222 years ago the conquistadors of the First Fleet issued an eviction notice to the Aboriginal people. Since then not a day has gone by where the first inhabitants of this land have been free from attempts to obliterate their identity and culture. The Northern Territory Intervention Emergency Response, the gentrification of Redfern, Rudd's disengenuous and cheap “Sorry”, the unrelenting harassment, brutality, imprisonment, and murders by the police, the clear systematic repression, is nothing less than the continuity of institutionalised genocide and marginalisation of the Aboriginal people.
In June 2007 the “Little Children Are Sacred” report was the catalyst for a so called "emergency response" by the state, the NT Intervention. The state and media eagerly projected an image where alcohol and sexual abuse were rampant in Aboriginal communities. How convenient that the arch plutocrats with their proven record of compassion for Aboriginals found this moment to respond to this “emergency”.
In fact the the details of the “emergency response bill” had been devised long before the “Little Children Are Sacred” inquiries had even begun. The mining industry is in collaboration with the state to remove Aboriginal communities from areas of the Northern Territory where profitable deposits of uranium have been discovered so that they can take the land and expand their destructive practices. The report has been used as a smokescreen to validate the repressive measures of the intervention- ridiculous fines, increased imprisonment, forced relocation, income management (forcing people to convert to capitalist ways of exchange, benefit cards instead of money so they cant collectivise their paltry wages and payments) in short making life unbearable. It is a blatant racist attack on indigenous people, not applying to those of European background. However this is also a experiment in more universal social control as aspects of this income management are intended to be extended to all people on the dole and pensioners.
When governments and other mediators talk of reconciliation and apologies they are seeking to conclude the issue, as Rudd says to “put behind us the history wars and the culture wars”, they are demanding our silence. Of course they want an end to the crises, the conflicts, and the dissension- the better to push forward the process of integration. What could be more offensive than to be invited to the negotiation table with those who have tried to wipe a people from the face of the planet by stealing children, stealing land, erasing language and culture, spreading disease, committing rape and mass murder? And who continue to exercise genocidal policies while showing on their face the sweet smile of social democracy.
The new proposed bureaucracy, the Aboriginal Congress of First Nations is a construction of the colonialist court and parliament to somehow incorporate legitimate indigenous demands and interests into their illegitimate legal system. It is no different then the previously dismantled ATSIC whose leadership consistently sold out the people they supposedly represented. Reconciliation is a mechanism of assimilation and genocide.The process of assimilation is about taming the recalcitrant members of Aboriginal society and coercing them to adopt the culture of wage slavery and an atomised existance alienated from the traditional more communal way of life.
A further measure of the state's strategy for dealing with “the Aboriginal Question” can be observed occuring in inner city neighbourhoods such as Redfern (where there has historically been a large Aboriginal population) which is being rapidly gentrified. Property speculation is increased, rents go up, policing intensifies and the population is displaced and evicted. The most uncontrollable and alienated elements are removed from the city centre in order to isolate and disperse them, creating a sterile peaceful environment where the bourgeousie and institutions of capital can smoothly go about their administration of society, free of the disturbance of class conflict.
The clashes with police in redfern in February 2004, and later that same year the burning and destruction of the local police station and court by the residents of Palm Island were justified and honourable outpours of social rage. Society was forced for a brief moment to take notice of the voice of Aboriginal people. A rupture was created, the delusion of social consensus was shattered, which the mass media's and some self proclaimed “community leaders” were quick to condemn, silence, and pacify using their usual propaganda attacks and pleas for a return to normality.
To prostrate oneself before the most barbaric and brutal criminals and killers, appealing to their moralism and pleading for "justice", is the worst degredation and an indignity we refuse to submit to. The path to a free society is through total revolution and social war against the state and its repressive institutions. We do not speak in terms of such and such a policy, or this law, or that politician, because we recognise that the appalling circumstances that Aboriginal people face are part of the totality of state control and repression, and to single out these elements creates the illusion that perhaps through reformation there is hope for change. We do not ask for reason or dialogue with the state because we know it is incapable of such civility, it know onlys coercion and violence, and we want nothing less than its destruction.
The only "independence" offered by capitalism is the fantastic autonomy granted by the market (i.e. none at all) no matter what flag happens to fly over the places of exploitation, or skin colour of the overseer.
As anarchists our struggle is for life, freedom and dignity- against death, enslavement and humiliation; a struggle for social and individual emancipation, without hierarchy and against any form of exploitation and oppression. In the defiance of Aboriginal people against colonialism we can recognize each other; and so it is with workers, students, migrants and refugees, and in every part of society and in any place that resists and threatens the existing condition. Moreover, it is our responsibility to act in solidarity and collectively defend ourselves from the attacks of the state and its lackeys, to continue fighting in political terms, as a movement and as a community, resisting in diverse forms.
State terrorism continues and along with it, continues the struggle for a free world, without authority.
- Open Anarchist/Antiauthoritarian Assembly for Aboriginal Solidarity
NO RECONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIALISTS, WAR AGAINST THE WAR OF THE STATE
SOLIDARITY WITH THE ABORIGINAL STRUGGLE