THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
T R A V E L N O T E S
 |
HANGING WITH THE BLACKFELLAS DOWN UNDER
| DEDICATED TO DR. GRACELYN SMALLWOOD |
PART 1
A FEW BRIEF COMMENTS
On 19 November 1998 I boarded a Qantas
airlines flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. It was to be my first trip to
Australia and the flight lasted fourteen hours. Thirty minutes after going through customs
in Sydney I boarded a connecting flight to Darwin, Northern Territory in Australia's `top
end.'
My interest in the Black people of Australia (known generally as "Aborigines")
began as a young college student in the early 1970s when I chanced to read an article in
the Los Angeles Times about the brutal treatment meted out to Australia's aboriginal
people by the English convicts, administrators, soldiers and missionaries who landed in
Sydney's Botany Bay beginning in January 1788. The article told of scores of Black people
tossed to their deaths from high cliffs, and rewards being offered for the scalps of Black
men, women and children. All of this and more I was later to confirm for myself. During
the nineteenth century, for example, it was not uncommon for Whites to shoot Black people
for use as dog food. Indeed, during certain periods of marshal law it was not a crime to
murder a Black man. Sometimes an entire family of Black people would be rounded up by
Whites. In front of his family the Black man would be handcuffed and then castrated. His
head would then be cut off and strung around the widow's neck who would then be brutally
gang-raped. Following this the children would be buried in the earth up to their heads.
White men would then, with the mother of the children forced to watch, kick and club their
heads off. Black people were given blankets infected with small pox virus. Their
waterholes were poisoned. They were infected, women and children, with venereal diseases.
It was only in 1967 that Aboriginal people in Australia were considered human. Today, the
Black people of Australia constitute 1.6% of the total population but Black men make up
70% of the prison population. Black women make up 50% of the total prison population. The
life expectancy for a Black man in Australia is forty-five years. The infant mortality
rate is among the highest in the world.
PART 2
THE STOLEN GENERATIONS
On Saturday afternoon, November 21 1998 I landed in Darwin at the far top end of Australia's Northern Territory. Darwin, named after Charles Darwin and with a tropical climate, is a city of 70,000 people about 25% of which are Black. Darwin was to be the initial leg of my Australian travel adventure and it was here that I met Aboriginal people in Australia for the first time. The first Black people I saw were sitting in several groups on the floor of the airport's lower level. They were very dark with straight to wavy black hair and paid me not the slightest attention. I was later told that I shouldn't take their seeming indifference personally; that it was "a cultural thing."
I was met at the airport by two Black women whose job was "to take care of all of my needs." These sisters were Ms. Jacqui Katona and Ms. Christine Christophoson--two hard core activists who more or less introduced me to Black Australia. They checked me into a local hotel, fed me and introduced me to their families. After a relatively uneventful night in Darwin on Sunday morning Christine drove me to Jabiru in Kakadu National Park. Kakadu is on Aboriginal land and it was here that I learned that Aboriginal people regard themselves as "the custodians of the land." Kakadu is magnificent country and quite rightly regarded by many Australians as a national treasure. It was also in Jabiru where I became acquainted for the first time with the "Stolen Generations."
The "Stolen Generations" refers to those Black people who were abducted by White Christian missionaries beginning about 1905. By 1911 virtually all Australian states had legislated for the removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Tasmania was the exception, denying it actually had an indigenous population. An estimated 40,000 Aboriginal children, particularly the lighter-skinned children, were removed from their families this century. Under this legislation government officials acting under the authority of the Chief Protector or the relevant Welfare Board had absolute power over Aboriginal children and could simply order the removal of an Aboriginal child from their family without having to prove to a court that the child was neglected. In many cases this legislation permitted the removal of Aboriginal children on the grounds of race alone. The children were taken from their families and brought up largely as slaves in White foster homes and on Christian missions. The dominant ethos was that there was nothing of value in Aboriginal culture--all the value lay in European culture. Once removed the children were forbidden any contact with their families. Removed children were not allowed to know anything about their origins or their Aboriginal heritage. Any violation of this rule was met with severe floggings. Black children were told that their families had died or had abandoned them. Their names were changed. They were forbidden to speak their indigenous languages. They were forced to wear European clothes and adopt European diets. They were actually forced to wear dog tags for purposes of identification and were daily humiliated. Black families lived in constant fear for the children who might be taken away--and constant grief for those already gone.
There is not a single Black family in Australia that has not been affected by the Stolen Generations. In Kakadu I actually met many of the victims of this cruel government policy and heard their stories first hand. Unfortunately this extremely cruel process continues even now.
PART 3
ALICE SPRINGS
At noon on 24 November 1998 I left Darwin and flew to Alice Springs--a relatively small city in the very center of Australia. This part of Australia is sometimes called "the red center" and I must say that the soil itself has a dull orange-reddish hue with sparse vegetation and strange rock formations.
In Alice Springs I was met by representatives of the Central Land Council. They were extremely polite but seemed a little uncertain as to how to act towards me. Very few of the Aboriginal people of Australia that I met on the trip had had much experience with Black folk from America and they knew almost nothing of me personally. They only knew that "an African professor from the United States was coming to Australia and wanted to visit them." The "African professor" will be eternally grateful to them for I must say that it seems that every brother and sister that I met in Australia looked after me, and once they knew something about me became very anxious to talk with me. With two sisters I toured the city of Alice Springs; visiting every institution and facility directly affiliated with or run by Blackfellas.
Perhaps the highlight of my visit to Alice Springs was a tour of a women's Center. The center was for Aboriginal women, many of whom had been the victims of domestic abuse. Domestic abuse is a major problem in Aboriginal communities in Australia and much of it stems from massive alcohol and drug abuse. Such is the degree of despair and hopelessness among them that many Aboriginal people seemed determined to drink and drug themselves into a state of complete of oblivion. In the women's center I was introduced to many sisters, including two women of about fifty, although they looked much older. Life had not been very kind to them. Through a translator I asked them many questions. Questions like where they were born, their life stories, their goals, etc. At first they patiently answered my questions, but all at once they began to ask me all the questions! Basically they wanted to know who I was, what I was, what I wanted and why! It soon became extremely obvious to me that these sisters, who probably spoke for most of the Black people in Australia, knew almost nothing of their brethren in America. So I told them our story. I talked to them at length of mighty African empires and how we came to America. I talked to them of our enslavement and the door of no return. I told them how our families were separated and how our names were changed and how we were forbidden to speak our own languages. These sisters became more and more agitated and told me that they had never heard anything of what I was telling them. It was a very emotional experience. I told them of our struggle for justice and some of our great leaders. I then told the sisters in some detail about lynchings in America and they started to become visibly disturbed. It was at that time that one of them stopped my narrative and questioned me in a sad and plaintive way. She asked, "do you want us to help you?" It was my turn to wipe away the tears.
PART 4
ULURU NATIONAL PARK
Of all the international trips that I've taken, my visit to Australia during November and December 1998 is very hard to top. It was a unique experience. Indeed, there were times on the trip that I momentarily thought that I was in another world. Rather than the primitive people that the Blackfellas are often portrayed to be, they turned out to be for me the most complex and spiritually profound brothers and sisters that I've ever encountered or read about. Truly, Australia was both a delightful and vividly insightful experience. I felt continually that the ancestors were with me--guiding and protecting me, keeping me safe and strong. I prayed regularly and passionately and had few worries along the way.
On 26 November I flew from Alice Springs to Uluru. White folks commonly call Uluru "Ayers Rock." Uluru was one of the places on the trip that was not on my original itinerary but, certainly, I had hoped to travel there from the very beginning and I was prepared for it. Uluru is 273 miles from Alice Springs and I was the last person to board the plane. Naturally, I was the only Black man on the flight. That was the norm for the trip.
After a very short Qantas flight I departed the plane with the hope that someone would be at the airport to meet me. After about an hour sister Joann Wilmot, accompanied by a another lady, swooped me up. It didn't take me long to realize that the brothers and sisters in Australia, apparently like brothers and sisters everywhere, had their own sense of time!
Because I had no idea as to where I would be lodging Joann, who was a kind of Aboriginal director for Uluru and the designated person to escort me around, invited me, if I had no problem with the idea, "to stay with a Blackfella." It sounded good to me. Once again, I was in the company of two Black women. And because I'm a brother who happens to adore African females I was quite content and felt in good company.
Aboriginal people attach great spiritual significance to Uluru. It is one of the world's largest monoliths and rises more than 1,100 feet from the flatness of the surrounding plain. More impressive than its size, though, is its color--a brown to bright glowing red that changes throughout the day. About forty miles from Uluru lies another fascinating rock formation--Kata Tjuta. Indeed, some view Kata Tjuta as even more spectacular than Uluru. Uluru, however, as it was my understanding, is viewed by at least by many Aboriginal people, as the "navel of the world" and the center of creation. Although many visitors climb on top of Uluru I was forbidden to even touch it! With Ms. Wilmot I drove around Uluru and heard "dreamtime stories" of the beginning of the world.
Within a couple hundred yards of Uluru lies an Aboriginal community forbidden to non-Aboriginal people. Signs warning trespassers to stay out were liberally posted. Well, I didn't see myself as a tourist, and quite naturally, it was the place where I most wanted to go, and sister Joann was only too happy to take me there. Indeed, she was the person in charge and was gently deferred to within the community.
Although I ached to be with my brothers and sisters I had found in Kakadu National Park that an Aboriginal community, for me, wasn't always the most pleasant place to be. Squalor, disease and poverty were the rule. I have to say that Black children running around dirty and naked with mucous running down their faces is not a endearing sight but it is reality.
After touring the community Joann invited me to dinner. She asked me if I had any preferences and because I felt lucky to even be there naturally I said, "well sister, anything that you cook will be just fine for me." And then she told me that we'd have kangaroo tail and a whole host of second thoughts ran through my mind! She was determined to treat me to a real delicacy and all the polite excuses from me about her not going to any trouble were fruitless. As a result three large kangaroo tales (which she called "whippers") were purchased from the company store. She even shut down her office a little early--just for me! She then picked up her "skin mother" and granddaughter. We were going to have a feast.
To cook the kangaroo tails she accumulated quite a bit of dry wood and started a fire. As the fire began to blaze the whippers were tossed on top. They were purchased frozen and the fire would warm them up and burn the hair off. Suddenly I was not hungry, but, again, my protests that I didn't want to be the source of so much fuss got me nowhere. After about fifteen minutes on the fire the whippers were taken off the fire and the hair scrapped off with a knife. Where the fire had been a hole was dug, the whippers placed in the hole, the burning wood put on top of the hole and an hour later dinner was ready.
Uluru National Park is wonderful place and the Blackfellas were extremely friendly to me. In July 2000 I plan to take a group of brothers and sisters there to see Uluru and Kata Tjuta and the Aboriginal community. And while I will remain forever grateful to sister Joann Wilmot for her hospitality, the next time the dinner menu will be decidedly different.
POSTSCRIPT
THE BLACKFELLAS DOWN UNDER
The above article was written in December 1998. I had just returned to the United States from Australia and I was still very much floating on something of a cloud. Australia was such a phenomenal experience for me that I was determined to put at least some aspects of the trip down on the record for posterity. As it turned out I only told a part of the story. There was just so much, for varying reasons, that I left out. I wrote four sections covering about two thirds of the trip and then ran completely out of steam.
Since my return from Australia in 1998 I have journeyed to an additional two-dozen countries and in July 2000 returned to Australia in our ongoing global search for African people and African connections. From this experience, I am happy to say, has come a great deal of personal growth and development. And so now, in July 2001, as I prepare for my next big trip and with an extra bit of time on my hands it seems like a golden opportunity to engage in some additional reflection about my Australian adventure, supplement some of this current travel narrative, and add a more fitting conclusion to one of my favorite travel notes.
Besides my life long interest in the Black people of Australia, the major reason for my 1998 travel there was to attend the Second World Indigenous Pathways Conference. This was a historic event sponsored by the Kumbari/Ngurpai Lag Higher Education Center at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia, and was held from November 28 to December 4, 1998. My participation in the Conference came after having met Dr. Gracelyn Smallwood. Sister Gracelyn, from Queensland, Australia, is a wonderful woman, a good friend, and perhaps the most dedicated and dynamic of all of the Indigenous Australians that I have met. To me, she is the absolute Queen of Australia and she was certainly the driving force behind the Conference.
The Second World Indigenous Pathways Conference was designed to present the opportunity for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from around the world to engage in discourse about such issues as identity, culture, reconciliation, multiculturalism and social activism. The previous conference, in 1996 (to which I was also invited but could not attend because of a major scheduling conflict), drew together a cross-section of high profile participants from Australia's Indigenous peoples and oppressed groups from around the world.
The theme of the 1998 Conference was "Pathways: Journeys of Discovery within Diversity." The program was dedicated to identifying the topics: what it means to be Australian, civil rights and social activism in the struggle for a socially just society, Indigenous universities, ancient cultures, the identification of oppressed groups, reconciliation, youth perceptions of the struggle for justice, and wisdom and knowledge of the Elders. Rather than call for papers the Conference organizers decided to invite speakers to address the topics and follow the presentations with discussion panels. For reasons that I never did quite fully understand I was invited to speak on the U.S. civil rights movement. For me, however, it didn't really matter so much the topic that I was to speak on but that I was finally getting to go to Australia. That is what I was happy about. All I knew is that a wish of a lifetime was about to be fulfilled.
Well, suffice to say, I gave a very good speech. It was about forty minutes in length and, for once, I did not use any visual aids. As a matter of a fact, the majority of the speech only touched on civil rights in a peripheral manner. I began by talking about the origins of humanity (Black people), the spread of these early Black people around the world (including Australia), the rise of classical African civilizations, the coming of the white man, and the international subjugation and forced dispersal of Black people. Only then did I talk about the U.S. civil rights and Black power movements. I judged the audience and decided that this was what most needed to be heard. I was totally uncompromising, I was extremely well received, and I was most satisfied with my presentation. I believe that you would have been proud.
The Second Pathways Conference was definitely an international event. There were contingents from southern Sudan, Hawaii, New Zealand, Canada, Barbados, and four African-Americans, including myself and the great Dr. Tony Martin from Wellesley College, Massachusetts. One sister came from Drexel University, while another came from Harvard. There was a also a high-powered delegation from South Africa, including Rev. Makhenkesi Stofile (Premier of Eastern Cape Province) and the two youngest sons (Samora and Hlumelo) of Steven Biko. They were all interesting and engaging and a great pleasure to be around. Most interesting, though, were the Blackfellas themselves. I was particularly impressed with brother Murandoo Yanner (a dedicated young activist from northern Queensland), Charles Perkins (a pioneer Black Australian civil rights activist and now an Ancestor), Gary Foley (a Koori activist in Victoria), Errol West (a Black Tasmanian and a noted poet), and, of course, Dr. Smallwood herself. The most poignant part of the Conference were the stories of actual survivors of the Stolen Generations, white supremacy and police brutality. Accounts of Black deaths in police custody in many parts of Australia aroused great anger and fierce indignation. On the other hand, there was hardly a dry eye in the auditorium when the life stories of Stolen Generations survivors were recited and relayed. These were heart-rending narratives of children being torn from Aboriginal parents and never united again. Their stories haunt me still. The Conference, altogether, was an experience never to be forgotten.
Following the Second World Indigenous Pathways Conference I left Queensland and journeyed south to New South Wales to the cities of Sydney and Canberra. The Sydney visit was highlighted by multiple visits to Redfern--the downtrodden but heroic Black community sometimes called the "Harlem of Australia." In Canberra I visited the Aboriginal Embassy and paid more respect to the traditional owners of the land. In both cases I was guided and accompanied by another impressive sister--Isabel Coe. Sister Isabel (like Dr. Smallwood and several of the women that I met in Australia) is a wonderful and dedicated Aboriginal activist. Being in the presence of these sisters was a great honor and I shall never forget their warmth, dedication, commitment and hospitality.
I left Australia with the distinct impression that the Blackfellas were a very special people, a highly spiritual people and real survivors of the storm. In spite of all the setbacks that they have suffered at the hands of Europeans they refuse to accept the concept of final defeat. They believe that they have been fighting an unrelenting war of survival for more than two centuries against the white invaders of the land down under. I will never forget a conversation I had towards the end of my trip with several sisters and brothers in Redfern. I was a real curiosity and a bona fide celebrity during my visit, and was treated with great respect and courtesy. I asked them what they knew of Black folk outside of Australia. They told me that most of their knowledge of African-Americans was derived via the television. They said that they saw us on TV or from afar but most of them had never had the opportunity to actually interact with one close up and intimate. We all learned a lot from the interaction and enjoyed the opportunity. At one point I halted the conversation and told them that I did not believe that Africans in America had been captured and enslaved and taken away from home for no reason. I told them that I believe that we have a special mission and purpose. I then paused and looked around the room and asked them collectively "do you believe that you a have a mission and destiny in life" "Yes," they told me, "to have one last dust up with the white man to get our land back." I couldn't help but let go a broad smile of great satisfaction. These, indeed, were truly my sisters and brothers.
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