Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 04:00:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: gilchrik-AT-ses.curtin.edu.au
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: We moderns!



>>I am not sure if I uderstand what you are angry about Mr 
gilchrik-AT-ses.curtin.edu.au
- all I know is that you are emailing from 
Australia.<<<

Okay, let me explain. My name is Karen, I am female, and I am from Perth, Western Australia.

>>>>In the context it was written, I understood that this was referring to 
aboriginal people, as opposed to black people.  Red Indians and Black People

of Australia are both aboriginal people.<<<

I realise that may be the case, but the use of the word "Black" to describe Aboriginal Australians simply indicated to me that the author of the email did not know the situation nor the sensitivities in this country that surround the issue, and therefore the comments seemed doubly in-sensitive. 

To describe them as "Black" also infers that they are somehow the same race as "Black Africans", or that they somehow share the same characteristics. This is a problem I have with some South African (European decent) relatives, who make some very racist, and very ignorant comments about Aborigines because they think its the same thing. 


>>>The history of settlement in Australia is far more recent than that of the

USA. <<<

Hence my anger I think. Sorry, I didn't let myself calm down before replying. :)

 
>>>Also, the use of Black Australian is far different to the use of Red Australian.  Black Australian is considered derogatory.  Aborignal is even considered derogatory too - almost as derogatory as 'boong', which was explained to me as the sound your bumper makse when you hit an 'abo' (which is a dominant way of talking in some parts of Australia.)<<<

you might want to watch your words too, "which is" could definately be changed to "which was". You might like to be careful about what kind of myths the city people will tell you about the country people.

Aboriginal is nowhere near as derogatory as "boong". Aboriginal must be used if you are referring to the whole of Australia. "Boong" is a racist term, nothing else.



>>>>'Cooree' is the preferred term.  I don't know what 'cooree' means, but it would have been preferable to say Red Americans and Coorees ... , but how would an American or European know?!?<<<<


Cooree threw me for a minute there, but now I realise its a variation of "Koori" which is a word for "person" in some of the tribes down near New South Wales and Victoria (you hence have given away your own location when you lived in Aust!). Some Aborigines prefer that, but as someone from Western Australia, that term doesn't apply. If you're going to call people by the areas they come from, Nyoongah is the word appropriate for the areas surrounding Perth, and there are many different terms all over australia. 

Though of course, it is not practical for the world to know this, so it is "Aborigine" is preferred. Though if Americans and Europeans did not know even this, there are other ways of putting it so as not to cause offense, like "Indigenous Australians" or even the native people of Australia. Failing that, you all have search engines!

>>Then again, Australians percieve their coorees to be something completely different from Black Americans.  I am sure I sound like a colonialist and I apologise for that, but they are referred to as 'still living in the stone age.'  This is not true really, there have been and are accomplished sports people, academics and business people of cooree decent.<<<

Where did you hear this? Though I feel I must point out that though
many Aborigines are successful in the Western sense, *all* Aborigines are living very much in the 21st century. 

I do not think that anybody here believes they are living in the stone age, or at all more "primitive" for this is racism in a traditional sense which just simply is absurd for anybody to think these days, let alone express. Racism happens in Australia on the level of how "different" they are, or how much benefits they get from the government (the myth that they are somehow privileged to "ordinary Australians"). That doesn't make it any better though. 
There is debate over their living conditions, because of  our systems, and institutionalised racism, nothing to do with Aborigines themselves.

Though as I said before, of course they are different from Americans! I am sure you do not consider Native Americans and African Americans to be the same thing simply because they are not white? 

>>>it shows how people misundersand misunderstandings and how 
people get mad for no reason.  They 'don't know what they do does.'

Then again, I have noticed that some Australians tend to get angry about these issues and others.<<<<

Okay, I did over react to the wording of the email. But the content of the email was seriously racist, and I can't understand why no Americans on this list reacted in the same manner as I did. The writer if the email stated that:

 "I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong hasbeen done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia." 

This person is saying that it was not wrong to come to Australia, kill the people living there (outright and through disease), and take their land. To "replace" them because White Europeans were a "stronger
race, a higher grade race, a more worldly-wise race." This type of thinking went out in the 60s. It is racist and I was disgusted by it and I have every right to be angry over it. "Higher Grade"? What is this guy on? 

It is not simply a misunderstanding. Or if it is, the writer can tell me how I misread it if he wishes.

Karen.



>From: gilchrik-AT-ses.curtin.edu.au
>Reply-To: foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: foucault-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: We moderns!
>
> >>> I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong hasbeen done
to
>the Red Indians of America, or the black people of
>Australia.<<<<
>
>firstly, not "black people" they are Australian Aborigines. And
just,
>my God you have made me so angry! *Australia* has decided that a great

>wrong has
>been done to Aborigines, and I'm not going to waste my time digging up all

>of
>the information about the genocide we perpetrated upon these people in
our
>invasion of the land. All of Australia decided, (including the Aborigines)

>that
>we did do a great wrong, and it is not up to anyone else to just dismiss

>it. Go
>bloody well comment on your own country where you know the facts.
>
>
>  >>>I donot admit that a wrong has been done to these people by
the
>fact that a strongerrace, a higher grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to

>put
>it that way, has comein and taken their place.<<<
>
>not a *stronger* race, a more *violent* and *self-justifying* race.
Which
>doesn't make it right, and we have not "taken their place".


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