Blood

Dana writes about her world all the time and as far as I am concerned she is Lakota brought up with the ways, learning the customs she is as fully Lakota as you can get but a certain anonymous poster on her blog is saying that she cannot possibly be as "Indian" as they are because she isn't full blood well I say rubbish to that
The amount of blood coursing through your veins of any particular race has nothing to do with it, its the culture that makes you who you are.
An Aboriginal living in the city who doesn't know the culture is less Aboriginal than another living and breathing the culture. The Aboriginal people were massacred and killed too, the children taken away in an effort by the government at the time to 'thin' out the blood there are many half blood Aboriginal people here but it doesn't make them any less Aboriginal than a full blood in fact depending on where they live how much they have learned about their culture and history possibly more. A city dweller wouldn't know the dances, how to collect food or the culture and rules of their own society as they have been brought up in a white culture.

I've become Australian now lived here for 34 years I'm no longer English don't ask me who the prime minister of England is , don't ask me to speak French either apart from hello as I can't but I do have very distant French ancestors
Don't call me a 'convict' because I'm not, not all Australian settlers where convicts some, like my relatives in Tasmania where free settlers (1880's) even though Tasmania was a penal colony my relatives were NOT convicts
and Dana is not any less Lakota because of the amount of blood in her veins its culture, community and surroundings that make you who you are not blood

What's in a name

Visitors

What’s in a name A 360° Writers Challenge Australia is covered in things that “taste good” those are the labels that the First People gave those things obviously not the ones that the colonists gave them but everything had to have a name Australia was called Terra Australis Incognita or the unknown land of the south in latin at first. That was the label given to Australia the nameWhat's the first thing someone asks you when you meet them? What is your name. When someone has a baby, you ask what did you call it, the name is crucial to our society everything has to have a name. If I mention CocaCola you would recognize it, that’s a name brand along with Kellogs and Kraft all recognizable instantly, you can see them in your mind. (The pictures are in your mind) What would we do if that sweet tasting brown fizzy drink had been called something else maybe The Brown Fluid do you think anyone would drink it? This is where the name is important as important to the retail industry as well as consumers, they could have named Coca Cola “Tastes Like Chicken” but everything tastes like chicken, the name had to set it apart of course it did help that Coca Cola or Coke did once have cocaine in it (9 milligrams per glass) why do you think it tasted so good. So it got called called Coca Cola , diet, lite, vanilla or cherry its Coca Cola today and it still has coca leaves or cocaine in it. See a name is important you could have “sweatshop” printed on your shoes but would they still be recognizable as Nikes’ ? You could rename the Yankee Stadium to Coke Park would it still be as recognizable as the famous baseball park that it is?

The Fence

Touchy Subject..take2 June 24, 2006

I wrote this last month after Eddo asked me
in my question me
post “Do you have any aborigine neighbors?” and it’s very difficult to explain
the Aboriginal situation here in anything less than a whole blog

The aboriginal situation

This is serious stuff if you want to leave now its ok
with me

This is a touchy subject here; Australia has a reputation
for being a racist country, I don’t care what colour you are you can be green
with pink spots for all I care, it don’t matter what colour you are on the
outside we are all red blood cells and pink on the inside and it’s what we are
like on the inside that counts

I am a white person living in a land that once belonged
to a people who have no sense of ownership of the land, why??? because
they are one with it, the land was a part of them and in many places in
Australia it still is but not so many places now .Aborigines were nomadic they
moved around, they traded, drew maps, have religion (Dreamtime) but didn’t wear
much specially in the hotter places, the ones that lived in the cooler climates
did don’t you?
Then the white man arrived in his big ships with guns and disease
and some strange language, when they came across the people who lived on this
big brown land and asked “what do you call this animal” the reply was “good
eating” or “tastes great” or stood and pointed to a tree and asked “what’s that”
the reply was “tree you idiot” eucalyptus doesn’t literally mean “tree you
idiot” but that happened a lot

Many Aborigines dislike the
terms 'Aborigine' and 'Aboriginal' since these terms have been foisted on them,
and they carry a lot of negative cultural baggage. Not surprisingly, they have
looked for alternative words, and instead of `Aborigine' they prefer to use the
word for a 'person' from a local language. When the Europeans arrived here there
were about 250 languages spoken in Australia this of course was frowned upon by
the government and they where made to speak English, a lot of the languages have
been lost forever only a few words remain
Kylie in the “local” language
means boomerang that’s why every time we throw Kylie away she keeps coming
back

Most aboriginals are poor
because they don’t own anything it’s a cultural thing; they are given
cars, housing and money by the government mainly because the government feels
guilty and so they should too. This was their country and the white fella took
it away either by disease (there was no typhoid or TB or even diabetes amongst
the aboriginal population before the white man arrived) or gun fire and up till
the 1970’s the policy was to take children of “mixed” heritage away from their
culture and their mothers so they could grow up in the white mans way. I actually went to primary
school with someone who was what we call “half caste” If you haven’t seen the
movie “Rabbit Proof Fence” sometimes billed as "Long Walk Home" you
should, it explains the lost generation in much more detail than I
can

The Rabbit Proof
fence

The city dwelling “black fella” may have a few broken down cars on
the front lawn, there maybe 7 or 8 children running around even a few dogs .I
say may have as in all countries there are the people who live in the
run down parts of town and those who don’t

Of course when you get given something you don’t really appreciate it and then
there is the cultural thing too, we live like we have lived for hundreds of
years in houses, in Africa there are people living in shanties and in huts .In
America you have Chinatown’s, there’s a Chinatown here it’s in Sydney.
Cabramatta and Redfern are suburbs where everyone there is from the same
background .The “government housing” is in the poorer areas that’s where the
single mothers live, that’s where the unemployed live that’s where most of the
aboriginals live . Some don’t they own property (on paper they own) they have
vast tracts of land, big houses even fame and gold medals same as anyone else,
not all that long ago it was considered to be bad to say you where of aboriginal
descent, same as it was to say your ancestors were transported, no one wanted to
admit to their heritage but now when we have people like Cathy Freeman and Ernie
Dingo proud Australians who are proud of their heritage .People can stand up for
their rights and teach their children the language or the culture and not be
punished for it, many years ago the government the “authorities” tried to wash
away the people who were here first, believe it or not the “lost generations”
where taken in an effort to breed out the aboriginality in people it didn’t work !

Everlyn Sampi and Tianna Sansbury in The Rabbit Proof Fence

To explain
this further say someone comes up to you one day and says I really like your
hand oh and the arm that goes with it, here’s some bits of paper, I’ll live on
your hand but you can’t touch your hand with any other part of your body ever
again .Would you go yeah sure live on my hand I don’t need it or why are you
trying to buy my hand you cant buy a piece of me as I don’t own it in the first
place I can’t own myself . Then they say well ok then you don’t want that deal
but I still want your hand how about some blankets and some sugar, you like
those oh and sorry but those little tiny parts of you, you cant have those
either I’ll have those and I’m going to have your hand weather you like it or
not. Ok, ok you say you can live on my hand but it’s still a part of me and
connected to me and as I have no permanent housing can you give me that but as I
don’t own anything I wont really care if the house falls down or burns as I will
do as I have done for millions of years, just move, and you will give me another as you have done so many things to me

Sorry about the change in font colours and sizes in this its a re-post from 360 and the html isn't coping to well with the change in blog hosts

Aboriginal kids must learn English says government

This made me furious it really did, ok so to be able to cope in today’s society you should speak some semblance of the language of the country that you live in.
If you live in China you should be able to speak Chinese or Russia or France where ever, you can’t get a job ask where the toilet is if people can’t understand you.
The thing is we live in Australia, John Howard the prime minister lives in Australia he should be able to speak at least one Aboriginal dialect after all English is not the language of the people who live here, who lived here for thousands of years before the white man, many different languages are one of which is the Koorii language
Now Mr.Broughs argument is that not many people speak an Aboriginal language so the Aboriginals should speak English, well I say this if all the schools across the country taught at least one aboriginal dialect, the language of the people of Australia then everyone would know it and be fluent and Australia would be a truly multilingual society.
There are different versions of Indian languages; different Chinese languages even some parts of England people speak a totally different language
They don’t force the indigenous people of India to speak English not anymore, they can learn it if they want but they learn their own language as well, everyone in the whole county does, the people of India are truly multilingual.
New Zealand has programmes set up for the schools to teach the Mauri language and culture, they are teaching their children how to embrace the indigenous culture
Australia isn’t a 3rd word country why then is the government basically taking a step backwards in time? We should be embracing the culture not destroying it. These children in the outback aborigional communities aren't even learning thier own culture because of cut-backs and the government wants to force them to learn english its just so very wrong.

Now I will say this if you come here from another country you should be able to speak the language, myself as an immigrant to this country many years ago I had to learn to speak "aussie" and that does include many Aborigional words and words that only aussies use like coorong, kangaroo, woolongong, ice-block, lollies, mince and thongs. You should learn the language of the country that you live in and here it happens to be mainly English...well kind of.

Aboriginal kids must learn English
May 25, 2007 10:20am
Article from: News.com.au

Indigenous people 'must speak English'
School non-attendance punished by welfare cuts

INDIGENOUS people had no hope of being part of mainstream Australian society unless they could speak English, Prime Minister John Howard said today.

Mr Howard backed a proposal by Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough to ensure indigenous children in remote communities learned English, and said the best way to ensure they became proficient in the language was to send them to school.
Mr Brough is drawing up a Cabinet proposal that would require indigenous parents to ensure their children attended school or risk losing welfare payments.
He said today there was a lot of support from Aboriginal communities for the plan.
Mr Howard said: "Indigenous people have no hope of being part of the mainstream of this country unless they can speak the language of this country.
"If you require them to go to school they'll have to learn English."
The children of non-English speaking immigrants learnt English through their contact with the school system and so should indigenous children, Mr Howard said.
"In the case of indigenous people, none of them come to Australia as mature-aged people. They were all born in this country, in that sense they're different from migrants," he said.
"The children of Chinese and Vietnamese immigrants are forced to learn English because they go to school. Equally, Aboriginal children should learn English because they should be required to go to school."

Mr Brough told today's The Australian newspaper that Aboriginal people should follow the example of Greek and Italian migrants and become bilingual.
He said this - coupled with a "basic grasp" of mathematics and improved school attendance - would allow Aboriginal children living in deprived communities to find work and economic independence.
"Most of the children (in many communities) don't speak any semblance of English," Mr Brough said.
"So what chance have they got?"
"They speak the language that in many cases only a handful of people do," Mr Brough said.

Mr Brough's proposal was met with amazement by NSW's first Aboriginal MP, Linda Burney.
"I think that he needs to understand that culture and country is incredibly important to Aboriginal people and they will be protected at all costs," she said on ABC radio.
"Aboriginal kids do need to be bilingual but it's a bit rich coming from a person who actually is part of a government that took away funding for bilingual programs in the Northern Territory."

Read and then scroll down to the bottom of the page

Sometimes you just get presents out of the blue for no reason at all you just get them and the other day well I got one its at the bottom of the page here, pretty neat huh
Susan made that for me pretty cool I recon

Oh you want to see something really scary?

That really old looking fella is my X he's 46
He allways was a bit grey he had a grey streak when I met him when he was 25 but geeze now he's totally grey.

I've been asking people on 360 how old he is and only ZFrog and Jeepers have come close most are saying in the 60's

Here is a very small badly scanned wedding picture (1986)
Yes he IS dark in that photo

Can't find the picture that I wanted a family one, one of those proffessional ones he isn't so dark on that, it has to be on disk somewhere as I won't have uploaded it because the kids are small on it doesn't matter I'll find it later
No he's not Aborigional well don't think so anyway have my suspicions that his grandfather was part Aborigional though as when the family tree was recearched they came to a full stop at grandad but granma could be traced back for like 10 generations
See if grandad was adopted (read one of the stolen generation of Aborigional children) then they wouldn't find anything would they and I've seen a picture of him and well he's very dark and ol Kenny boy (my X) has an uncle who is the spitting image of him he looks Aborigional as well so it wouldn't suprise me
Grandad would have been born in about the right time frame but there is no way of finding out not now
Both my X and my daughter go very dark after about 5 mins outside I burn my son burns they go tanned very tanned as you can see, he's very tanned looks funny in the summer time as its only his arms up to his elbows and his face and neck the rest of him is white and now his hair matches .
I shouldn't laugh at the poor old bugger he's only 6 years older than me I'm grey myself now but damn not THAT grey