Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: justice

  • so little, so long

    We say, they have so little, yet they complain so little. They have so much suffering and stress, yet they smile so much. Secretly we think, I think, That’s because they feel things less. Otherwise the difference would rub intolerably. Secretly we must think, the smiles mean they need less: we deserve all this.

    Imagine someone living in a long row of tents between two countries. Imagine them imagining a mansion, overspilling with one unhappy person who is home alone, with the maid, the cleaner, can’t count it all, a lottery winner to whom a lot means but a little. Imagine that lonely pioneer of loneliness is on the moon, left behind, shut out of the endlessly imagined Gatsby parties, a liner of communion which steams by while they are on their fur-lined raft. Once again they go to the fridge, open the two doors on the rows of shoes, can’t count and don’t count, roaming their overfilled unfulfilled life like a coin in a bloated cow’s belly. Or so we might imagine.

    Isn’t it amazing how bright the children smile? They have a sack filled with rags and are kicking it. Children are easy to love, like foetuses. The first tenet in an advice column “how to tell if your children are spoilt” was: do they find it difficult to enjoy themselves? Does nothing seem to make them happy?

     

  • treaty

    treaty

    February 6

    On this day in 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in New Zealand to make peace between British invaders and North Island Maori chiefs. To this day no treaty has ever been signed with the Indigenous nations of Australia, so you could say we are still at war. In his film Welcome to Australia John Pilger points out that though we lionize the fallen of the disastrous Gallipoli conflict in World War One, the cenotaph standing in every tiny Australian town is unaccompanied by any monument to the Aboriginal warriors who died fighting to defend their land. Nor to the women and children slain with poisoned flour and poisoned waterholes. Nor to the young men who manage mysteriously to hang themselves on boot laces whilst under police custody.

    At the Dreaming festival at Woodford I saw a powerful performance by a Maori singer who introduced the other members of her band. She said to the audience, Don’t you worry ’bout them haka boys, I’m gonna introduce you to the really scary members of my band. The ‘haka boys’ crouched with tongues out, ferocious faces. The really scary band members were her sister and sister-in-law, who sang backing vocals. She told us how when they had landed at Cairns airport a few days before, “your whole bloody Australian army was swarming the place.” Her backing vocalists amused themselves by going up to soldiers in camouflage gear and saying, Eh. Boys. We can still see you.

    Recognising the wrongs of the past, righting the wrongs of the present. Rejoicing in the wit and verve and resilience, the sacred seriousness of the displaced cultures, honouring our own settler/invader cultures by humbly asking Indigenous culture to be once again the root, the stem, the foundation of our nations: surely it’s time.