Aboriginal activist in London to stir

Press, 26 January 1988, Page 17

Aboriginal activist in London to stir

By

MIKE HEDGE

through NZPA London

The Aboriginal activist Burnum Burnum arrived in London last week to claim England for his people and to embarrass the Hawke Government. And within 12 hours he had been presented with more than enough opportunities to achieve at least half his ambition. The news media, which he says he is manipulating to bring attention to the plight of Aboriginals, occupied his time to such an extent that BBC-TV was squeezed in for a midnight interview and he was scheduled for breakfast time TV six hours later.

Tomorrow, Australia Day, Burnum Burnum intends to paddle a canoe ashore on the Kent coast then stand on the White Cliffs of Dover, read the Burnum Burnum Declaration and take possession

of England in the name of the Aboriginal peoples.

But there is more to his trip than making what he agrees is an absurd speech.

Burnum Burnum is one of the Wurundjeri, the Dolphin, tribe and his beliefs are dominated by 40,000 years of dreaming and Aboriginal spirituality.

The spirituality is so strong within him, he says, that he must go on to a beach at night and “breathe salt air into me to keep myself going.” "My grandfather had a pet whale, we all had pet dolphins, I have this in me,” he said. One of the reasons he has promoted himself as a representative of his people is his belief that his is the “gentle, spiritual” voice of the Aboriginal, unlike those he called the present, selfappointed leaders of Australia’s black community. “To be fashionable as

an Aboriginal nowadays is to hate,” Burnum Burnum said.

He said people such as Charles Perkins, head of the Federal Aboriginal Affairs Department, hated his guts because they were “out of sync” with the soul of Aboriginality. "In the last 30 years Charlie Perkins has alienated blacks and whites,” he said.

“The reason there is so much urgency for me to come here is because I’ve got the answers and remedies to problems of the Aboriginal people.

“What Bob Hawke should do is offer me Charlie Perkins’ job. Why? Because I could do it standing on my head, I’m in command of my faculties and I’m obviously an Aboriginal.” In lieu of Perkins’ job, Burnum Burnum said he should take over from Susan Ryan in the Senate.

Burnum Burnum is a member of the Australian

Labour Party and has already run for the Senate twice, but he precludes himself from seeking a seat in Parliament. One of Burnum Burnum’s plans is for setting up a "keeping place,” a museum of Aboriginal genocide to remind white Australians what had happened to the Aboriginal in the last 200 years. The Aboriginal actor would also like to establish Aboriginal “selfesteem centres” where he said his people could experience personal growth and get away from the image of being victims.

Other of his “remedies” are the release from prison of all Aboriginals on alcohol-related charges and the return of all land and other property now owned by the Church, the signing of a lease-back arrangement of all national parks, State forests, schools and community property controlled by whites.