Asian Americans Aren't 'Basically White' – Here Are 5 Ways Racism Hurts Us - Everyday Feminism

Asian Americans Aren't 'Basically White' – Here Are 5 Ways Racism Hurts Us - Everyday Feminism



everyday feminism

Asian Americans Aren’t ‘Basically White’ – Here Are 5 Ways Racism Hurts Us

June 5, 2016 by Kim Tran


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Profile of someone on a black background. They have long black hair, dangling gold earrings, and a serious expression.

I am Asian American and I hate teaching Asian American Studies. I’ve been doing it for about 5 years now and I regret to say it’s one of the most harrowing and downright painful experiences I repeatedly endure.

Is it because I hate my own kind? Absolutely not.

It’s because I frequently find that my students say some problematic, frightening, and downright erroneous things to resist seeing themselves as people of color who are oppressed. These include but are not limited to the following:

“No one’s ever been racist toward me.”

“It’s not like we’re Black.”

“We haven’t experienced racism in this country.”

“It’s worse in my home country.”

…or my least favorite and the inspiration for this article,

“We’re basically white.”

All of these things are untrue. Well, except for the second one because, unless you’re mixed race, we’re definitely not Black. That being said, I get it.

When I was younger, I saw Chinese folks who had nice houses, good educations, who spoke fluent English. And I saw Black folks who lived with the dehumanizing effects of anti-black racism.

Between those examples and Asian stereotypes, I thought, well yeah, maybe we’re just like white people.

Maybe if I work really hard, I can make it, too.

I bought into all the nonsense Asian Americans are taught to believe about our identities, our histories and our present in this country. I rejoiced when called a “twinkie” or a “banana” (white on the inside, yellow on the outside).

I thought because the racism I knew was different from the kind my Latinx and Black friends were familiar with, that it wasn’t legitimate. Wasn’t real. Wasn’t that bad.

Yet while our experiences as Asian Americans differ from other groups, we — like all other people of color in the United States — live with the daily ramifications of white supremacy. And that distinguishes us from white America.

I generally use the following equation to define racism:

Racism = power + prejudice

There are a tons of ways to define prejudice including but not limited to: cognitive, emotional or behavioral; you can read more about that here.

But prejudice alone doesn’t constitute racism. It’s also power: formal, institutional and material power.

An example would be the difference between a single person calling someone a Jap and the internment of Japanese Americans. The former is an act perpetrated by an individual while the latter is the state (or government) facilitated mass incarceration of an entire community based on race.

If we use the above equation it becomes clear that all Asian Americans experience racism because we experience these two things: prejudice and oppression from systems of power, together.

Now why do I want to point this out? Isn’t ignorance bliss? In a way it would be wonderful for all of us to erroneously think we’re immune to racism and that in fact we’re so close to whiteness socially and structurally it really doesn’t matter.

But if we continue along this route, we’re 1) simply wrong (in countless ways that I’m about to illustrate with this list) and 2) allowing ourselves to be divided from communities of color working toward equality both for us Asian Americans specifically and racial justice more generally.

So are you with me, beautiful community? Here’s how America was and continues to be racist against Asian Americans, and I’m not just talking about gross white dudes who are only into dating Asian women.
1. American Law and Foreign Policy Have Forcibly Excluded and Colonized Us

The very first law limiting immigration based on race was aimed at — you guessed it — Asians, Chinese folks more specifically.

The policy was called The Chinese Exclusion Act and it was a signed into United States federal law in 1882. It was exactly what it sounds like, a law that barred Chinese people from entering the United States.

Why?

Because Americans blamed high levels of unemployment and declining wages on Chinese workers — and don’t worry, you’re not alone if you think this sounds familiar to an argument we’re currently having about borders and a different migrant community. #MakeAmericaRacistAgain

The Chinese Exclusion Act was followed by countless other American policies restricting Asian immigration.

The Page Act barred “undesirables” generally, and Chinese women specifically, because they were assumed to be “prostitutes”.

Then there’s my all time favorite, the Asiatic Barred Zone Act that limited immigration from a broad part of the Asian continent because we were (get ready for this) “homosexuals,” “idiots,” “feeble-minded,” “criminals,” “epileptics,” “insane,” alcoholics,” “mentally or physically defective,” “polygamists,” and “anarchists.”

It further prevented illiterate people from immigrating to the US, let alone vote, which means the same literacy battles that we’re fighting when it comes to voting in southern and rural Black communities, Asian folks also fought and continue to fight.

Wait, there’s more.

Jason Kim Ph.D states “if there is one thing that unites all Asians, it’s the way America has used us to increase its own political power.” This fact is exemplified by the land wars America has waged across Asia.

The American War in Vietnam killed estimates of up to 4 million people in that peninsula alone and an additional 1 million in the region.

The Korean War took up to 3 million lives.

And just this year, the legacy of colonialism in the Philippines allowed the U.S. government to install five new military bases in the archipelago.

Racism in Asia and against Asian Americans has deep American roots that affect our communities to this very day.
2. Current American Laws Discriminate Against Us

Have you ever wondered why most Asian countries are impoverished with huge gaps between the rich and the poor, yet Asians in America seem to do so well? Wonder no more!

America has a habit of cherry picking only highly skilled technical workers to come to its shores. Immigration policies like H1B1 visas legalize preferences for only the most formally educated Asians to come to the United States.

In former presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio’s words, an extension of H1B1 visas opens the gates for only “the smartest, hardest-working, most talented people on this planet.” The bias is so slanted that Rubio added, “I have no fear that this country is going to be overrun by Ph.D.s.”

At the same time, it’s difficult for poor Asians to immigrate and be successful in the United States. The Obama Administration has deported upwards of 250,000 Asian people who are parents and children. These folks often work for little to no pay, contrasting the model minority myth.

Asians who legally immigrate can be strikingly different from Asian folks in Asia. They’re a deliberately skewed population of the best and the brightest.
3. We’re Never On TV“Asians are nearly invisible in Hollywood. Only 1 out of 20 speaking roles go to Asians. And 1% of lead roles in films go to Asians.” Source: AJ+


With the stunning exception of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, Asians are almost never on screen, let alone in starring roles.

Fresh Off the Boat is the first time we’ve seen an entire Asian American family starring in a sitcom since Margaret Cho’s All American Girl in 1994 — 22 years ago.

Recently, social media has made it easier to notice that even when Asian roles are written into films, white people are cast to play us. This phenomenon is called yellowface.

In 2016 alone, we saw Scarlett Johansen, Tilda Swinton and Emma Stone cast in roles to play Japanese and Chinese women.

Asian Americans pushed back with #MyYellowFaceStory and #StarringJohnCho as responses to the fact that we’re never fucking on screen — even to play members of our own communities.

If you’re wondering why this matters, Michael Brody, the chair of the media committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, has said children are affected when they don’t see themselves represented on TV.

In a study published by academic journal Communication Research, researchers found watching TV with limited or negative exposure of your communities causes a decrease in self esteem. Seeing ourselves reflected — and reflected positively — in media matters.

And Asian Americans see ourselves in films and on TV less than any other racial/ethnic group in America.
4. We Literally Work Twice as Hard for Half as Much

My dad wanted me to be a doctor. Or a lawyer. On the rare occasion that I saw him, he’d incessantly remind me what was in store for my future.

Although I do hope one day earn a doctorate, I am painfully aware that my professional accomplishments are the exception, not the norm.

And they can only get me so far within white supremacy.

Because despite the increasing levels of wealth and education for many Asian Americans, when it comes to property and work, we’re still experiencing racism.

A study published in the Administrative Science Quarterly Journal found that when Asian people “whitened” their names on resumes, they got called back for jobs 21% of the time compared to only 11.5% of the time if their names remained unchanged.

Moreover, the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) did a study in 2012. They found if an Asian and a white person walk into a real estate agent’s office with the same economic profile, the Asian person will only be shown only half the number of homes for sale.

Regardless of being told we’re better at math, school, and generally working harder than any other race, we still lag behind most white Americans.
5. The Model Minority Myth Is Used Against Us

The model minority myth is a response to how Asians were historically excluded from citizenship.

Before the 1950’s America perceived Chinese people as foreign and vile (see the above list of undesirable qualities). So first as a WWII tactic to secure an allegiance with China against Japan, then as a means of quelling a national juvenile delinquency crisis, Chinese youths were stereotyped as those with “unquestioned obedience” and a “high moral sense.”

Today, this stereotype is used to justify legislature that would create a more even playing field for all marginalized communities including Cambodian, Hmong, Vietnamese and Pacific Islanders who have lower levels of educational attainment than their Chinese counterparts.

But because of the myth, even Asians often fail to support policies like affirmative action.

One of the reasons I find solidarity challenging with other Asian folks is because being a first generation Vietnamese American can be very different from being a 4th or 5th generation Chinese American.

In terms of class, education, and linguistic isolation, my community is much more similar to Latinxs than to most East Asian folks in America — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t commonalities.


According to Takeo Rivera, a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley, the model minority myth has myriad effects.

One being that even though it’s positive, it also “produces the conditions for dehumanization and violence, and with de-individuation comes the sense that such lives are less capable of feeling, and of grief.”

Which is one reason we always hear about the American lives lost during the Vietnam War, but never about the millions of Southeast Asian civilians who died in the same conflict.

The model minority myth enables America to justify our dehumanization, institutional exclusion, and low levels of upward social mobility.
5. We Fight Racism

We live in a world committed to making Asian Americans seem foreign and exceptional. One that uses Tiger Moms and Confucianism to sweep racism against us and other communities of color under the rug.

But we are victims of American racism. Most importantly, we are freedom fighters.

Asians have historically been at the forefront of decolonial, educational, and cultural movements. We owe Asian American Studies programs, an ongoing literary legacy and voting rights to Asian Americans working toward social justice.

Asian Americans can claim the Third World Liberation Front, the Kearny Street Workshop, Caaav, 18 Million Rising, EBAYC and Viet Unity as the fruit of our labors for a racially just world.

And our movements are dope.

In his seminal book, Rethinking the Asian American Movement, Daryl Maeda points to a few important factors that differentiated our racial justice efforts in the 1960’s.

Asian American political campaigns at the height of the civil rights movement were always coalitionary, or working in solidarity with other communities of color.

Moreover, they had significant female leadership. They were guided by powerful women like Pat Sumi, Evelyn Yoshimura, Carmen Chow, Wilma Chan and of course Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs

Resistance is in our history. It is in our blood.

***

When I first got to college, I dated only white men. I abandoned “stinky” Asian food and I hung out with people named ‘Drew’ and ‘Megan.’

I wanted — desperately — to be the same, to be white. It was easier to project internalized racism than come to grips with its divisive reality.

My journey toward political consciousness began with two simple steps.

First, I recognized we live within white supremacy that seeks to hide our racial difference.

Second, I committed myself forever to divesting from that system, because liberation is not the product of complicity and ignorance.

Although I occasionally falter and sometimes outright fail, I continue to try.

Because I know that for us Asian Americans equality will not be the result of assimilation. Emancipation will be borne of acknowledging and fighting for our fundamental difference.

Kim Tran is a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. She’s also a collective member of Third Woman Press: Queer and Feminist of Color publishing. Her academic and activist commitments are to laborers, refugee and queer communities. She facilitates workshops on uprooting anti-black racism in Asian American communities. She is finishing her Ph.D in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley where writes on race, gender and economics. Her work has been featured on Black Girl Dangerous, Nation of Change and the Feminist Wire. She can be found in any of these capacities at www.kimthientran.com.

Decolonizing Solidarity: Dilemmas and Directions for Supporters of Indigenous Struggles by Clare Land — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

Goodreads | Decolonizing Solidarity: Dilemmas and Directions for Supporters of Indigenous Struggles by Clare Land — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

Malcolm rated it it was amazing

Shelves: first-nations, sociology, activism

For many of us who try to pay attention to developments in social and political theory, one of the most interesting strands to emerge in recent years is the notion of intersectionality, in part, the idea that we may have many different ways of being (relationship specific identities, for want of a better description) all of which are always present in any action we take. Intersectionality is a way past ‘choosing’ or emphasising one way of being in favour of the more complex messy lives that we live and ways that we exist in the world. As interesting as this emerging discussion is (and it is really intriguing, as well as very valuable), I have been much more interested in the parallel recent discussion of the meaning of solidarity. That of course might well be because I am a fairly well off, White, middle aged bloke with a fair amount of cultural capital (academic, a couple of post graduate degrees, fairly well paid and so forth), where my principal political work centres on support for workers and indigenous, anti-colonial struggles, shaped by an outlook that sees the most oppressed as the best suited to lead those struggles. So, as far from the most oppressed, the politics of solidarity are important to my political and my academic work.


Clare Land’s Decolonizing Solidarity is a very important contribution to that understanding, and is essential reading for solidarity movement activists working alongside and with other people’s struggles. Land has many years’ experience working in and with indigenous peoples in south-east Australia, and brought that experience to her scholarly work that provides part of the base for this book. Other aspects of the base include her ongoing activist work, advice and input from those she seeks to support, and interviews and discussions with other solidarity activists: there is a multitude of voices invoked in the investigation, voices that are essential to understand the multiplicity of forms and types of solidarity.


Alongside the significance of ‘solidarity’ in the title, ‘decolonizing’ in some ways presents a bigger challenge. For many, an especially those of us with a degree of privilege, there is a recognition of the importance of ‘diversity’ – we seek diverse social networks and communities; in schools we set out to diversify the curriculum; in healthcare we seek culturally sensitive forms of service provision. The list goes on. For many post- and anti-colonial/imperial activists and analysts however the goal is not liberal diversification but a more profound decolonization – where we recognize, act on and overturn the historical colonial relations and attitudes and outlooks that flow from them, disrupting and reforming ways of being and understanding. It is a more abstract concept, but for me it often comes back to book title by an Indian historian – a collection of essays by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe . Now, if Europe is one of many global provinces, and not the ‘centre of the world’ its cultural significance becomes different, as do the views of the world and the people in that world spawned and sustained by/sustaining European cultural power.


In solidarity movements and activism, this question of decolonization presents a specific challenge, centred on the politics of who gets to choose and who gets to determine what are the goals, forms and shapes of the struggles question. In indigenous solidarity this often takes a more challenging aspect, where those indigenous struggles relate directly to the life-world and circumstances of non-indigenous, newcomers many of whom are engaging in solidarity activism: to step back, to allow indigenous peoples to lead and shape those struggles when they directly affect the everyday life of non-indigenous supporters is a big ask, and brings this issue of decolonization right home into the banality of the everyday.


It is this challenge that is at the core of this book and that sees Land explore demanding issues, such as complicity in colonial oppression and relations, the challenges of labelling and identity categories – both indigenous and non-indigenous, the meanings and significance of collaboration, dialogue and friendship. A vital element of her exploration is the self-understanding of solidarity activists and what it means to act in a self-aware manner, to know how, where and with what effect that self-awareness influences, shapes and determines (or at least powerfully influences) political action. All this means that the moral and political framework she develops for solidarity activism includes difficult questions about motivation (and a clear critique of the desire to ‘help’ – this is a question of decolonization, after all). Much of the discussion is not as stark as this may sound – ‘dilemma’ is a recurring notion in her analysis and exploration, especially the dilemmas involved in de- and re-constructing issues, interests and consequently power dynamics. While this might sound big and demanding, Land has a light touch: she deals with specificities and lets her activists’ drive the discussions making excellent use of their own words.


Not surprisingly, she sees the most promising outlook and approach as being rooted in a motivation that is “trying to undo the system that does oppressive work on all/most of us, but most particularly and obviously along the axis of Indigeneity” (p215). This driver requires that activists have a clearly articulated theory of colonisation and its effects – it being colonisation that created Indigeneity. This is a marker of the openness of the case being made, a case that solidarity activists stand alongside or behind indigenous peoples, but also that these principles apply also to other forms of solidarity politics. The book concludes not with a discussion of Indigeneity but of solidarity with international development struggles, refugee groups, anti-colonial activism (focussing on pro-Palestinian activism) and LGBTQI support activism. That is to say, decolonizing solidarity with indigenous struggles should also reshape other forms of solidarity.


The importance of this book is two-fold. First, it demands that we reconceptualise how we do solidarity activism and our understanding of indigenous struggles (it sits for alongside and complements Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonising Methodologies and Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish’s The Radical Imagination: Social movement research in the age of austerity in doing so). Second, takes us deep into solidarity activism in a specific context, using insider activist voices from both the solidarity and indigenous activists – and uses that context and those voices in such a way that the integrity of that specificity is retained but also that we are able to transfer the case to other settings, both indigenous and non-indigenous struggles. This is essential reading for solidarity activists and vital if we are to develop ways to develop effective and meaningful affinity politics in the context of these developing intersectional analyses and an increasingly hostile global élite desperate to defend their power, and its sources.

Campbelltown Library My Account

 Campbelltown Library My Account


Nemarluk
Nemarluk
Idriess, Ion L. (Ion Llewellyn), 1890-1979.

C0170648845

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Burnum Burnum's Aboriginal Australia : A Traveller's Guide

Burnum Burnum's Aboriginal Australia : a traveller's guide

Burnum Burnum, 1936-

C0113877051
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The photographs of Baldwin Spencer

Spencer, Baldwin, Sir, 1860-1929.

C0445216527

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Blood On The Wattle : Massacres And Maltreatment Of Australian Aborigines Since 1788

Blood on the wattle : massacres and maltreatment of Australian Aborigines since 1788

Elder, Bruce.

The Hate Race review: Maxine Beneba Clarke's urgent writing is unique and vital

The Hate Race review: Maxine Beneba Clarke's urgent writing is unique and vital

• Fiona Wright

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MEMOIR & POETRY

The Hate Race
MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE
HACHETTE, $32.99

Maxine Beneba Clarke, Australian writer and poet of Afro-Caribbean decent whose first book, Foreign Soil, won the Premier's unpublished manuscript award. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones

Carrying the World
MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE
HACHETTE, $26.99

A few years ago, my writers' workshop, based in Bankstown, left a meeting to celebrate at the nearby sports club – a place that, despite its location and status as a glorified RSL, makes amazing pizza. I walked through the door without a second thought, as did the two Anglo-Australian men I was walking with. A few steps behind us was our colleague Mohammed, and as he entered the building he was immediately intercepted by security, asked to take off his hat and show his licence, and told not to give any cheek.

The Hate Race, by Maxine Beneba Clarke. 

Mohammed shrugged it off – this happens all the time, he said – but I was rattled to the core. This is what it's like for you, I remember thinking, this is what you have to deal with every day.

This is the territory that Maxine Beneba Clarke's memoir, The Hate Race, charts. It is a chronicle of the everyday injustices of racism that are always present in this country, no matter how hard we try to deny that they exist, and the way they accrue, and slowly wear away at the people against whom they are directed. ("This is how it changes us," Clarke writes, "This is how we're altered.")

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Clarke introduces many of these incidents with a refrain that breaks into the text at points where a new anecdote is about to begin or comes to an end: "this is how I tell it, or else what's a story for." It is at once a reference to the Afro-Caribbean storytelling tradition from which Clarke is descended, a consciously poetic interjection, a structuring device, and an allusion to the deliberate selection of these details and anecdotes.

Clarke states explicitly in in the acknowledgements of the book that this memoir charts a "very specific aspect" of her childhood, the confusion, anxiety and often downright hostility with which her race was met by the people she encountered in outer-suburban Sydney in the 1980s and '90s. It is a partial memoir – as all memoirs must be – but it is always conscious of its agenda, and its importance.

Carrying the World, by Maxine Beneba Clarke. 

The most damning of these interactions occurs early in the book, during the young Maxine's first year of school. A well-meaning teacher has a ritual in her class, whereby each child, in turn, is nominated "Student of the Week", and the rest of the class writes "something nice" about that student on a card.

Maxine's card, returned to her at the end of the day, reads "Maxine is brown. Maxine has brown skin. Maxine has funny curly hair … Maxine is nice and Maxine is black…Maxine is brown and she does dancing.'' There's something awful in how terribly wrong such a simple exercise, with such young children, can turn out, let alone in how such comments can make someone feel so unrecognised, so unseen.

Other stories within the book outline a subtler, or less unambiguous kind of cruelty – a gymnastics teacher who scolds the young Maxine to tuck in her "rounded backside", a boyfriend's parents who try to start conversations about the attractiveness of "mixed-race babies", dermatologists and hairdressers who are ill-equipped to deal with dark skin and tightly-curled hair.

These incidents Clarke relates with a sense of humour and an eye for absurdity, and this skilful move offsets the horror of the more frequent kind of anecdote that makes up the majority of the book – descriptions of the very deliberate mockery and bullying levelled against her by classmates, and ignored or abetted by teachers in her school.

Clarke's descriptions of this schoolyard bullying – and the effect that it had on her – mean that The Hate Race is, in many ways, a book about the cruelty of school children, and the pack-mentality nastiness that is endured by any child who is different, or who stands out.

Set against this are lovely descriptions of Clarke's suburb, her home and its rituals – picking out a birthday cake from the Women's Weekly party cake book, gathering tadpoles in ice cream buckets at the local creek, shopping at the local K-Mart. Again, this speaks to Clarke's skill in balancing – the familiarity of these gestures make the particularities of her racialised experience all the more confronting.

Clarke is an assured and direct narrator, although at times, the perspective she grants to her younger self seems a bit too precocious. The most striking example occurs when her second-grade class discusses the "discovery" of Australia as a part of bicentennial celebrations. Clarke's narrator, here, is six or seven years old, but nonetheless canny enough to question the version of history her teacher is telling.

Clarke's suggestion is that she is particularly alert to the suffering of Indigenous Australians because of her own experiences of racism, but there's something deeply uncomfortable about this alignment that elides very real differences of historical context and oppression.

This is a strange discomfort, because one of the most exciting things about Clarke's writing is her ability to inhabit different perspectives, and to draw links between different histories and experiences – and thereby enlarge the kinds of stories we consider "ours".

This facility is clearly evident in her new collection of poems,Carrying the World, which covers some of the same territory as the memoir, alongside broader stories and encounters.

Here, the poem marngrook, about the racial vilification of the Indigenous AFL player Adam Goodes, acknowledges in its opening stanzas that the poet has "no traditional name/ or right/ or tongue for" Indigenous stories, but also describes her own ancestors as being "chained and stolen too". This is, of course, true – other poems in the collection attempt to come to terms with the long history of slavery that brought Clarke's ancestors to the Caribbean – but there's still something problematic about comparing this to Indigenous experience.

The strongest poems in Carrying the World are the most personal ones, which deal mostly with family – especially with motherhood, and with coming to terms with family history. Demerara sugar, for example, describes a research trip through England, weaving together observations, oral histories, and chant-like invocations of place-names and the products – sugar, molasses, coffee beans – produced by slaves.

Also powerful is nothing here needs fixing, which charts the breakdown of a relationship and establishment of a new home as a single mother, and is a beautiful meditation on grief, resilience and the joys found in small moments.

As a whole, however, Carrying the World is uneven. Many of the poems – including marngrook and imkarikaturaustralischdeutsch, where the bottom-tucking gymnastics teacher reappears – are written for and with the energy of performance poetry, but feel flat or awkward on the page.

Others, such as armageddon and i is the revolution offer endings that feel too neat and come across as moralising. This unevenness makes the collection somewhat disappointing, because the impact of the very powerful poems that it does contain is, inevitably, lessened.

Nonetheless, Carrying the World is impressive in its passion and vigour. Clarke's writing, in this collection and in The Hate Race alike, is fresh, and her voice is confident, and unlike anything else in our literary landscape. But the inconsistency and unevenness across both works do mean that they are vaguely unsatisfying, despite the urgency and energy that drives them.

Amazon.com: Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (9780679748199): John Ralston Saul: Books

Amazon.com: Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (9780679748199): John Ralston Saul: Books

Time for Treaty, By Tony McAvoy

Time for Treaty, By Tony McAvoy

Principles for a treaty based on fundamental human equality

On 30 March 2016 The Daily Telegraph ran the front-page headline ‘“WHITEWASH” UNSW rewrites history books to state Cook “invaded” Australia’. It had a large picture of Captain James Cook. The fact that the offending ‘guidebook’ was published by the University of New South Wales in 2012 and such guidebooks arede rigueur at most Australian universities did not inhibit the promotion of the story as news.

Nevertheless, the story did promote discussion of an issue that struggles to get any consideration in modern-day Australia. Indeed the absence of discussion surrounding the foundation of the colonies and their federation is surprising given the extraordinary resources and effort being put into the Recognise campaign. One would have thought that the drafting of amendments to provide for ‘recognition’ of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in the Constitution would, out of necessity, have to at least attempt to accurately (and truthfully) characterise the nature of the relationship at the assertion of sovereignty by the British Crown.

The various Aboriginal ‘nations’ of the Australian continent had been existing in relative peace for many thousands of years when Captain James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast for the British. Of course, Cook didn’t discover Australia but rather, for the purposes of the European powers, engaged in the hunt for new colonies and in Britain’s case a repository for its failing social order. He named it New South Wales.

Under the European laws prevailing in the 1770s, the claim to new lands was not perfected by the claim itself and could be subject to counter claim if not populated. It was the arrival of the First Fleet that is purported to have been the act of erecting and establishing the colony of New South Wales as a British colony. The absurdity of such a claim is made readily apparent when one considers the extent of the colony. It encompassed the whole of the Australian mainland and coastal islands as far west as the 135th meridian. As a ready reckoner, you could roughly draw a line from Milingimbi in Eastern Arnhem Land, south through Coober Pedy, to Elliston on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. If I may be permitted to labour the point, according to the British that means the arrival of eleven ships in the First Fleet, comprising 1350 people, on Gadigal land at the newly named Port Jackson effected acquisition for Britain of the territories of the Ngarakwal people at Byron Bay, the Wik on eastern Cape York, the Kalkadoon at Mt Isa, the Yolngu in Arnhem Land, the Arrernte at Alice Springs, the Ngarrandjeri at the Murray River mouth, the Barngarla on the Eyre Peninsula, and all territories in between.

For the vast majority of Aboriginal people in Australia, our cosmology has our ancestors coming from our lands as the original creator spirits or being given life by our creator spirits. Our creator spirits imbued the lands and waters and sky with our songs and stories. The Adnyamathanha people of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia do not call them ‘stories’; they say it is their ‘history’. That seems to me to be a wholly more appropriate translation into English of the relationship between us, our ancestors, our cosmology and our land.

The archaeologists confirm our belief that we have been here since time immemorial and the anthropologists confirm our understanding that our territorial boundaries were largely settled millennia before the British arrival. The land, having been invested with the songs and narratives of the creator spirits in one form, is not conducive to change. Our law and world view does not permit of the acquisition of rights in land by any means other than descent.

How then did the British acquire our lands by establishing a colony on the lands of the Gadigal? Under the British law of the day, it was possible to acquire the territories of other people by conquest, cession or settlement. The British claim that there was ‘settlement’ of our lands. ‘Settlement’ can only occur where the lands are ‘desert and uncultivated’. That does not mean uninhabited. Its meaning in the late eighteenth century involves an agrarian viewpoint of land management. The failure of the British to appreciate the complexity and sophistication of Aboriginal land- and resource-management techniques, whether deliberately denied or not, was an imperial necessity and, in time, may turn out to be a significant marker in the development or downfall of the human species. For it is clear that Aboriginal Australia, in the period immediately prior to the British invasions, was arguably the most refined form of sustainable human existence this world will ever see. Of course, it was not perfect and it was never going to be able to resist the catastrophic changes rippling out of Europe.

But the inevitability of European domination does not equate to rectitude.

Putting morality to one side, a purely objective analysis should remove all doubt in any informed person’s mind that Aboriginal people were subjected to invasion, genocidal practices and oppression perpetrated by or sanctioned by the state. In this case the ‘state’ is the British Crown, and later the colonial governments in the name of the British Crown, and eventually the federation and the colonial governments in the name of the British Crown.

The dual questions now are whether Australians and the Australian governments should do anything about it, and if the answer is yes, then what should be done.

*       *       *

The focus on the inaccuracy of the foundational aspects of the establishment of the British colonies in Australia is important from both a historical and a legal standpoint. But rather than get embroiled in legal argument about the effect of the invasion, it is far more relevant to present-day Australians to put the discussion in terms of the moral well-being of the country and its people.

The moral well-being of Australia is poorer for the failure to come to terms with the past. The response from certain media commentators about the UNSW guidebook indicates a nation with a chip on its shoulder. The reason for Australia’s moral ill health is not just those things that happened in the past but what is still occurring. As Chris Sarra has recently put it, there is an ongoing failure to respect our humanity, which thereby diminishes Australia’s own.

More specifically, Australia is living a historical lie. The very notion that the British could simply come and take our land and resources is understood by many if not most Australians to be lacking in respect for the fundamental principle of human equality. The notion of settlement of other people’s lands is now anachronistic. In Mabo the High Court said we cannot go back. But in circumstances in which Australia is one of the most affluent and modern First World countries and yet Aboriginal people are made to apply for the return of lands from the Crown, or to undergo the belittling legal hearings that comprise the native-title processes, the inequity bites hard. That is without descending into the ugliness that is Aboriginal social policy.

Many Australians understand this inequality. I think that they also understand that the truth will, in a sense, set them free. We in Aboriginal Australia suffer some form of intergenerational post-traumatic stress disorder, and the rest of Australia suffers from a guilty conscience. Our responses are emotive and reveal the hurt and humiliation we continue to suffer, and the Australian governments are trapped by a perceived need to deny the truth in an effort to assuage the guilt of the denialists who vote.

The answer to the first question is ‘yes’: we, both Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal Australians, need to do something about this fundamental flaw in the national foundations and we should begin now. It should not be left until the debate about an Australian republic gathers speed. A modern Australia needs a modern relationship with those of us who were dispossessed and on whose dispossession the nation has been built over and over again.

However, I do not see the present Recognise campaign and proposed referendum to amend the Australian Constitution as dependent upon resolution of the broader relationships. The concept of recognition of the prior existence of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders in the Australian Constitution and the correction of the record regarding the purported acquisition of the Australian continent for the British Crown are no doubt closely related to each other. But it should be remembered that whatever constitutional reform occurs as a result of the present Recognition campaign, it will only be a step along the path to a more equitable future, not an arrival at the factual, moral and legal endpoint.

In my view the simplest and most elegant solution to a very complicated scenario is to enter into an overarching national treaty framework agreement that is secured by statute, followed by individual or regional treaties.

The most important reasons for such a structure are:

• If agreements are to be comprehensive and final they must involve both the relevant colonial government or governments and the federation;
• The government needs certainty that the process is not going to lead to a claim for secession;
• The First Nations need certainty that the process guarantees certain outcomes.

Aboriginal Australia would need to develop a representative body holding a mandate to negotiate an agreement such as the proposed national framework.

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Logically, the process of creating a national treaty framework agreement could be commenced by an invitation from the First Nations to the federal and state governments to indicate the willingness of the Assembly of First Nations and its members to enter into negotiations based on certain broad parameters. The most critical of these parameters would be:

• An admission by the Australian colonies and federation that the Australian continent was not ‘settled’;
• A corresponding agreement by the First Nations that, notwithstanding that the colonies did not acquire legitimate sovereignty by the act of establishing the penal colony of New South Wales, a form of practical sovereignty has been acquired in the years since;
• Agreement by all that the colonies and federation are burdened to varying degrees by a contested sovereignty;
• Agreement that the contested sovereignty can only be resolved by agreements entered into by First Nations with the federal and relevant state governments; and
• An expression of the desire by all to reach a final settlement of all matters arising from the contested sovereignty.

Within those broad parameters the governments of the colonies and the federation could negotiate a framework agreement with a national First Nations representative body. Canada went down the final-settlement path many decades ago. Review of the final agreements entered into in Canada give us insight into the subject matter that needs to be addressed if we are truly to draw a line under the past and work towards a new future. The subject matter includes the entitlement to lands, waters and resources; the entitlement to compensation and reparations; the entitlement to benefit sharing from resource use; self-determination; tax relief; security of social welfare benefits and support services; and the resources to enter into negotiations on an equal footing.

In my view the aim should be to negotiate this framework agreement over the next few years. Once negotiated, individual First Nations or groups of First Nations would then be able to express a willingness to negotiate according to the agreed process. The process would be drafted in such a way as to ensure that any treaty that has already been entered into could be accommodated, such as that which might result from the Victorian government’s recent commitment to attempt to negotiate a treaty with the Aboriginal peoples of south-east Australia.

The ultimate aim for all participants in the process should be to arrive at a position where there is certainty about the past, and a path to social and cultural prosperity for First Nations and citizens of those nations.

For my part, the most difficult part of the process is describing success. I have some idea of what a successful transition from colonial oppression might look like for my people, the Wiri of central Queensland. It will not look like our ancestors’ pre-colonial lives. But I would like to think that my people will be rich in our culture; free from the trauma that haunts us; possessed of some of our lands; joint decision-makers in resource- and environmental-management issues; beneficiaries of royalties from development that we have agreed to; and able to afford, and be in a position to receive, the best education available.

The real dilemma we will have to face as peoples is whether we promote the pursuit of individual wealth and all that that entails. As Noel Pearson has recently stated in relation to the Queensland government’s latest restrictions on native-vegetation clearing, Aboriginal people also have a right to develop. He is correct. Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides that all human beings have the right to economic development as an expression of their right to self-determination. How we balance that human right against obligations to protect our country, obligations to kin and obligations to act sustainably, I am not sure. Do we give in to the Western gods of growth and material wealth, concluding that the old ways that are very deeply ingrained in our societies and culture must be abandoned or put to one side? Noel Pearson often cites modern Japan as evidence of a society that moved from a largely agrarian model to a thriving First World economic success while maintaining all of its cultural identity. I appreciate the point that is being made, but I say that the very things that make us culturally different are those that are embedded in our social equality and sustainability.

This is a discussion, along with many others, we need to focus on within the broader Aboriginal community. We must develop methods, processes and models that First Nations can adopt or discard as they please. Such is the fierce independence of each nation and clan that none will accept any form of edict.

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Rather conveniently, this brings me back to the discussion regarding the need for a body to advocate nationally for a framework agreement and negotiate the content of that agreement should the governments be brought to the table, which is looking at least possible in light of the Victorian government’s announcement and the Queensland premier’s ready admission of colonial invasion.

Over recent years there has been discussion at the annual National Native Title Conferences about the creation of a national Assembly of First Nations. These discussions have led to the establishment of a working group consisting of a number of people having interest in pursuing such a body. The working group consists of Mick Gooda (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner), Geoff Scott (CEO of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples), Mark McMillan (law lecturer at Melbourne University), Valerie Cooms (member of the National Native Title Tribunal and chair of the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation (RNTBC)), Robynne Quiggin (formerly CEO of the Australian Indigenous Governance Institute and now at the Australian Human Rights Commission) and Janine Gertz (a Gugu Badhun and Ngadjon-jii woman). I am also a member of that working group.

I have drafted a charter for the assembly and presented the draft at numerous native-title and Indigenous legal conferences. There have been various meetings over the last three years driving the establishment of an Assembly of First Nations along. It is not a new name or idea. There is a Canadian version bearing the same name. However, the structure of the proposed Assembly of First Nations mirrors that of the United Nations in a number of important respects. First, it will respect the sovereignty of the member nations. Secondly, declarations and conventions will gain force by a majority vote at a meeting of the general assembly. And finally, individual First Nations will only be bound by such declarations or conventions if they ratify the instrument domestically. Each First Nation will be entitled to have a delegate attend the meetings and exercise a vote.

There are two other critical features of the Assembly of First Nations. They are that the body must be independently funded, and that it should not be incorporated.

Government funding is antithetical to the objectives of the assembly. In my view we are now in a position to fund our political representatives ourselves. The most readily available sources of funding are a share of royalties and for a small levy to be added to each native-title compensation agreement. The proceeds would be paid to a trust that would fund the meetings and a small administrative arm.

Finally, in answer to a question I am often asked by non-Indigenous Australians—‘What can I, a non-Aboriginal person, do?’—there is one simple thing that can be done at this point in time. Your help is needed to overcome the threshold issue, which is the political recognition that Australia was not settled. The whole construct that other peoples’ territories can be acquired depends for its legitimacy on the notion of a stratified humanity.

The threshold will have been crossed when the prime minister and a sufficient number of the state premiers accept that Australia was not settled. From there we should move to negotiation mode. So, my answer to that question is that non-Aboriginal Australians can reject the notion of settlement as part of our national dialogue. When somebody raises it in conversation, tell them that the British did not settle Australia. When a politician refers to Australia being settled, respond to them, call them out on it, ring their electorate office, and write to their party leader. Whenever it appears in written form or online, write to the authors or publishers.

The use of the term ‘settled’ is a horrendous euphemism that for many smooths out the jagged reality of Australia’s past. I refuse to characterise those events in the language of the eighteenth-century British Empire. That language only serves to legitimise a brutal and inhumane past. I say that the British and Australian governments owe us far more than they can ever repay (à la Bernie Sanders’ election commitment to the Aboriginal people of the United States). Therefore, it makes no difference how they characterise our invasion.

The term ‘settlement’ really is insulting and dehumanising. Once that lie has been put to rest, the remainder of the roadblocks to a proper reckoning should tumble.