museums. These artifacts should be given back. We agree on that. But when we agree, you can't stanch the flow of filth out of your mouth directed at me; I am "scum" and so forth even when you agree I'm right. Which calls your entire argument into question.
Well, for starters, I can spell, and I know the difference between "loose" and "lose". More to the point, I try to make my words mean something concrete, and don't just parrot high-sounding language out of fifth-hand corrupted versions of old Martin Luther King speeches. You think you're being eloquent, I suppose.
They certainly do, in the traditional areas at least. I've spent a great deal of time and effort trying to understand what they are saying, with some success, I believe; though I can't speak any of the languages I am slowly acculturating myself to their very different ways of seeing the world. Even simple concepts like "mother", "father" and "child" don't always mean what Westerners think they mean; and the concept of "moieties" is much more difficult to grasp. Have you made that effort?
Grammatically this says that you know I love to ridicule their speech, and white Australians probably do too. This is the reverse of what you meant to say, and it's ludicrously false. I revere Aboriginal speech. And while your cartoon Australian still exists, he's not widespread in the circles I travel in.
I'll do my best.
Again, bully for you. It has nothing to do with the repatriation of cultural artifacts in Australia.
This is false. We are both Americans; we speak the same language, we watch the same TV shows, we shop at the same malls, we comment on the same blog. You have nothing in common with traditional Aborigines, and your common ground with urban Aborigines, while there are some parallels, is still pretty tenuous. But urban Aborigines don't have anything to do with the repatriation of traditional artifacts -- and your repeated assertion that urban Aborigines don't WANT the objects to be repatriated to the traditional people who are the descendents of those who made them, but instead should be put out for everyone to have a look, IS COMPLETELY NOT TRUE.
Here comes the poetry, and the pulpit! Here's a shocker -- I am fully in favor of social awakening, and the struggle for rights by Aboriginals. Unlike you, I actually know what's going on in Aboriginal communities, both in country (which you appear to be vigorously opposed to) and in town.
Once again you have pulled out a few packets of pre-prepared rhetoric which has nothing to do with either the subject at hand or with me. WHO ARE YOU ARGUING WITH?
Who do you think is against this? I'm certainly not, and you can't point to anything that suggests otherwise. I WANT Aboriginal children to understand their heritage -- but in a REAL way, not your canned language but the language of their ancestors, taught to them by their elders in the traditional ways, but also in a context that gives them possibilities in the future in the wider Australian society. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. That's what repatriating the object DOES.
Please point to any place where I have "dictated" anything at all to anyone, besides yourself. The longer you go on, the further your case is separated from reality. You're not arguing with me, you're arguing with an imaginary bogeyman.
To repeat: displaying the object for all to see is culturally imperialistic and destroys Aboriginal communities. That's what YOU want, not me. Giving it back to the appropriate tribal elders so that THEY can decide what to do with it is what I want. How is that "dictating"?
Wreak. You wreak havoc, you don't wreck it. I agree: not inferior. The fact that you have me confused with some bastard colonial administrator out of "Rabbit-Proof Fence" (Kenneth Branagh, perhaps?), when NOTHING could be further from the truth speaks volumes about your comprehension and your fixed agenda.
You're going to blast anyone who comes along and talks about your pet Aborigines, whether they hold the values you hate or not. That's not helping. It suggests that you are either not willing or not capable of understanding what you profess to admire. Many of the problems of urban Aborigines, whom you seem to know and care about, stem precisely from the loss of culture -- rootlessness, poverty, unemployment, segregation, alcoholism. Yet you want to sever those cultural bonds further?
Let me suggest some books. Try Wally Caruana's brief art survey, and then Tim Flannery's "The Future Eaters" to see where the people came from and why.
"Bad Aboriginal Art" by Eric Michaels has some great stuff on exactly what I'm talking about -- how white destruction of and appropriation of Aboriginal culture damages lives, and was a deliberate part of the "Stolen Generation" program. He also is penetrating on how aboriginal media must be made and controlled by Aborigines (he helped them start a pirate TV station at Yuendemu).
"Australian Dreaming" by Jennifer Isaacs and Wandjuk Marika (so much for white male anthropologists) is an excellent history.
There are many other great books on the modern art, which both is and isn't traditional (it's complicated); best is "One Sun, One Moon". Geoffrey Bardon's big book on Papunya is incredible -- he describes the government authorities, good Christian men all (like you), who deliberately painted over the mural on the schoolhouse that was the first flower of modern Aboriginal art there -- one of the greatest acts of cultural terrorism ever perpetrated.
If you don't know about any of these things, how can you possibly have opinions on pan-Aboriginalism, or advocate the destruction of the Law? And you claim to be these people's friend? Again, I'll ask you to point me to any website anywhere wherein an Aboriginal Australian of any standing states that traditional culture should not be preserved, that it's holding his or her people back. I'll wait.
More...
Aww you repulsive waste, how many like you have committed genocide and taken away land and children (the lost generation) from Aborigines and now have come out in favor of the good ol' pastime of divide and conquer under the guise of your anthropological preservation fetish?
I do not have an anthropological preservation fetish. The customs and voices I wish to preserve are those of actual Aboriginal people. You have somehow acquired the notion that paying attention to what Aboriginal people want for themselves is "divide and conquer", but nothing could be further than the truth. It is ABORIGINES who are demanding, quite rightfully, that their culture not be destroyed or stolen from them.
YOUR idea, that differences in language groups and tribes should be ignored, and subsumed under a pan-Aboriginal cod-spirituality, modeled no doubt on your own Western weak-tea unfocused spirituality (it sounds positively New Age), is the one that most closely resembles the genocide of those who stole the Stolen Generation; it's right out of their playbook. They believed that Aboriginalism was inevitably due to become extinct, and soon, and the quicker the stupid old customs and traditions could be driven from memory, the better.
That sounds like you, not me.
Yes, scum like you both here and in the land down under know alot of aboriginal culture because it has been people like you (your forefathers) the ones who have killed the men, raped the women and taken away their children to be instructed under your western doctrines so that they would loose all sense of cultural worth and identity.
Ahem. My forefathers never went to Australia to do anything, let alone rape anyone -- although my grandfather did attend a lot of parties in Brisbane during WWII (a bit of a sore subject with his wife back home).
I'm not getting the connection between how rape, murder, and kidnapping leads to "know[ing] a lot of aboriginal culture", as you claim. Your sentence structure is difficult to follow at times. If you're suggesting that I in any way support the old policy of rape etc., you could not possibly be more wrong, and you're not being honest, either, because you and I both know you don't believe I do.
You're just making a point that rape etc. is bad. Bully for you. That's a really brave, controversial position, isn't it?
Every thinking person here and in Australia knows the old policies were bad, and in great detail. In Australia, public discussion of the Stolen Generation has been overwhelmingly extensive, and official government apologies have been made. If you are under the impression that you're taking a bold stand here, you are deluded.
Being horrified by the treatment of Aborigines in that time is of course IRRELEVANT to the question of what to do with stolen artifacts in Western museums. These artifacts should be given back. We agree on that. But when we agree, you can't stanch the flow of filth out of your mouth directed at me; I am "scum" and so forth even when you agree I'm right. Which calls your entire argument into question.
Yes, the way I express myself is totally different from yours (thank God for that)
Well, for starters, I can spell, and I know the difference between "loose" and "lose". More to the point, I try to make my words mean something concrete, and don't just parrot high-sounding language out of fifth-hand corrupted versions of old Martin Luther King speeches. You think you're being eloquent, I suppose.
just as I'm sure Aborigines have their own way of expressing themselves differently from that of your counterparts in the land down under
They certainly do, in the traditional areas at least. I've spent a great deal of time and effort trying to understand what they are saying, with some success, I believe; though I can't speak any of the languages I am slowly acculturating myself to their very different ways of seeing the world. Even simple concepts like "mother", "father" and "child" don't always mean what Westerners think they mean; and the concept of "moieties" is much more difficult to grasp. Have you made that effort?
and I'm sure just like you, white Australians love to ridicule them for their speech.
Grammatically this says that you know I love to ridicule their speech, and white Australians probably do too. This is the reverse of what you meant to say, and it's ludicrously false. I revere Aboriginal speech. And while your cartoon Australian still exists, he's not widespread in the circles I travel in.
Keep pounding yourself on the chest swine.
I'll do my best.
I know my worth, I know my history
Again, bully for you. It has nothing to do with the repatriation of cultural artifacts in Australia.
and I know I have way many things more in common with an Australian Aborigine than I'll ever have with your ilk.
This is false. We are both Americans; we speak the same language, we watch the same TV shows, we shop at the same malls, we comment on the same blog. You have nothing in common with traditional Aborigines, and your common ground with urban Aborigines, while there are some parallels, is still pretty tenuous. But urban Aborigines don't have anything to do with the repatriation of traditional artifacts -- and your repeated assertion that urban Aborigines don't WANT the objects to be repatriated to the traditional people who are the descendents of those who made them, but instead should be put out for everyone to have a look, IS COMPLETELY NOT TRUE.
Thank goodness for the social awakening, a consciousness, happening within the aboriginal community, regardless of what scum like you try to do to disrupt it.
Here comes the poetry, and the pulpit! Here's a shocker -- I am fully in favor of social awakening, and the struggle for rights by Aboriginals. Unlike you, I actually know what's going on in Aboriginal communities, both in country (which you appear to be vigorously opposed to) and in town.
Once again you have pulled out a few packets of pre-prepared rhetoric which has nothing to do with either the subject at hand or with me. WHO ARE YOU ARGUING WITH?
The seed has been planted and aboriginal children will grow up with a sense of worth and pride of their heritage and collective community as ethnic Aborigines.
Who do you think is against this? I'm certainly not, and you can't point to anything that suggests otherwise. I WANT Aboriginal children to understand their heritage -- but in a REAL way, not your canned language but the language of their ancestors, taught to them by their elders in the traditional ways, but also in a context that gives them possibilities in the future in the wider Australian society. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. That's what repatriating the object DOES.
No more will they be dictated what they're by the likes of you
Please point to any place where I have "dictated" anything at all to anyone, besides yourself. The longer you go on, the further your case is separated from reality. You're not arguing with me, you're arguing with an imaginary bogeyman.
To repeat: displaying the object for all to see is culturally imperialistic and destroys Aboriginal communities. That's what YOU want, not me. Giving it back to the appropriate tribal elders so that THEY can decide what to do with it is what I want. How is that "dictating"?
or accept that they're inferior to the progeny of those who have wrecked havoc in their lands.
Wreak. You wreak havoc, you don't wreck it. I agree: not inferior. The fact that you have me confused with some bastard colonial administrator out of "Rabbit-Proof Fence" (Kenneth Branagh, perhaps?), when NOTHING could be further from the truth speaks volumes about your comprehension and your fixed agenda.
You're going to blast anyone who comes along and talks about your pet Aborigines, whether they hold the values you hate or not. That's not helping. It suggests that you are either not willing or not capable of understanding what you profess to admire. Many of the problems of urban Aborigines, whom you seem to know and care about, stem precisely from the loss of culture -- rootlessness, poverty, unemployment, segregation, alcoholism. Yet you want to sever those cultural bonds further?
Let me suggest some books. Try Wally Caruana's brief art survey, and then Tim Flannery's "The Future Eaters" to see where the people came from and why.
"Bad Aboriginal Art" by Eric Michaels has some great stuff on exactly what I'm talking about -- how white destruction of and appropriation of Aboriginal culture damages lives, and was a deliberate part of the "Stolen Generation" program. He also is penetrating on how aboriginal media must be made and controlled by Aborigines (he helped them start a pirate TV station at Yuendemu).
"Australian Dreaming" by Jennifer Isaacs and Wandjuk Marika (so much for white male anthropologists) is an excellent history.
There are many other great books on the modern art, which both is and isn't traditional (it's complicated); best is "One Sun, One Moon". Geoffrey Bardon's big book on Papunya is incredible -- he describes the government authorities, good Christian men all (like you), who deliberately painted over the mural on the schoolhouse that was the first flower of modern Aboriginal art there -- one of the greatest acts of cultural terrorism ever perpetrated.
If you don't know about any of these things, how can you possibly have opinions on pan-Aboriginalism, or advocate the destruction of the Law? And you claim to be these people's friend? Again, I'll ask you to point me to any website anywhere wherein an Aboriginal Australian of any standing states that traditional culture should not be preserved, that it's holding his or her people back. I'll wait.
24
Thanks for posting, Jen.
Thank you for the tutorial and suggested reading, Fnarf.
Like an Umbrella, thank you for your contributions, too.
25
Yes, Umbrella, Fnarf, and last but not least Kim all non-aborigines most likely all of european decent not only talking about but dictating what aboriginal culture is and even questioning the ethnicity of Indegeneo Australians and reality. Classic divide and conquer. Sorta reminds me of the same being done with the whole bering strait over here when it comes to Native Americans, you see that's how the invaders solidify their claim on the land they have stolen, by stating that everyone is like them. Why am I not surprised.
20 "Aboriginal Rights movement in Australia", I think that pretty much undid everything else you and Fnarf wrote. Also as I stated previously Australian Aboriginal PEOPLE DO SHARE a common ethnicity:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/1286/…
That's not to say that or deny the existence of different families with their own languages and customs under the Australian Aboriginal family as a whole.
But do try and keep on wrecking havoc and division amongst them like your fellow white ozzys and fetishs afficionados like Fnarf are trying to do, hopefully you will fail in your attempts as indications are that young Aborigines are awakening and are starting to create their own indigenous and transnationalist movement.
If any of them happen to be reading this (I doubt it, but..) I just want to encourage you my brothers and sisters, do not succumb to those who want to divide you because that's the only way (and they know it) that they can keep you impoverish and discriminated in your own land. Unite my fellow brother and sisters Indigenous Australians you are a family of people with a shared history and with a common oppressor and as such only as the family that you are, you will be able to confront and rise above from the obstacles your oppressor has been throwing at you. Learn from your family's (tribe) history take from it what has worked and aided you but also work with all your families (tribes) to acknowledge what hasn't and built from there, take charge of your own destiny as UNITED Indigenous AustralianS and do not let any western professor and the books that they have written dictate your past, your culture and your future. As an African American myself, who has been involved in my own fights here against similar bs tactics thrown at me, I know with what you're dealing over there, it wont be easy, because the enemy is determined to keep you divided and in the status that's benefecial for him/her. But I humbly advice and encourage you to keep informing yourselves and gaining insight from other's struggles for racial and cultural, not only equality (that's great but beyond that) also the restoration to your Creator given status as a special people, hold your heads up high cause you as Indigenous Australians are a rich exalted people, you're no less that the european invaders who have taken your land children and who currently discriminate against you, and trying to assimilate you with them in their own image. You are a beautiful people. Never forget it.
PS. I meant that sincerely my fellow brothers, as a woman I must admit, I have been an admirer of the handsome features of Australian Aboriginal men for quite some time know, I know I'm not the only one, but alas I'm taken but I can still look, lol.
More...
20 "Aboriginal Rights movement in Australia", I think that pretty much undid everything else you and Fnarf wrote. Also as I stated previously Australian Aboriginal PEOPLE DO SHARE a common ethnicity:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/1286/…
That's not to say that or deny the existence of different families with their own languages and customs under the Australian Aboriginal family as a whole.
But do try and keep on wrecking havoc and division amongst them like your fellow white ozzys and fetishs afficionados like Fnarf are trying to do, hopefully you will fail in your attempts as indications are that young Aborigines are awakening and are starting to create their own indigenous and transnationalist movement.
If any of them happen to be reading this (I doubt it, but..) I just want to encourage you my brothers and sisters, do not succumb to those who want to divide you because that's the only way (and they know it) that they can keep you impoverish and discriminated in your own land. Unite my fellow brother and sisters Indigenous Australians you are a family of people with a shared history and with a common oppressor and as such only as the family that you are, you will be able to confront and rise above from the obstacles your oppressor has been throwing at you. Learn from your family's (tribe) history take from it what has worked and aided you but also work with all your families (tribes) to acknowledge what hasn't and built from there, take charge of your own destiny as UNITED Indigenous AustralianS and do not let any western professor and the books that they have written dictate your past, your culture and your future. As an African American myself, who has been involved in my own fights here against similar bs tactics thrown at me, I know with what you're dealing over there, it wont be easy, because the enemy is determined to keep you divided and in the status that's benefecial for him/her. But I humbly advice and encourage you to keep informing yourselves and gaining insight from other's struggles for racial and cultural, not only equality (that's great but beyond that) also the restoration to your Creator given status as a special people, hold your heads up high cause you as Indigenous Australians are a rich exalted people, you're no less that the european invaders who have taken your land children and who currently discriminate against you, and trying to assimilate you with them in their own image. You are a beautiful people. Never forget it.
PS. I meant that sincerely my fellow brothers, as a woman I must admit, I have been an admirer of the handsome features of Australian Aboriginal men for quite some time know, I know I'm not the only one, but alas I'm taken but I can still look, lol.
26
This one didn't come up in the above, I hope it does here:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/article…
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/article…
27
Jesus Christ, woman, you are insane. "I'm taken but I can still look, lol." -- you're off your nut.
"Divide and conquer"?. I SUPPORT ABORIGINAL RIGHTS, you fucking moron. You are profoundly illiterate. You haven't addressed a single thing I've said. You keep blasting away with your pig-ignorance; NOTHING IN YOUR @25 IS AGAINST WHAT I'M SAYING.
The common ethnic origin of Aborigines, who came to that continent 50,000 years ago, is not in doubt. I NEVER SAID IT WAS. In fact, if you read Flannery's book mentioned above he'll tell you all about it.
You keep driveling on about us bad old white guys; but who is Hamish Clarke, who wrote that Cosmos article? I'll bet you a hundred dollars that Clarke supports the repatriation of the object in question, as do virtually all Aboriginal Australians.
A common origin 50,000 years ago -- earth's oldest continually maintained civilization -- doesn't require the destruction of cultural traditions any more than American Indians are required to throw out their tribal awareness in order to secure THEIR rights. Quite the opposite; celebrating the separate traditions of their own people, as the Duwamish are doing down at their new longhouse, just a few miles from here.
If you ever visit Australia, you'd better be careful. With your hyperdramatic and wildly off-target misunderstandings, you're quite capable of finding yourself in a situation where Aboriginals will want to harm you. They're not stupid, and I'm sure they've run into weepy Western boobs like you before.
To me, it's tragic that someone who claims to love the Aborigines as much as you has made so little effort to know anything about them. This, not my writing above, is in the long tradition of exploitation and harm. You, Loveschild, are everything evil that you claim I am. That's sad.
More...
"Divide and conquer"?. I SUPPORT ABORIGINAL RIGHTS, you fucking moron. You are profoundly illiterate. You haven't addressed a single thing I've said. You keep blasting away with your pig-ignorance; NOTHING IN YOUR @25 IS AGAINST WHAT I'M SAYING.
The common ethnic origin of Aborigines, who came to that continent 50,000 years ago, is not in doubt. I NEVER SAID IT WAS. In fact, if you read Flannery's book mentioned above he'll tell you all about it.
You keep driveling on about us bad old white guys; but who is Hamish Clarke, who wrote that Cosmos article? I'll bet you a hundred dollars that Clarke supports the repatriation of the object in question, as do virtually all Aboriginal Australians.
A common origin 50,000 years ago -- earth's oldest continually maintained civilization -- doesn't require the destruction of cultural traditions any more than American Indians are required to throw out their tribal awareness in order to secure THEIR rights. Quite the opposite; celebrating the separate traditions of their own people, as the Duwamish are doing down at their new longhouse, just a few miles from here.
If you ever visit Australia, you'd better be careful. With your hyperdramatic and wildly off-target misunderstandings, you're quite capable of finding yourself in a situation where Aboriginals will want to harm you. They're not stupid, and I'm sure they've run into weepy Western boobs like you before.
To me, it's tragic that someone who claims to love the Aborigines as much as you has made so little effort to know anything about them. This, not my writing above, is in the long tradition of exploitation and harm. You, Loveschild, are everything evil that you claim I am. That's sad.
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