The struggle against racism in Australia
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
By Emma Murphy
一月二十六日はオーストラリアの日なんだそうだが、
Protest in Hobart on January 26.
As often happens at this time of year, in the lead-up to January 26, commentators and activists raised the suggestion that Australia’s national day be moved to a different date.
Writing in the January 21 Sydney Morning Herald, Aboriginal MLA in the ACT legislative assembly Chris Bourke said: “
Which nation celebrates its national day on the date it was invaded by a foreign power? … The answer, of course, is Australia.”
January 26 marks the day that Europeans arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788.
Aboriginal people around the continent ― especially in the north ― had been receiving visitors from abroad and engaging in trade long before then. But there was something different about Captain Cook and his mob. They weren’t here to trade, they were here to stay, to build a colony on behalf of the British Empire. Aboriginal people were in the way.
Each year on January 26, there is an outpouring of national pride and nationalism. Mainstream politicians spruik everything that is “great” about Australia.
But, while some may ignore or downplay the ugly side of Australia’s history, there is no escaping the facts:
January 26 is the day Aboriginal dispossession began. It marks the beginning of a process of genocide, of land-grabbing, unpaid wages, and the smashing of traditional cultures to replace them with what we now know as Australia.
Is that worth celebrating? If so, it reveals something of the racism deeply embedded in Australia’s history
But whether survival or invasion is the theme, if January 26 is to remain a significant date,
it should be the day we formally acknowledge that this country was ― and is ― built on racism.
Australia is a wealthy country because resource-rich Aboriginal land was stolen; Aboriginal people were forced to work for little or no wages to establish a booming pastoral industry; rent was never paid and the Stolen Generations never compensated. No wonder the federal government can afford the hundreds of millions of dollars the racist Northern Territory intervention (now insultingly called “Stronger Futures”) is costing.
Aboriginal people are imprisoned at some of the highest rates in the world. This is rising as a result of federal and territory government policies in the NT.
The health burden carried by Aboriginal Australians is shameful: in some communities, Aboriginal people are dying from diseases otherwise eradicated in this First World nation.
Aboriginal men and women die, respectively, 11.5 or 9.7 years younger than their non-Aboriginal counterparts.
These appalling statistics, and many more like them, are deeply entwined with white Australia’s history: they are the result of what started in 1788 and continues today.
この日を建国の日とすることに原住民から異論がでている。この日は侵略の日であって、ジェノサイド、土地収奪、賃金搾取、文化破壊が始まった日であり、現在も続く原住民に対する差別が始まった日として、記憶されるべき日の筈である、と。
この日を祝うことは、ドイツ人政治家たちがホロコーストを祝っているのと似たようものか?
NYTはなぜ問題にしないのだろうかーーー白人男性読者には痛い話なのだろうか?