3rd January 2008, 09:08 AM
Course I'm a digger too, only I chose the status.
Not suggesting that all white Australians are racist any more than anywhere else.
In the UK I spent all my life in the Anti-Nazis league and know that racism exists everywhere. But you fight where you are, 'the enemy begins at home'.
White Australia policy, Native title amendment, Tampa, Nauru, Refugees, Howards drink policy, deaths in custody, beach riots etc, etc,
Now I bet you Aussies wouldn't defend any of these measures its just that you can't stand a pom criticising. Well I've got a passport eat vegimate and have been here years, regarded as an Aussie until joining in a conversation at a BBQ I say I think the Government should apologise...
Then I'm a pom and don't understand the situation. Of course, the people telling me this have never met an Aboriginal person and have never been outside Subiaco but they are 'real Aussies' and the fact that I have spent my whole time in Oz working with and having friends who are Aboriginal doesn't mean a thing.
This country is structurally a very racist place (Its like UK in the 1970s and the TV reflects this, try the Footy show, ie all polls found that the majority of Australians aggreed with Howard that there was nothing wrong in locking up unaccompanied refugee kids as young as five in desert concentration camps.
There is a 20 year difference between indigenous mortality and white mortality.
I'm very surprised that its found surprising that archaeologists might be racist. Have you ever been to WA?
But of course all the soft racists in Perth don't think they are racist.
Then of course noone in Perth thinks its strange to have a holiday resort built on the site of a concentration camp (Rottnest Island)for Aboriginal people (Expensive hotel has guests in the condemned cells near where the prisioners were executed).
A student from WA got a job straight from uni on $90000 a year with BHP.
No experience at all.
The money is huge here.
I know the student who I studied with who now works for the DIA and I remember when she asked my Aboriginal archaeoloist friend "Why his community couldn't sort things out" (perhaps she changed).
People spend their entire degree doing historical archaeology with no anthropological input and no indigenous experience and can get a job anywhere in WA or Queensland.
Before working as an archaeologist I have spent many years working as a community psychiatric nurse and a nurse in LongBay gaol.
And during that time I have met many proffessional people who are racist.
Don't you think its strange that out of 60 students in my undergad year at UWA only a handful of students were interested in Aboriginal archaeology?
WA with Devils Lair, Riwi with 30000 year old beads and even older clearly dated art from carpenters gap at 40000 years and they are not interested.
And all the white students just love the Romans and Egypt and digging up some crappy colonial farm from the 1930s (colonial bit designed to enrage the easily enraged).
Its possible to live in Sydney and think that Australia is an anti-racist place but if you know Aboriginal people in the bush you can think again.
Working in the 'justice' [sic] system one knows that shoot to kill still operates in the bush.
So if you are Australian and you don't attack the racism of your own governments then you are as bad as a UK subject who thinks Blaire was right on Iraq
Arthus
Not suggesting that all white Australians are racist any more than anywhere else.
In the UK I spent all my life in the Anti-Nazis league and know that racism exists everywhere. But you fight where you are, 'the enemy begins at home'.
White Australia policy, Native title amendment, Tampa, Nauru, Refugees, Howards drink policy, deaths in custody, beach riots etc, etc,
Now I bet you Aussies wouldn't defend any of these measures its just that you can't stand a pom criticising. Well I've got a passport eat vegimate and have been here years, regarded as an Aussie until joining in a conversation at a BBQ I say I think the Government should apologise...
Then I'm a pom and don't understand the situation. Of course, the people telling me this have never met an Aboriginal person and have never been outside Subiaco but they are 'real Aussies' and the fact that I have spent my whole time in Oz working with and having friends who are Aboriginal doesn't mean a thing.
This country is structurally a very racist place (Its like UK in the 1970s and the TV reflects this, try the Footy show, ie all polls found that the majority of Australians aggreed with Howard that there was nothing wrong in locking up unaccompanied refugee kids as young as five in desert concentration camps.
There is a 20 year difference between indigenous mortality and white mortality.
I'm very surprised that its found surprising that archaeologists might be racist. Have you ever been to WA?
But of course all the soft racists in Perth don't think they are racist.
Then of course noone in Perth thinks its strange to have a holiday resort built on the site of a concentration camp (Rottnest Island)for Aboriginal people (Expensive hotel has guests in the condemned cells near where the prisioners were executed).
A student from WA got a job straight from uni on $90000 a year with BHP.
No experience at all.
The money is huge here.
I know the student who I studied with who now works for the DIA and I remember when she asked my Aboriginal archaeoloist friend "Why his community couldn't sort things out" (perhaps she changed).
People spend their entire degree doing historical archaeology with no anthropological input and no indigenous experience and can get a job anywhere in WA or Queensland.
Before working as an archaeologist I have spent many years working as a community psychiatric nurse and a nurse in LongBay gaol.
And during that time I have met many proffessional people who are racist.
Don't you think its strange that out of 60 students in my undergad year at UWA only a handful of students were interested in Aboriginal archaeology?
WA with Devils Lair, Riwi with 30000 year old beads and even older clearly dated art from carpenters gap at 40000 years and they are not interested.
And all the white students just love the Romans and Egypt and digging up some crappy colonial farm from the 1930s (colonial bit designed to enrage the easily enraged).
Its possible to live in Sydney and think that Australia is an anti-racist place but if you know Aboriginal people in the bush you can think again.
Working in the 'justice' [sic] system one knows that shoot to kill still operates in the bush.
So if you are Australian and you don't attack the racism of your own governments then you are as bad as a UK subject who thinks Blaire was right on Iraq
Arthus