I dont celebrate Australia Day. The date is poorly chosen...a date when Captain Arthur Philips claimed a land that he had no lawful right to claim as it belonged to another people. Some amongst you may be offended and think my sentiments are a new thing stirred up recently by aboriginal activists. You could not be further from the truth. Consider these words printed in the Argus in 1856 (over 150 years ago) It would seem that never does the white man . . . appear in a more thoroughly despicable light, than in his dealings with his less civilised brother. He takes possession of the land as a matter of course. He alters water-courses, drives off game, fences, clears, and cultivates, tears open the very bowels of the earth, and walks away with uncounted wealth, while the original occupant of the soil, not only looks helplessly on, but sinks, contaminated by the new vices, and wasted by imported diseases, into premature extermination. And we - a Christian people - God-fearing, magnanimous, intelligent race - with a history to look back to, and a character to support - stand quietly by, and do not feel the disgracefulness and sin of such a position! As the mind continues to dwell upon the subject, it really becomes too humiliating and too irritating to be treated of with moderation. If the so-called savage be sufficiently astute to strike a bargain for his land, my noble Caucasian condescends to buy it. If the native be too simple and unguarded to stipulate for payment, it quite consorts with Anglo-Saxon purity to take it without payment. If Copper-colour is so far advanced towards civilisation as to know the value of property, and still more if he have such a knowledge of war as to make him dangerous, Pale-face fumbles at his breeches-pocket. If the Aboriginal be dull in intellect and deficient in physical force, the white man thinks it no shame to steal! What, to true nobility of nature would be an additional plea for fair and even liberal treatment - the helplessness and unsophistication of those we dispossess - become with us - oh, shame, shame that it should be so - the opportunity for dishonesty and fraudulent misappropriation. We assert that under present circumstances this country has been shamelessly stolen from the blacks. Had they been like the New Zealanders or the North American Indians, we should have bought their land, and supplied them with the means of living when we took it. But being weak, and poor, and ignorant, we ousted them without fee or reward. We protest against this as an act of as mean and cowardly tyranny - as of vile and flagrant dishonesty - as the world ever saw. We, the people of this colony, occupy in this instance, the position of cheats and swindlers, and we do not deserve that the land should prosper with us, which has been so dishonestly come by. Read more: smh.au/federal-politics/society-and-culture/a-national-day-of-shame-20130123-2d7b3.html#ixzz2rS2Ciqbu
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 22:30:41 +0000
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