Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about the possums that kept me awake on a bushwalk recently.
Now you would think that after a week holiday in spectacular Tasmanian mountain wilderness and among beautiful gardens, I would have little to grumble about. But every bushwalker has experience or has heard the stories of possums that get into huts, rip through tents or backpacks (or even learn how to use the zippers) and eat into the walkers’ food supplies.
The first night on a high Tasmanian plateau it was paddy melons sidling up to the tent in search of food, and on the second night possums made regular attempts to get into the historic but crude hut.
The third night we were camped in a spectacular spot by a mountain lake, but as the sun set another possum poked its head out of the dead tree next to our campsite.
It did not take long for it to be on, and this was no timid wild creature. Unable to shoo it away by shouting and banging on the tent, and with throwing things at it providing only very temporary relief, at 1am we tried hanging the food bag on a stretch rope from the limb of a tree.
There was some rest, but after a few hours the possum was on the bag noisily nosing through the rubbish at the top. I got up, grabbed my walking stick and poked the possum away – but only as far as the ground where it circled around to have another go at the food. I swung the stick to frighten it, but to no avail.
In hindsight, with a torchlight in its eyes the poor nocturnal creature was probably blinded, and it was only when the stick hit him that he took flight (NB. Curiously, I have now gendered the possum, when really I have no idea).
I was horrified. How did a vegetarian respecter of animal rights so quickly move to violence against a native animal in its own habitat?
I was tired, I had a right to a night’s sleep and I had worked hard to carry the food there – although in reality there was plenty of food.
And though we were on his patch, I was also steeped in the folklore demonising the other and angry that he had refused to leave us alone or to be dissuaded by warnings and gentler methods of persuasion. Force was necessary.
Hmmm. Sound familiar?
Yet again, I find myself talking about the processes of colonialism.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 21 April 2015
Greg's Grumbles can be heard on Radio Adelaide during SACOSS' Small Change program - 6pm every Tuesday night. 101.5FM or online.
Showing posts with label colonialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colonialism. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 April 2015
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
56. Remote Aborigines
I am Greg and following last week’s grumble about our limited understanding of Aboriginal history, I want to reflect more on issues of colonialism and welfare.
My last grumble criticised the racist idea that the Australian population had been growing since 1788 as it was clear that in the aftermath of the arrival of Europeans the Aboriginal population – and therefore the Australian population – plummeted in the early years of the nineteenth century.
But it is important not to see colonisation as just an event in 1788 or the nineteenth century. While colonial diseases may have had a devastating immediate impact, colonisation generally refers to a process of the imposition of an imperial state on a subject population.
In 1788 there were hundreds of Aboriginal nations and the arrival of a British military garrison in Sydney was, in the short term at least, an invasion of only one country. Each Aboriginal nation was colonised at a different subsequent point, but it was not a one-off process.
Yes, land was taken and colonial law enforced, but Aboriginal people remained on much of their land and continued to live under Aboriginal law as well – that was what the Mabo judgment recognised when it found the existence of continuing native title.
For some groups a more absolute dispossession happened through the nineteenth century as towns and cities were built on their land, although even then it was rarely complete. For other nations, dispossession happened in the 1950s with their removal for a bombing range in the north of South Australia, or in the 1960s and 1970s for new mines, or the 1980s and 1990s for new resorts, roads and even bridges, or in the 2000s with the army invading the Northern Territory.
For Aboriginal groups with continuing connection to country, colonialism was not about a historic event in 1788, it is a micro process which happens every time a new land use or policy means that Aboriginal law and land is displaced by a colonial land use backed by the force of the state.
That is why the PM’s comments about a lifestyle choice to live in remote areas and the policy agenda which underpins it were so offensive. Shifting Aboriginal people off their country is another act of colonial dispossession.
That said, providing services to those in remote communities with few resources is a genuinely difficult issue. But the history matters.
Viewed from a prism of a colonisation that happened in the distant past, payments and services to these communities are seen as welfare – a drain on the public purse with an ongoing assimilationist assumption that the people there really should be more productively employed (elsewhere).
But if we see colonisation as ongoing, and we want to think instead about rights to self-determination, then perhaps we could talk about supporting Aboriginal people to stay on country – not in poverty or on welfare, but by right.
And then it is a question not of a decision in Canberra, Perth, or Adelaide, but of negotiation between equals about economic arrangements and what we might be prepared to pay not for welfare but for heritage protection, or perhaps even simply for “rent”.
It is not a panacea, but it is not colonialism either.
I am Greg and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 24 March 2015
My last grumble criticised the racist idea that the Australian population had been growing since 1788 as it was clear that in the aftermath of the arrival of Europeans the Aboriginal population – and therefore the Australian population – plummeted in the early years of the nineteenth century.
But it is important not to see colonisation as just an event in 1788 or the nineteenth century. While colonial diseases may have had a devastating immediate impact, colonisation generally refers to a process of the imposition of an imperial state on a subject population.
In 1788 there were hundreds of Aboriginal nations and the arrival of a British military garrison in Sydney was, in the short term at least, an invasion of only one country. Each Aboriginal nation was colonised at a different subsequent point, but it was not a one-off process.
Yes, land was taken and colonial law enforced, but Aboriginal people remained on much of their land and continued to live under Aboriginal law as well – that was what the Mabo judgment recognised when it found the existence of continuing native title.
For some groups a more absolute dispossession happened through the nineteenth century as towns and cities were built on their land, although even then it was rarely complete. For other nations, dispossession happened in the 1950s with their removal for a bombing range in the north of South Australia, or in the 1960s and 1970s for new mines, or the 1980s and 1990s for new resorts, roads and even bridges, or in the 2000s with the army invading the Northern Territory.
For Aboriginal groups with continuing connection to country, colonialism was not about a historic event in 1788, it is a micro process which happens every time a new land use or policy means that Aboriginal law and land is displaced by a colonial land use backed by the force of the state.
That is why the PM’s comments about a lifestyle choice to live in remote areas and the policy agenda which underpins it were so offensive. Shifting Aboriginal people off their country is another act of colonial dispossession.
That said, providing services to those in remote communities with few resources is a genuinely difficult issue. But the history matters.
Viewed from a prism of a colonisation that happened in the distant past, payments and services to these communities are seen as welfare – a drain on the public purse with an ongoing assimilationist assumption that the people there really should be more productively employed (elsewhere).
But if we see colonisation as ongoing, and we want to think instead about rights to self-determination, then perhaps we could talk about supporting Aboriginal people to stay on country – not in poverty or on welfare, but by right.
And then it is a question not of a decision in Canberra, Perth, or Adelaide, but of negotiation between equals about economic arrangements and what we might be prepared to pay not for welfare but for heritage protection, or perhaps even simply for “rent”.
It is not a panacea, but it is not colonialism either.
I am Greg and I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 24 March 2015
Tuesday, 17 March 2015
55. Aboriginal History
Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about the government’s lack of understanding of Aboriginal history. In the last week the PM has been rightly lambasted for his comment that living in remote communities was a “lifestyle choice”.
And of course before that there was his infamous comment about Sydney that it was “hard to think that back in 1788 it was nothing but bush”. Indeed, it is hard to think that!
But what caught my attention was a comment from Joe Hockey in launching the government’s Intergenerational Report that Australia’s population had been growing since 1788. Well, actually, no.
When the British Navy set up camp with their conscripted colonisers in 1788, the population of what is now Australia was probably about 750,000. Estimates are difficult because obviously there was no census of the several hundred Aboriginal nations across the continent.
Early European estimates of an Aboriginal population of around 300,000 were based on observations of communities which had already been devastated by deadly diseases which travelled faster than the colonial push into country. More recent estimates go as high as over 1m Aboriginal people at the time of initial colonisation.
Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, as a result of disease, dispossession, and the other intentional and unintentional colonisation processes, there were only about 100-150,000 Aboriginal people.
Again, estimates are difficult, but this massive depopulation is extraordinary. If we took the mid-point estimate of an original 750,000, then the equivalent of about 6 in 7 Aboriginal people disappeared over the course of the century. [See note below]
In relation to Joe Hockey’s comment, if we assume that much of that population loss was in the first half of that period, then it was probably not until the gold rushes of the 1850s that Australia’s population reached the heights of the pre-colonial period. So, no Mr Hockey, the population has not been growing since 1788.
And it is not good enough to ignore the Aboriginal population simply because they weren’t counted in the original statistics – to do so simply imports nineteenth century racism into the present.
To be fair to the Treasurer though, numbers have never been the strong point of Intergenerational Reports and it was only a throw-away line. But as with the PM’s mis-statements, such one-liners are important because they reveal underlying assumptions and arguably a more real version of government thinking than heavily manicured policy statements.
But what is more interesting was that Joe Hockey’s population comments did not cause an outcry – hardly even a stir.
It is perhaps a marker of the distance we still need to travel before we fully appreciate and come to terms with our colonial history.
And about that, moreso than the silly statements of our alleged leaders, I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 17 March 2015
Endnote: To put the figures of Aboriginal population loss in perspective, the catastrophic global influenza epidemic of 1918-20 killed more people than World War 1. It was probably the biggest single demographic event of the last century and in Australia cost the lives of over 2% of the population – yet the Australian population continued to grow in those years – in marked contrast to the massive loss of Aboriginal population after 1788 which has only relatively recently recovered to pre-colonial levels.
And of course before that there was his infamous comment about Sydney that it was “hard to think that back in 1788 it was nothing but bush”. Indeed, it is hard to think that!
But what caught my attention was a comment from Joe Hockey in launching the government’s Intergenerational Report that Australia’s population had been growing since 1788. Well, actually, no.
When the British Navy set up camp with their conscripted colonisers in 1788, the population of what is now Australia was probably about 750,000. Estimates are difficult because obviously there was no census of the several hundred Aboriginal nations across the continent.
Early European estimates of an Aboriginal population of around 300,000 were based on observations of communities which had already been devastated by deadly diseases which travelled faster than the colonial push into country. More recent estimates go as high as over 1m Aboriginal people at the time of initial colonisation.
Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, as a result of disease, dispossession, and the other intentional and unintentional colonisation processes, there were only about 100-150,000 Aboriginal people.
Again, estimates are difficult, but this massive depopulation is extraordinary. If we took the mid-point estimate of an original 750,000, then the equivalent of about 6 in 7 Aboriginal people disappeared over the course of the century. [See note below]
In relation to Joe Hockey’s comment, if we assume that much of that population loss was in the first half of that period, then it was probably not until the gold rushes of the 1850s that Australia’s population reached the heights of the pre-colonial period. So, no Mr Hockey, the population has not been growing since 1788.
And it is not good enough to ignore the Aboriginal population simply because they weren’t counted in the original statistics – to do so simply imports nineteenth century racism into the present.
To be fair to the Treasurer though, numbers have never been the strong point of Intergenerational Reports and it was only a throw-away line. But as with the PM’s mis-statements, such one-liners are important because they reveal underlying assumptions and arguably a more real version of government thinking than heavily manicured policy statements.
But what is more interesting was that Joe Hockey’s population comments did not cause an outcry – hardly even a stir.
It is perhaps a marker of the distance we still need to travel before we fully appreciate and come to terms with our colonial history.
And about that, moreso than the silly statements of our alleged leaders, I am grumbling.
This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 17 March 2015
Endnote: To put the figures of Aboriginal population loss in perspective, the catastrophic global influenza epidemic of 1918-20 killed more people than World War 1. It was probably the biggest single demographic event of the last century and in Australia cost the lives of over 2% of the population – yet the Australian population continued to grow in those years – in marked contrast to the massive loss of Aboriginal population after 1788 which has only relatively recently recovered to pre-colonial levels.
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