Aborigines will fight for 'their land'

Press, 26 August 1980, Page 17

Aborigines will fight for ' their lan d'

By

DES CASEY

A “second invasion” is sweeping Austalia, and the state and federal governments are inviting “the international community to witness the rape of the Aboriginal people’s mother — their land”. This was Father Pat Dodson’s summing up, in .Christchurch recently, of the destruction of Aboriginal sacred sites by .multinational mining companies. Despite injustices

in employment’, education, and health, land is the central issue in a growing tide of Aboriginal resentment and frustration, he said. “Last century, during the ‘first invasion’, we were pushed on to what the pastoralists thought was-waste land. Now it is wanted for a quick buck by the companies and we are expected to move on again.” , Whites have no understanding of Aborigines’ love and respect for land. “For us, land is not private property or real estate. It is the mother that brought us into life and keeps us in life. Dig that up and you cut the mother, the source of life for the people. They are then left to wander and die”. Father Dodson, an activist and the only Aborigin-. al Catholic .priest, believes that the cumulative effect of two centuries of oppression is a growing re-

sistance. “We will not prostitute ourselves for the multinational companies. We have a right to the soul that makes us who and what we are”. He detests the utter degradation of women in the mining area. “Just imagine what happens when 600 men move into a community of 200 women”. The men, too suffer. Once they were supporters of the family; “now they are denigrated and fed alcohol”.

According to Father Dodson, mining fever is rampant in Australia. Yet, he says, it is a myth that exploitation of minerals will bring widespread development. Only the companies and a minority of white Australians will benefit. The lot of Aborigines, and other marginal groups, will worsen. The lines are being drawn for a confrontation — a final effort by an indigenous people to save

what is left of a shattered culture, disrupted community values, and stolen land. “It is the same all over Australia — Mt Isa, Ayres Rock, Weipa, Pilbara, Arakun ... “The weapons today are not the hunting parties poisoned waterholes that followed Cook’s discovery. But the effect is the same”. Land is claimed “in the name of devel-

opment and progress, but it is blatant rape and theft”. Father Dodson’s own town of Broome recently witnessed a clash between an Aboriginal road-block and a convoy of trucks preparing to establish a mining camp on a sacred site at Noonkanbah. The company involved is Amax, which has propecting rights in the Coroman-

del, and is looking to the Grey River. Father Dodson’s fight for Aboriginal rights was aroused during his childhood in the Kimberleys. “My people have always been a sea-coast people, but they were disrupted early by the pearling industry”. • His grandparents were caught up in what he calls “the stud-book approach

to a mixed race”. In the 19305, Aborigines of mixed blood were separated from their natural communities and placed in mission schools and settlements far from their home territory. ‘‘Their descendants today are an alienated and lost people. Efforts to resettle them in the land of their origins have failed because no records, even

of names, were kept.” Father Dodson is among the few Aborigines who have achieved educational success. He puts this down to “the very strong influence of my grandparents, and to my mother, who was sent to jail for punching a policeman. He was trying to conn her ■. . and she ended up thumping him. We had an example from her and other relations. We weren’t prepared to be put down by the racist values that prevailed”. He is now studying law, not, he says, because he respects it or has hope in it, but to find out how it can be used for his people. “We have to deal realistically with Australian society, which needs people with pieces of paper before it will associate with them.”

The judicial system, as it exists, will not provide justice because- it “works to make the mining com-

panies secure — at the expense of the Aborigines. These latter are expendable.” But “the law can be used >to convince whites of their prejudice.” “For example, it is important to break the myths of white Australian society — that blacks have a drink problem.” Yet white Australians are among the biggest consumers of alcohol in the world, and today it is their number two killer.

Increasingly, in his fight for Aboriginal rights against racism and the discrimination of the judiciary and legislature, deep conflicts are surfacing in his involvement with the Church.

“It is not possible to identify with the Church without losing a lot of one’s Aboriginality.” This happens because the presa sure is on to adopt an “acceptable” standard of behaviour.

“The Church has tried to say that it is not interested in politics, but every Sunday politics is being preached, from the basic stance it takes, moulded as it is in the Australian model that is white and capitalist.” Often, being religious or a priest, even a Christian, means “a denial of our Aboriginal background. The Church is supposed to be about sharing and developing communities and justice, We live that way, and when we try to live like that in a religious institution it becomes an offensive thing.” There is even a problem with the sacraments. Baptism in Australia today means entry into a society that is discriminatory, individualistic, uncaring, and based on -die economic model of profit and! private property. “Wq don’t live like that” This conflict, like the bigger issue of land rights, remains unresolved. But the main battle now is “against the mining companies and the complicity of the Australian Government Defeat here _ might well mean the falling of the curtain on the Aboriginal race.’’