Hi Issy,

What's your favourite magazine "Shooters and Hooters"? You never did say how many nut jobs are down at your local shooting gallery.

Hi Foxy,

Went to see the movie 'Whina' (pronounced Fina), another distant relative of the wife's, she has so many. Great account of the woman Whina Cooper who in 1975 at almost 80 years of age, led a peaceful march of Maori people, about 4,000, from Te Hapua (up north) to Wellington (down south), a distance of 1,100 Km to demand Maori land rights. Over the years she not only had to fight the pakeha racists government, that had systematically stolen Maori land for more than 100 years (about 96% of their land), she had to fight against entrenched attitudes of her own people, and the bigotry of the Catholic Church (she was a Catholic). A very good movie.

Dear Paul,

Thank you for telling me about the film - "Whina."
It is screening at a theatre near us and we shall
try to see it during the week. It has had excellent
reviews.

I see Foxy and Steele evaluating aboriginal culture on Western society standards, blaming social disadvantage as the causes of domestic violence among aboriginal communities. They fail to see they lived for 60,000 years without our Western concept of disadvantage. The women gathered seeds, fruit, and roots for food each day and the men hunted and were killing animals and making fires. The male aboriginal culture was based on violence and in remote communities where today they live, males still feel they have superior rights over women.

I lived in 1960 among an aboriginal shanty town in the NT for several months and violence was commonplace. Their women were being sold as sex slaves for alcohol and cigarettes.

The SBS series, "Australian Wars" is a fiction based on the authors understanding of historical events. It has all the license of theatre to recreate the story as intended by the author. It is a pity it is being shown at this time as it does not represent current Australia when we are endeavoring to unite our society rather than divide it by cultural wars.

When the WA Government offered the remote aboriginal villages to move to towns where services were available, they did not accept it and wanted to stay on their tribal lands. It was too costly to provide services to remote villages. We cannot blame the Government if they wanted to live in their tribal lands. The only way would be to remove newborn children, so they have no attachment to the tribe. This has been tried with half caste children, "Sorry" was the consequence.