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The Forum > Article Comments > Wanderings in a desert > Comments

Wanderings in a desert : Comments

By Donna Jacobs Sife, published 9/6/2006

The loss of innocence in the Red Centre of Australia.

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What an indictment that this declaration of despair should bring about such contempt from a mere glimpse of Uluru.

Imagine, a well-meaning aborigine, traveling through the suburbs of Adelaide, looking for a school to entreat with story-telling. Despairing at the plight of spiritual dislocation and environmental disenfranchisement returns to accusations of historical and grammatical error and cultural intolerance.
Posted by Neil Hewett, Friday, 9 June 2006 7:18:55 PM
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A great article Donna. Don't be put off my those nit-picking fools who pick on minutae because they have nothing to contribute. Keep up the good work I think you have described how many of us feel about this issue and we all need to speak out about it. Because of your article I will try harder to make my voice heard as well.
Posted by Priscillian, Friday, 9 June 2006 9:29:26 PM
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At the end of her article Donna Jacobs Sife suggests that "the greatest sorrow of all is for the loss of knowledge that we so desperately need to save this earth of ours". It would help us all if Ms Sife could explain what this knowledge is ....

Is it to live as hunter-gatherers? Not really relevant when there are now more than 20 million of us on this continent alone.

Is it to worship rocks as being the "sacred" creations of ancestral beings? I'm sorry but Uluru wasn't created by the ancestors of contemporary Anangu, anymore than the rocks of the Scottish Highlands were created by my elementary ancestors.

Ms Sife says that the traditional owners "communicate their spirituality with enormous dignity". Which no doubt explains why the Mutitjulu community looks particularly trashed by these custodians.

Next time she is out there she might also like to ask why it is that Anangu women can't visit the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta and why Anangu regard Kata Tjuta as being even more important than Uluru. It's got something to do with the fact that Kata Tjuta is a place of secret men's business and the over-arching misogyny of their Aboriginal culture.
Posted by Savage Pencil, Friday, 9 June 2006 11:19:38 PM
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While agreeing that Donna's article was a little long on emotion, I am rather disappointed with the debate on this thread. Apparently some posters believe that compassion is bad and emotional, but that judgemental bilious spite is good. To freight your posts with loaded terms like "black arm band view" "do-gooders" "rave on", etc and then complain about emotion makes me laugh. Why don't you stick to "the facts"?

THE FACTS, of course are truly dispiriting. Indigenous health is a national disgrace. High rates of diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism and substance abuse lead to life expectancy 20 YEARS less than the national average. There are also high levels of infant and maternal mortality as well as chronic skin and eye infections etc. Recent research suggests that something as simple as a town swimming pool can make a big difference to child health in these communities.

Unemployment at Mutitjulu is a real problem, as highlighted by the Alice Springs News http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/0940.html Amazing isn't it, that a tourist resort (owned by Lend-Lease) employing nearly 1,000 people doesn't have a training program for local kids.
Posted by Johnj, Saturday, 10 June 2006 12:18:15 AM
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Well, to start with Donna, the never was any "stolen generation(s)".

Just like "The Jews burned down the Reichstag" story told to the Hitler Youth by Germany's incumbent "politically correct" in 1938, the "stolen generation(s)" was a little "story" fabricated by a people with a "blame the whites for everything" mindset. You could probably recognise these people, Donna, they appear to be exactly the same one who have a "blame the Israelis for everything" attitude today.

Donna asks "What have we done to threse people?" Well, actually Donna, we have improved their lot quite a lot.

Aboriginal people lived as about a degraded as existence pre white settlement as could be imagined. We are talking about people who had not even reached the stage of using animal skins to keep themselves warm. I know two accounts of early settlers describing the rivers of green mucus running down the faces of aboriginal people. This was because most, if not all, aborigal people in cold areas of Australia were suffering from respiratory diseases. Aboriginal people could only keep themselves warm by huddling very close to smoky fires at night, which also gave them some protection from mosquitoes.

The traditional extreme brutality which aboriginal men meted out to aboriginal women was even witnessed by Governer Phillip who personally intervened to stop Bennelong from bashing a young aboriginal woman to death. Aboriginal women today are afforded some protection by our caring government, although a recent court case involving the anal rape of an unstolen 14 year old aboriginal girl indicates that some magistrates consider traditional stone age aboriginal culture to still be appropriate today.

Cold hard facts can make less appealing reading than emotionally wrenching fiction employing vivid verbs and metaphorical adjectives, Donna, but entertaining fairytales are no substitute for objective analysis.
Posted by redneck, Saturday, 10 June 2006 8:13:21 AM
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I find the poorly informed (as always?) prejudice in some of the comments above astonishing, given this is 2006, not 1906. For your information, Aboriginal people that lived in cold climates did both make and dress in warm clothing (maybe some of you need to go and have a look at the magnificent possum skin cloak in the National Museum in Canberra: in fact maybe some of you need to change out of your pyjamas and get out more!). In Victoria, Aboriginal people made elaborate shelters due to the cold climate (reference first chapter of John Archer's book "Building a Nation", a history of Australian architecture which begins, as it should, with Aboriginal architecture: it includes photos).

As for the treatment of women in some Aboriginal cultures (another furphy: there was never one single Aboriginal culture in Australia: we don't even know for sure how many different languages were spoken in pre-European Australia, but researchers know there were hundreds) in the 1800s, there are accounts that some Aboriginal cultures weren't very nice to their women, but I'd have to say at the time many other cultures in the world at the time weren't too nice to women either. That is not a reason for rejecting a culture as having no value.

As for current violations of women's rights in Aboriginal or, for that matter, any other culture: the declaration of human rights, which includes the rights of men, women and children, should always take precedence over cultural values. Sadly, this is not the case in many parts of the world. Clearly something needs to be done to enable Aboriginal people to take these rights for granted as other Australians do.

Posted by Not JohnJ but his spouse
Posted by Johnj, Saturday, 10 June 2006 9:58:36 AM
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