The Stolen Generation

Alderson is from the Murumburr clan, a people believed to have inhabited Australia since Homo Sapiens first walked the earth. His ancestors preserved their experiences, good and bad, in the oral tradition that embraced the songlines made famous by Bruce Chatwin. Alderson has added his bit to the family tradition, preserving the trauma he suffered as a child who was forcibly separated from his parents in the form of blank verse:

We rode to Nourlangie on horseback

They dressed us up and put us on a plane

We landed in Darwin and stayed there

for a couple of days and then got on a boat

 

The Margaret May, the mission boat.

In all I think there were about fifty boys

and probably the same number of girls at the Mission.

The priests were mongrels

Theyd call

And if you didnt come

Theyd wait until you were in the classroom

And strip you naked in front of the class.

They used a fine belt from a Singer sewing machine

To belt us over the backside, cutting us all up

Because we were late

The more I think about it

We were sent there to be chased

To get the Aboriginality out of us

There was no other reason.

Colour is an issue that usually evokes monochrome reactions. John Howards new conservative coalition has now dramatically polarised 20 million Australians who are agonisedly debating the ethical pros and cons of giving aborigines the status of special citizens. After two decades of multiculturalism and positive affirmative action, Howards coalition came to power on the slogan of Australia for all Australians implying an end to all positive discrimination. That has reopened a two-centuryold can of worms which white Australians hoped had been buried in the recent past.

Most Australians would prefer to overlook those 1000 centuries when the aborigine walked free and assume that their nations history began in 1788 with the first ships carrying English convicts and other free men to Botany Bay close to modern Sydney.

The Europeans named the vast, open continent Australia literally, the Southland. According to them this was terra nullius, Latin legalese for land belonging to no one. Over the next 200 years the Europeans populated the empty spaces with their cities and established huge pastoral farms that were often leased out in perpetuity.

The rest of the story sounds grimly familiar, with echoes of South Africa and the Red Indians thrown in. The empty land was actually not vacant. Hundreds of aboriginal tribes, each with their own language and highly developed oral culture, had been living in semi-nomadic style for aeons. The arrival of the Europeans put an end to their primal innocence. The farms and towns encroached upon their country, and as the years went by, the natives were forcibly settled by Christian missions, and introduced to European languages and cultures.

From 1860 to 1911 (Australia became a Commonwealth country in 1901), the aborigines reported to local protectors. They had no rights or opinions, in the eyes of the settlers. Massacres were commonplace and, as is widely acknowledged, reached the level of genocide on the island of Tasmania. From 1911 to 1940, the tribes were asked to stay in designated areas, where they received a weekly dole.

In 1951, the government embarked upon a policy of assimilation, which greatly enhanced funding of schools and health centres. It also meant that mixed-blood aboriginal children were forcibly taken away from their parents so that they could be brought up in the proper Christian tradition. Simultaneously, a White Australia policy was evolved restricting foreign immigration to Caucasians.

The story of that stolen generation refuses to go away. Sandra le Brun Holmes, in her seminal book on the famous aboriginal painter Yirawala, tells of her experience at the Currawang mission, near Kalgoorlie (Western Australia) in 1954: An aboriginal child was spanked for calling out in her language to her parents who were peering through the high wire fence. They, and others, had walked through the burning desert looking for their little lost ones. In the bush, outside the mission fence, old men were dancing and singing, hoping that the children might hear or see them.

As an Indian wandering through cities like Sydney, Canberra and Perth, you dont miss the fact that most of the sophisticated jobs are manned by whites. Many aborigines and mixed bloods follow the stereotype of living on the dole and coping with endemic alcoholism and drug abuse. The ones who dont have blended silently into the background. Ironically, it is the stolen children with their generally higher education levels who are noticeably more upwardly mobile than their full blooded brethren.

In the outback, most ranches are still white-owned though a few in recent years have been bought by aborigines. Vast national parks and reserves like the 19,000 sq km Kakadu are also administered by whites. Now, though, they are managed in accordance with the policy created by a board with ten aboriginal and four white members on it.

It is only in the bush and large parts of Kakadu are prohibited to outsiders in the deep, virginal forests, and in the Great Australian Desert that aborigines continue to live out their ancient rites of passage. According to some studies, their ancestors may have lived in exactly the same way some 175,000 years ago. If that is true, it would make them the oldest living civilisation in the world.

While the Labour government over the last 13 years followed a proactive policy of affirmative action in favour of aborigines, Howards conservative coalition rejects disproportionate interest in the native population. In an effort to balance the budget, Howards government has reduced state employment and cut funding to a number of institutions it comes as no surprise that special projects for aboriginal health care, education and half-way housing have been among those hardest hit.

The aborigines are, nevertheless, celebrating two decades of affirmative action the land rights movement for returning the land to its native people was first started in 1976. In October, after the Howard regime came to power, an historic court judgement directed the government to pay A$ 738,000 as compensation to the Dunghutti tribe, in return for a land claim on the New South Wales coast, just a little further up from Sydney.

The Dunghuttis will receive that sum for one-fifth of 12.4 hectares of land already sold to developers. Says Mary-Lou Buck, spokeswoman of the Dunghutti tribe, We were the first people to be displaced; dispossessed of our land, culture and language. This gives us a reason for going on.

Mary-Lou also refers to 408 other aborigine claims since 1992, when the Australian high court ruled in favour of an aborigine called Eddie Mabo from Murray island in the Torres Strait, just above Queensland state.

The landmark judgement, in the case Mabo and Others v. the State of Queensland has since irrevocably changed Australia. The Court held that Australia was not terra nullius (land belonging to no one) when the British first settled in 1788 meaning, that the aboriginal people who had lived there before had their own laws and customs; that earlier perceptions of aboriginal society were wrong and effectively racist; and crucially, that native title to land had survived the Crowns annexation of Australia.

For the first time in 208 years, then, an aboriginal tribe or group could lay claim to land if it could prove continuous occupation and use under traditional law. The Mabo case was followed in 1993 (under the Keating government) by the Native Title Act, which attempted to define native title and answer crucial questions related to land claims. In essence, land claims would be valid only if they related to vacant Crown land (or land owned by the government) and not to the land that had been given to pastoral leases in perpetuity.

The judgement revived memories that people on both sides had thought buried : white ranch-owners whod lived in Australia for generations and knew no other country believed they would be thrown out of their homes by the half-castes. The aborigines, especially the stolen generation, felt this was only the first step in avenging of a historic wrong and that much more should follow.

Many Australians believe today that the only way to deal with the murky past is to find reconciliation in the present. Patrick Dodson, chairperson of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, articulates that viewpoint : Whether it is a crisis or not, we are at a crossroads and need to choose the right direction. Will it be a nation which lives in harmony because it has healed the wounds of its past with wisdom and generosity of spirit?Above all, reconciliation must mean some form of agreement that deals with the legacies of our history, provides justice for all, and takes us forward as a nation.

Opinion is however split on the impact of the new governments policy switch. Mike Butler is the acting director of the Parks & Wildlife Commission, an organisation that manages 93 parks in the Northern Territory, a province where 27 per cent of the population is aboriginal. He is ambivalent about the previous policy : The previous government was ideologically disposed towards accommodating aboriginal interests. This government has made a much stronger case for accountability. Some say that is racist, but I dont think so, he says.

Butler recounts how A$50,000 allocated for a pilot project in an indigenous protected area was spent by some aborigines on buying a Toyota and then cruising around in the car, how housing materials ostensibly bought for aborigines rots in the sun and the rain... The problem with keeping them in the bush and isolating them is that this will also marginalise them, he says. Though many aborigines are alcoholics, there is also no doubt that they have a strong tradition of being tied to the land.

Daytripping to Kakadu national park from Darwin, we fly into Jabiru town in a seven-seater Cessna 405 as the pilot points out the sights : the South Alligator river with its picturesque oxbow lakes, around which exist some of the worlds finest wetlands, massive sedimentary rock ranges and the Arnhemland plateau. Here some 300 aborigines have volunteered to go back to living on the land, some in more settled community centres, others in primitive tin-sheds in the Outback.

Jabiru is also the townhead for the controversial Ranger uranium mine which now pays royalties to the local tribes. In 1978 just before it was established, the aborigines said no to the mine, a gut reaction based on their previous interactions with prospectors.

We were with Tiger Brennan

We worked for him in the mines

Gave us no money

But gave big mob of us his name

Minnie Brennan of the Bolmo clan, on prospectors in the 1880s and aborigines who provided the labour.

Increasingly, aborigines are now in favour of mining. Says Greg Miles, public relations officer of the Kadaku, Younger aborigines are becoming addicted to the cash flows: theirs is a culture in decay. Howards government is also backing large mining companies who want to scour virgin areas across Australia for more uranium, gold, diamonds, oil and other minerals a move that has already begat its own controversies.

Trippers to the park are never too far from five-star airconditioned comfort whether its the bus or the million-dollar crocodile-shaped hotel. We watch lazy crocodiles gobble up an unfortunate barramundi. My neighbour on the launch relates how hes seen those wretched reptiles turn into fanged lightning if a human being falls into the water. But do you know why the crocodiles never kill an aborigine?, the Australian asks me, ignoring my brown skin. He then volunteers conspiratorially, Because they stink! n

A man for all seasons

Artist Atul Dodiya sheds light on the

workings of Indian art today

.................................................................. 2

Salaam Mumbai

A photofeature unveils the city as seen through the eyes of six adolescents .................................................................. 3

Operation desert storm

After invading Atar, the Partners rough it out with the odd sandstorm for company .................................................................. 4

Australia is

shadowboxing with its own

past as it attempts to balance two centuries of

white occupation against the

aborigines

thousand year old claim, says

Jyoti Malhotra

Most Australians would prefer to overlook the

thousand or so

centuries when

the aborigines walked free

What happens when you pick up a group of teenagers from five cities across the world and give them licence to shoot? The Getty Conservation Institute decided to find out in a global photographic event that spanned Los Angeles, Cape Town, Mexico City and Paris as well as amchi Mumbai.

In each city, a group of teenagers, all between the ages of 12 and 18, from various cultural and economic backgrounds were given cameras and let loose to record their interpretations of the metropolis. None of them had any previous photographic experience, but that doesnt appear to have been a deterrent.

The result from India was Picture Mumbai: Landmarks of a New Generation, a multi-faceted portrait of the city as seen by nine young adults six of whom have been featured here. These are images of startling depth powerful, starkly honest, evocative and deeply moving.

Asked to define the term "landmark", none of them came up with the conventional responses. Their definitions personal, rich with a new meaning have a freshness that forces the viewer into adopting an unaccustomed perspective This, then, is what Mumbai looks like, seen through their eyes.

ANITA BALACHANDRAN (17 years)

l The Mahalaxmi Bridge near Gadje Maharaja Chowk

Life happens within walls, not outside them. I think people are landmarks more than we imagine

2. NICOLE DSOUZA (18 years)

l Backbay Reclamation, Cuffe Parade

What gives Mumbai the finishing touch are the people. They create and break the landmark. For me the ordinary channawalla, the

bhelpuriwalla, the handcart pullers are all landmarks.

3. VERNON FERNANDES (12 years)

l Gateway of India, Mumbai Harbour

4. BIKRAM MITRA (15 years)

l Bhulabhai Desai Road,

Breach Candy

5. NIVEDITA MAGAR (18 years)

l Stock Market, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Fort

A landmark to me is something that jumps at you from this uncontrollable chaos as sense and structure

6. ASIR MULLA (12 years)

l Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat,

Mahalaxmi

I think that relationships are landmarks. They come from unexpected places never dreamt of in the village.