Goodooga, northwest NSW, 5 December 09 -- Aboriginal political activist Michael Anderson is calling for a national get-together early in the new year to “talk of a new way”.
Mr Anderson is the last survivor of the four Black Power men who set up the Aboriginal embassy in Canberra in 1972. The leader of the 3,000 Euahlayi was also involved in Walgett with the “Freedom Ride” through rural New South Wales in the early 1960s with the late Charles Perkins.
“We must now set the agenda, not [Prime Minister] Kevin Rudd and [Aboriginal Affairs] Minister Macklin,” Mr Anderson writes in a media release.
“It is our lives, our children and our future existence and we must make the decisions that will impact on us,” he says.
“We need a date and a place to meet early in the new year. We need fighters and believers. We need committed people who do not want to promote self. If we believe, then we must dare to struggle as a people against all odds.
“The time has come for us to take the fight to the dominant society again, otherwise we are finished as a distinctive race of people.”
He writes that “the greatest hurdle that we face as a people is the need to politicize our youth”.
Mr Anderson’s statement in full:
All the recent talks on the internet of the need to be politically pro-active is inspiring and exciting. But challenging the political dominance of the dominant society is an admirable yet real objective that we as a people must plan for. The greatest hurdle that we face as a people is the need to politicize our youth.
As a people, though, we cannot and should not overlook our need to work through that which is hurting our people the most, poverty and hopelessness.
There are many elders, middle-aged and youth who would revel in political action. Those of us who have been out there fighting this fight at the bureaucratic and grassroots levels understand and know what it takes to make changes. Our enemy, this system, dominates and suppresses us and cleverly disguises the demon by arguing that they (the whites) need to bridge the gap for us!
What is this? The truth of the matter is they want us to assimilate, never mind our uniqueness as the oldest living culture on the earth. If we fail to stand and fight now, our children and their children will curse us because we will leave them a world without knowledge other than what white anthropologists have gathered. Our old ones told them some things but generally misled them into believing that what was told to them was all and the truth. We come from a secret society and to think that the old ones would give them knowledge of our secrets is to delude oneself.
We have an obligation to our children and our future generations to make a stand. Those who were born in the 30s, 40s and 50s lived and grew up amongst the last ceremonially educated. We lived the lives of imprisoned people confined to government-controlled mission stations without the right of freedom of movement and association. All materials provided to us were on loan only, including the clothes and blankets they gave us.
I plead that we unite in our endeavours. In the 1970’s we succeeded because we believed in each other and we were committed to the cause. The time has come for us to take the fight to the dominant society again, otherwise we are finished as a distinctive race of people.
I call upon those who believe that the fight must be re-ignited to discuss a coming together early in the new year where we can talk of a new way. Let us not have the dominant society dictate to us what sort of and type of people they want to talk with about our future. No revolution ever came from the top down. We must take it from the bottom up to politicians and let them know that we are Aboriginal, Murris, Koories, Yolngu, Yumitji, Nyoongar, etc.
We must now set the agenda, not Kevin Rudd and Minister Macklin. It is our lives, our children and our future existence and we must make the decisions that will impact on us.
We need a date and a place to meet early in the new year. We need fighters and believers. We need committed people who do not want to promote self. If we believe, then we must dare to struggle as a people against all odds.
Our agenda is our right to exist as people on our terms. The right to own our culture and land; the right to profit from those lands; the right to adapt; the right to own our children; the right to teach our children our culture, the right to speak our languages; the right to teach our children an integrated educational system. This is not apartheid, this is survival.
The Catholics teach their children in Catholic schools; the Jews teach their children their culture and educate them in private schools; the Muslims can have their mosques; Scientology can be recognised as a religion under Australian and international law. SO CAN WE do all these things?
We have rights, let us exercise them.
Contact Michael Anderson at ph 02 6829 6355 landline, 04272 92 492 mobile, 02 68296375 fax, ngurampaa@bigpond.com.au
