Dear Editors,
I feel dismayed and slightly embarrassed that in the 21st century your chief columnist Andrew Bolt is able to use your newspaper to promote such discriminatory drivel as his latest article "Ferals run amok". To tell you the truth, if it were not likely to be incredibly hurtful to any indigenous person of mixed heritage in this country, I would find his views rather comical in their ignorance of contemporary tolerance and understanding of Indigenous rights, even if they do happen to have 'Scottish wharfie' fathers.
In the lead up to the Camp Sovereignty I had the chance to meet and interview Robbie Thorpe for a short documentary project about the issues of the Black GST (The film is free to download at http://www.undergrowth.org/node/1511). I found him to be well informed and passionate, and indeed angry at the injustices he sees as ongoing in Australia. His sister Marj Thorpe who is also one of the main leaders of the Black GST campaign offered a more empathic view of the situation, but rather than be divisive, I felt that both of them were very interested in working hard to achieve understanding and reconciling these past injustices so that we may move forward as a country.
I believe the Black GST campaign, and the larger Aboriginal sovereignty movement are examples of a new generation of Indigenous people (hand in hand with many elders and white people) standing up and trying to point out that all is not well in the country of Australia. Andrew "Still Not Sorry" Bolt's article and its blatant racist rhetoric is unfortunately an all too perfect example of this situation.
Having just traveled through Alice Springs last week, I am all too aware of the issues which face Aboriginal people in this country. The domestic violence and alcohol abuse is a major problem in that town, as it is with Native North and South American's and other indigenous populations that have suffered genocide under European colonialism. It seems that Bolt doesn't even believe Aboriginal people we're ever treated badly, though - and this represents the gulf which lies between him and those he criticises so militantly.
Although you wouldn't know it from Bolt's well researched and thoughtful article, sadly the situation is completely different in the Northern Territory to Victoria. It would be quite amazing if the alcohol ban, the sense of political history and respect to ceremony, which typify Camp Sovereignty in Kings Domain, were being conducted in any of the town camps in Alice Springs. In light of what I saw in both cities, Bolt's analysis and comparison would be laughable, were it not so divisive in itself.
Even funnier is Bolt's absolute disgust and fear of the 'feral'. He quotes the radical anthropologist Graham St John, describing the tribal style dancing at the peaceful nudist festival of 'Confest' with the same kind of civilised disgust that early colonists might have looked upon Aboriginal tribal gatherings upon arrival in Australia. While 'hippy' seems to be an acceptable form of insult for anyone with an alternative outlook on life, 'feral' is a new derogatory term held for those with a more political bent, but it essentially means the same thing, and is likewise simplistic. It is the tactic of a bully to call names, not a journalist.
Andrew, I'm sure anyone with a tattoo, piercing or slightly unconventional haircut is probably a feral in your eyes, and therefore worth less than a Jew in Nazi Germany - such is the cultural racism you place upon this subculture. Perhaps you feel the same disgust for other youth subcultures you don't understand, or is it purely those who you disagree with politically? Either way, it is a puerile form of debate, and not worthy of the News Ltd media establishment you represent.
I think the point is, surely the coming together of indigenous and non-indigenous people at Camp Sovereignty and the sharing of ceremony such as the sacred fire is exactly the kind of thing Australia should be (and is) doing as people in our different cultures continue to learn to respect each other. However, Bolt as a political commentator refuses to take even the first step in any kind of multi-cultural understanding. Sadly this means his readers also continue to be misinformed as his personal prejudices are promoted. I do hope they take a look and decide for themselves.
To paraphrase a certain Bob Dylan;
"There's something going on, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Bolt."
xx
Tim Parish
Editor and Art Director
Undergrowth.org
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Ferals run amok
by ANDREW Bolt
12apr06
If they really wanted the sniff of a genuine black camp they could have
pitched a tent in the river bed at Alice Springs ...
THE barbarians aren't just at the gates. They've smashed through and are
camping in the Kings Domain gardens.
And, no, I don't call this rabble in the tents at "Camp Sovereignty"
barbarians because they are Aboriginal.
In fact, not even a third of the 150 illegal campers who were there at the
height of the Commonwealth Games looked even tanned.
And that's the worry: our change-the-world ferals -- now lawyers,
journalists and councillors -- are growing stronger, and our officials are
now too ashamed of our culture to resist them and their Aboriginal
mascots.
Just check how we've been humbugged by the camp's Black GST (Genocide,
Sovereignty, Treaty) group and its leader, Robbie Thorpe.
Thorpe says he is an "Aboriginal elder", though he has more British blood
than our ethnic Chinese Lord Mayor, John So. Or me.
But it's his black ancestors who have helped him most. They've made him a
useful ally for the eco-ferals who see Nature as sacred and urban humans
as corrupt, who adore the "Noble Savage".
And so Thorpe, as an "Aboriginal elder", is now an unlikely holy man -- a
guide back to the Garden.
Oops. Too philosophical. So here are the plain facts.
Thorpe's ties to forest ferals go back years. In 1991, for instance, he
helped the Melbourne Rainforest Action Group to resist imports of tropical
timber, saying then that he was an elder of the Barbuwooloong clan of
central Gippsland.
In 2000, the Communist Party's newsletter reported he was helping
protesters at the Goolengook anti-logging camp, this time as an elder of
the Krauatungalung clan, from around the Snowy.
Three years ago he was "saving" the Strzelecki forest, giving a speech
alongside Greens leader Bob Brown as an elder of all western Victoria's
"Gurnai Nation" clans.
He'd then drifted to the radical fringe of black politics, becoming
treasurer of the Aboriginal Provisional Government, which issued its own
passports and demanded half of Australia be put under black rule where the
"laws of the white man would not apply".
His APG had more success than you'd believe. Its deputy president, Geoff
Clark, a Scottish wharfie's son, became the (last) head of ATSIC, the
taxpayer-funded Aboriginal parliament. The pale APG secretary, Michael
Mansell, is legal manager of the state-supported Tasmanian Aboriginal
Centre.
You'd think stirrers with such a dumb and divisive agenda would get the
bum's rush, no matter how black -- or white -- they were.
But the Melbourne City Council last year started digging a designer hole
for itself by holding a groovy "Talk Blak" conference featuring not just
Mansell and Clark, but a woman from Thorpe's Black GST collective.
How crazy was that, especially given the race-based rant Thorpe had given
at a Black GST public meeting just weeks earlier?
"The white man," rasped Thorpe, part-white himself, "he's a liar, he's a
thief."
So evil was he that he'd "exterminated 99 per cent of the (black)
population here".
"Weapons of mass destruction were used on innocent people in a pre-emptive
strike, namely smallpox . . . (using) a cargo of disease".
And this "pariah state" was still committing a "premeditated criminal
genocide of the indigenous people ongoing for 237 years".
Aborigines, on the other hand, "never committed crimes against humanity
like the white man does" and had cared for the land.
"Because you've separated them and their customary law, their ceremonial
practices, you're facing your own peril." White man was destroying Mother
Earth.
Fact check. Smallpox was brought here not by whites but by Indonesian
fishermen; the British did not try or want to to wipe out Aborigines; and
settlers made this land so fruitful it can carry tens of millions more
people than were here in 1776.
More facts: Aborigines were more likely to die in their own endless wars
than white Australians were to die in the world wars. As for the myth of
the green black . . .
But never mind facts. Feel instead the eco-feral faith -- that toxic mix
of white-hating and green-preaching.
And thus was Thorpe adopted by so-sorry whites who can't get enough of
what hurts. Note the help he got when when he announced the Black GST
would set up camp in the Botanic Gardens during the Games to demand black
rule and a treaty from the Queen. The camp was illegal, but the timid
council let it stay rather than enforce its own laws. Greens councillor
Fraser Brindley even offered the Black GST the use of his flat.
The Federation of Community Legal Centres, paid by the Bracks Government
to actually help the poor with their legal troubles, meanwhile gave Thorpe
and his mates free advice and a 24-hour hotline to help resist any moves
to kick them out.
No wonder no one touched them, not even when their foul-mouthed heckling
forced the Queen to drop a street walk, or when they crashed a Thai
festival at Federation Square.
Instead -- most spookily -- eco-feral Melburnians came to worship in their
thousands, and be led, shiny-eyed, through a "sacred fire" lit by Thorpe
and his friends.
This fire, said Thorpe, was "a living conduit to the Creator". It could
"heal", but if extinguished had "destructive power". The council must
build something to ensure it never went out, if black religion was to be
respected and the city saved.
Thorpe couldn't have made a smarter marketing move in these pagan days.
You see, magic fires are all the rage among eco-ferals, as you'd see at
next weekend's Confest, near Deniliquin.
Here's how Queensland University cultural anthropologist Graham St John
described the fire-frenzy at one of these annual Confests, started with
the help of former Labor Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns and now a
must-go for witches, pagans, nudists, vegans, artists and failures:
'One hundred females danced in a circle pulsating towards and out from the
centre (a fire) chanting to a steadily increasing drum beat." Then
"dancers, many of whom were naked, with mud, ochre and paint-based body
and facial designs, gestured frenetically" to music.
Thorpe's fire at the Botanic Gardens burned less bright, but callers to
774 ABC talkback were almost in ecstatic tears as they told of having been
"smoked" there.
As Age columnist Tracee Hutchison, mystically wrote, this was an "ancient
and gentle healing ritual", and she felt "humbled" that "the Fire Man" who
smoked her "thinks I've got some kind of blackfella spirit inside me".
Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gavin Jennings, easily sucked in by black
spin, even seemed to tell protesters he was comfortable with fencing off
their "sacred" blaze.
Hundreds of eco-ferals meanwhile camped with the Black GST to get in touch
with that re-imagined Aboriginal spirituality, around a fire that the
grovelling council promised yesterday it might keep burning forever.
Of course, if they really wanted the sniff of a genuine black camp they
could have pitched a tent in the river bed at Alice Springs, but the
boozy, brawling reality isn't what such folk desire.
Ernie Dingo of The Great Outdoors might even have let them camp in the
horse paddock of his 4ha Brisbane home, but they prefer their blacks
primitive and poor, not rich and sophisticated.
And so they camped among the New Tribals who make them feel closest to the
Nature gods they've always dreamed of. But how Aboriginal was any of this
really?
Ask Graham Atkinson, a Yorta Yorta man who co-chairs the Victorian
Traditional Owners Land Justice Group, and he'll tell you Thorpe and his
crew are just blow-ins who are causing trouble and should "now pack up and
call it a day".
Local Wurundjeri "elder" Ian Hunter also wants them kicked out. I'd have
asked the rival Boonerwrung land councils what they think of Thorpe, too,
but I doubt they're any more the voice of Melbourne's "real" Aborigines,
given the spokesman of one is a white restaurateur and the other is an
activist from Western Australia.
But it's not Aborigines who made a hero of Thorpe anyway. That was instead
the folly of eco-ferals and their sympathisers in the bureaucracy, who see
in him the Noble Savage they've always wanted to light their fire.
------
Be alert, but not alarmed.