Relations between Australians who immigrated from other continents (both Europe and Asia) and Aboriginal Australians don't fit into neat white-formulated US categories about race. Nor are "blackfellas" (polite Australian usage for Aboriginal people of both sexes) analogous to Native peoples in the US. Brutally put, more blackfellas and blackfellas' culture survived whitefellas' massacres, at least outside the cities, than in the USA. This is particularly true in the remote west and north where we traveled. I'm not going to claim to understand the social conditions we saw -- but anyone attuned to issues of white supremacy and oppression can hardly ignore that something ugly has happened here.
And so, here's another Gordon Hookey painting that his simply a hoot. Titled "Xanthorrhoea takes over suburban backyard" it captures white suburban nightmares about the surrounding, possibly encroaching, native environment.
"Here the 'Australian dream' of the quarter acre block, complete with all the requisite trimmings, has been infiltrated by xanthorrhoea shrubs. This native plant is more generically known as 'grass trees' or 'spear grass.'"
You can kind of understand the fear given what's happening in South Africa. When you suppress a people, take advantage of them for your gain, you better hope they never end up with more power than you. I wonder if there is any way out of such past abuses that don't end up with new abuses.
ReplyDeleteAgree Rain -- doing justice when oppression has been murderous is not easy.
ReplyDeleteBut having actually worked in South Africa during the transition to majority rule, I have to take issue with that part of your comment. I know Tucker Carlson has been passing along stories of white landowners threatened and suffering land seizures; President Nitwit inevitably picked up on it since it fits his racist narrative. But in fact (see this from Axios, a frequently pro-Trump source,) this is fearful white conspiracy theorizing. South Africa is more than little a mess, but so far it has remained predominantly a rule of law society despite a terrible history of cruelty and inequality.
I did have sources where I had read it was a fear. Tucker wasn't one of them lol
ReplyDeleteRemember, the blacks were not first to South Africa. That was the Boers. But when might makes right, it doesn't matter about history and definitely for a long time the whites did act in less than honorable ways. Where I had read that some claimed deaths, this is more about land transfer.
If you own land (we do) where originally there were Native Americans, might you have concern... It's kind of arbitrary how this works out-- One article Farm seizures. I think it relates to Zimbabwe and how that worked out..
It's funny how we operate as humans and most of it in the end is not, in the long run, not even good for those thinking they are cheating someone else. Karma
One more answer to Rain: Get real. Yes, there is a white-settler mythology that South Africa was empty in the 1500s when Dutch people (later called Boers) got there and the Zulus were just arriving from the north. And it is anthropological bullshit. Though groups of people moved around, Africans have been in Africa (and their descendants everywhere else) since a bipedal hominid wandered out of the Rift Valley or possibly modern day South Africa. The idea that South Africa was a land without people just waiting for the Boers is simply bullshit.
ReplyDeleteFriend, you've been eating drivel.
Justice is hard, but South Africa at least tries, even if, like us, it often fails.
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ReplyDeleteMy familial tremors are particularly bad this morning, which is why I had a mistake that made me have to trash what I'd written to correct it here... I hope
ReplyDeleteI wrote something about mccain that presented two facts that opposed each other. We usually pick what suits our preconceived opinion. I actually had none on when people ended up settling South Africa. I do on taking land from those who currently work and own it. I imagine it might differ from yours. On our land in Oregon Native American tribes traveled through and spent time seasonally. Would that make their claim to it more valid than our deed? Settling and traveling through are not the same thing but even those in this country, who had settled an area, lost it when more powerful interests wanted it. I would guess that explains today in South Africa with the concept that a current generation should get what an earlier generation didn't. Socialism likes this idea better than capitalism.
As for what I've been eating, my mistake was commenting on what happens when a downtrodden culture takes power as it's all I really was interested in. I've often found it's a mistake to add in something that doesn't matter that much to me.
And I do not watch tucker Carlson nor do I get presidential tweets. The few times I've tried with Tucker his arguing with liberals gets to me fast. So my thinking on the farmers probably came from The Guardian with pieces like this South Africa and Australia tiff. I did though just look at who settled it first and looks like it was the Dutch with slaves... Considering we all evolved from sites, some in South Africa, maybe we can all lay claim... Yes, I didn't say that seriously in case that becomes an issue.
the more I read on Africa, the more I regretted putting a comment here. If it wasn't that I'd then have three removals, I'd have removed it. My information has mostly come from newspaper accounts of other countries also removing farmers; movies; fiction books where who knows which piece is true; more recently newspaper accounts that the government there wants to replace white farmers; a friend (white) who worked there at one time; and the high general crime rate (which was Oscar Pistorius' defense or attempted defense) but that it doesn't just target white farmers. At any rate-- mea culpa.
ReplyDeleteDear Rain -- got to say, I appreciate your working at finding info on this, as I do. Let's drop this one for the moment. :-)
ReplyDelete"Relations between Australians who immigrated from other continents (both Europe and Asia) and Aboriginal Australians don't fit into neat white-formulated US categories about race. Nor are "blackfellas" (polite Australian usage for Aboriginal people of both sexes) analogous to Native peoples in the US."
ReplyDeleteLikewise for relations between Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians.