Trudy & Rod Bray
Fri, 08 Sep 2000 01:30:47 -0700
Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,SAV-0009060232,00.html
ABORIGINES WANT SHARE OF OLYMPIC STAGE
By Uli Schmetzer
Tribune Foreign Correspondent
September 06, 2000
BOTANY BAY, Australia By the eucalyptus trees on the bay where the first
white man landed to claim Australia for the British Crown, Kevin Buzzacott
of the Arabunna people fueled a fire that has been smoldering Down Under
for two centuries.
His flames have kindled the passion of tens of thousands of aboriginal
people, moderates and radicals alike, who want to turn the Olympics that
start next week into a platform for lost land rights and better treatment.
They also demand an apology for past crimes white Australia committed
against its indigenous population.
The Sydney Games, already lambasted for their exorbitant corporate
sponsorship and commercial greed, may become the Games during which a
forgotten native people moves into the limelight along with the gold medal
winners.
In the beginning "Uncle Kevin's" fire was only a symbolic gesture for
reconciliation between white and black Australia. Today it has become a
rallying cry for the remnants of an Aborigine population whose voice rarely
is heard or taken seriously in world forums.
The flame, carried in a long-burning native hardwood, was lit in early June
during a ritual ceremony of tribal elders at central Lake Eyre and carried
on foot by the 68-year-old Buzzacott for 86 days and 1,500 miles across the
continent to this lush National Park an hour's drive south of Sydney.
There it flickers as a log fire, a reminder of precolonial days when tribal
messengers walked across the country, sometimes for years, to carry the
fire of peace and friendship to other tribes. It was a time, Buzzacott
says, when "fire was our totem, our peace offering. It warmed our hearts,
our souls and stilled our pains. With fire we called on our ancient
spirits, and fire overcame hard times."
Ferried into towns by police escorts, his walkabout almost came to the same
dramatic end many of his ancestors experienced when they crossed tribal
lands seized by white settlers. At Farms Downs Station at Mulyungary, a
farm half the size of Switzerland, he claimed the station managers
threatened to shoot him and set the dogs on him and his companions if they
tried to cross their property.
"Of course I made a detour. Mate, these were the kind of people who
would've pulled the trigger," he said.
Today the fire he lit is also burning at an aboriginal tent camp outside
Parliament in Canberra and in Victoria Park, next to Sydney University,
places he visited to spread the flame.
In Sydney nearly 100 Aborigines are living in igloo-type tents and hovels
under a sign: "Aboriginal Tent Embassy." A totem pole pays tribute to the
heroic Eora people whose land was what is now Sydney. Their chief,
Pemulwuy, fought a guerrilla war against the British settlers from 1788
until 1802, before he was caught and killed.
The campers are the vanguard of an expected 100,000 Aborigines and their
supporters who are determined to make their voices heard during the
Olympics, one way or the other.
"Our country is sick, and the healing should be done here, right on this
spot where it all started," said Buzzacott, a tribal elder who is famous as
a healer. "From the time of [white] landing the country became sick. They
took away our kids. They knocked off our medicine and our bush trees and
replaced them with their own plants. They cut our land open for their
mines, dumped waste in our deserts. Oh, mate, there's a lot of sickness out
there, and all I want is people to think about that and talk about it."
But fires can burn out of control. The government has given the Aborigines
a permit to protest near Sydney's airport, but radicals want to take their
cause right into the Olympic Village.
"To really protest you need to do it in an illegal manner and not one
that's totally coordinated by police and nice and clean," said activist
Murrandoo Yanner.
As Australia made the final preparations for the Sept. 15 Olympics, the
United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination added
fuel to Buzzacott's fire of peace by criticizing Canberra for its treatment
of aborigines and asylum seekers.
The unexpected criticism was a cold shower for a nation brimming with
confidence after weathering the Asian economic meltdown without major
damage. Australians today seek a global role after their nation's troops
successfully led a UN peacekeeping mission in East Timor. The Olympics are
the crown jewel in the country's newly acquired self-confidence.
"Right now we might act like a mob of 5-year-olds at a party. I just hope
the present government has enough sense not to let things get out of hand,"
said Richard Laidlaw, a senior political adviser for the opposition party.
The opposite may be happening.
Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government, already notorious for
refusing to apologize to Aborigines for the Stolen Generation debacle that
started in the 1930s and continued through the '70s, during which
aboriginal children were taken from their parents, bluntly told the UN it
was meddling in Canberra's internal affairs. UN human-rights committees no
longer would be welcome in Australia, the government said.
"We'll only agree to visits to Australia by UN treaty committees and
requests for information where there is a compelling reason to do so," said
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. This was a few days before Downer joined
Western nations in condemning the Myanmar government for rights violations
against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The dilemma of how to deal with native anger has divided the country.
Intellectuals attacked Canberra's double standards in decrying rights
violations in other countries while rejecting criticism at home. Others
applauded the government for rejecting UN criticism of what they called
minor rights violations.
"Its time someone told the UN, `You go off and lecture North Korea and
other members who have no rule of law. Then come back to us,'" said Laidlaw.
Canberra's newly acquired bunker mentality became even more evident when
the government proposed a law authorizing the prime minister to call in
troops to shoot and kill unauthorized protesters, a pointed warning for
those who see the Olympics as a launching pad for expressing their grievances.
In the early days, as in America, settlers simply killed or scared away the
animist nomads who had lived thousands of years in symbiosis with the vast
continent.
Today Australia's remaining 430,000 Aborigines make up only 2.3 percent of
the population. Many of them consider the Olympics their last chance to
lobby the world for their survival, their rights and redress.
Once considered part of the country's flora and fauna and thus worth
preserving--like kangaroos, koalas and wattle trees--Aborigines were
granted full citizenship in 1969. This included the right to vote and the
right to be served alcohol in bars, called pubs in Australia. The prone
bodies of drunken natives in parks and outside pubs have reinforced white
racial prejudice.
To overcome a plethora of minor thefts, often inspired by inebriation,
judges were ordered to impose mandatory jail sentences for all offenses
against property. Nearly all the offenders were Aborigines, and many of
those imprisoned hanged themselves in their cells because, accustomed to
open spaces, they couldn't bear being locked up.
Both the UN and international human-rights organizations have lobbied
Australia for years to scrap the mandatory sentencing practice, which
contravenes international legal norms that specify there must be equality
before the law.
Amid the pre-Olympic hype, Sydney columnist Mike Carlton probably summed up
the case of Australia's black population when he wrote: "Our record on
aboriginal human rights is appalling . . . It is a plain fact that in 2000,
a prosperous nation which can find $2 billion-plus for Olympic sporting
facilities cannot guarantee even a clean water supply to many black
communities."
--
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