John Pilger's Utopia Hits Home

John Pilger's extraordinary, jaw-dropping, heart-breaking but totally eye-opening documentary Utopia screened across Australia on SBS tonight. Utopia is one of the most important films ever made in Australia, about Australia, about its secret past, and its secret present.


Although mostly ignored by mainstream media, and unable to even get a distribution deal, initially, Utopia was still seen by more than 100,000 people in parks, churches, school halls and community halls across Australia, in dozens of communities.

The reaction on Twitter to Utopia airing on SBS was intense.

For a few minutes, a documentary about Aboriginals topped the Twitter trending topics for Australia. Shortly after, it locked in between AFL and NRL trending topics. If you know the volume of celebrity and sports and boy pop band related tweets that usually result in a subject trending, you will understand just how massive the public reaction to Utopia on SBS was. And it was on SBS, not on a commercial channel.

Tens of thousands of tweets were posted, quoting from the documentary, airing feels of shock, dismay, anger but almost overall a sense of betrayal. Not just betrayal by Aboriginals on social media still waiting for justice, but from people all over the country who had never been told most of the information in Utopia, by teachers, by the media, by history books. How did we not know all this? How can so much be hidden?



Films can change societies, and for now at least, it feels like Utopia will help Aboriginals in their fight for justice, and full recognition. It certainly got people talking. And that's a start, isn't it? At least people know more than they did a few years ago.




Here are photos from the first screening of John Pilger's Utopia, at 'The Block' in Redfern. More than 4000 people turned out to watch the documentary, and Aboriginals traveled from across Australia to be there, and to speak, passionately, about the stories of Aboriginal heroes and their battles for justice featured in the film. I'm haunted to this day by the cries of pain and anguish from some of the Aboriginal men and women in the crowd, when they saw images of dead friends, or relatives, or stolen children from their ancestral lands. I doubt I will ever go to another film screening where emotions were so raw, and the joy at truth finally being told was so overwhelming.

You can buy a DVD of Utopia here. It's archival footage, alone, is worth keeping a permanent copy of, but the story in total is something you should share with people who don't know, including your children, or your grandchildren. It is the truth of Australia.

Sorry It Took So Long To Say Sorry

It's interesting, and disheartening, to read some of the international mainstream media reaction to the Rudd government's decision to offer an official 'Sorry' (to the tens of thousands of Aboriginal children removed from their parents in the first half of the 1900s) the initial item of business for the new government's first day in Parliament on February 13.

Excerpt follow from longer reports and news stories.

The Associated Press :

Australia will issue its first formal apology to its indigenous people next month, the government announced Wednesday, a milestone that could ease tensions with a minority whose mixed-blood children were once taken away on the premise that their race was doomed.

Australia has had a decade-long debate about how best to acknowledge Aborigines who were affected by a string of 20th century policies that separated mixed-blood Aboriginal children from their families — the cohort frequently referred to as Australia's stolen generation.

From 1910 until the 1970s, around 100,000 mostly mixed-blood Aboriginal children were taken from their parents under state and federal laws based on a premise that Aborigines were a doomed race and saving the children was a humane alternative.

Barbara Livesey, chief executive of Reconciliation Australia, a government
commissioned agency tasked with bringing black and white Australians together, said the apology on the day after Parliament resumes for the first time since the November elections would be historic.

"It's a moment that all Australians should feel incredibly proud of, that we're recognizing the mistakes of the past," she said.

Excerpts from the New York Times :

The history of relations between Australia’s Aboriginal population and the broader population is one of brutality and neglect. Tens of thousands of Aboriginals died from disease, warfare and dispossession in the years after European settlement, and it was not until 1962 that they were able to vote in national elections.

But the most lasting damage was done by the policy of removing Aboriginal children and placing them either with white families or in state institutions as part of a drive to assimilate them with the white population.

A comprehensive 1997 report estimates that between one in three and one in 10 Aboriginal children, the so-called stolen generations, were taken from their homes and families in the century until the policy was formally abandoned in 1969.

Excerpts from Reuters :

Aborigines are Australia's most disadvantaged group. Many live in Third World conditions in remote outback settlements.

The 1997 "Bringing Them Home" report found Stolen Generation children, as depicted in the 2002 film "Rabbit-Proof Fence", were forcibly taken and placed in orphanages run by churches or charities, or fostered out to socialise them to European culture.

Some were brutalised or abused.

But John Howard, as prime minister, rejected an apology, arguing that because the removal of aboriginal children between the 1870s and 1960s was done by past governments, such a move could open the door to reparation claims.

From the BBC :

Thousands of Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their parents and given to white families or institutions to raise between 1915 and 1969.

The policy was aimed at forcing assimilation between Aboriginal and white communities.

Indigenous campaigners have been seeking a billion-dollar nationwide compensation package for the policy.

But the government has ruled this out, instead promising to fund improved education and health care facilities for Aboriginal communities.

From the Voice Of America :

The apology will include a reference to the so-called "Stolen Generations." These were young Aborigines taken forcibly from their families by the authorities and placed in foster homes. It was an official attempt to dilute indigenous culture, and the practice persisted from 1910 until the 1970's. One-hundred thousand children were affected.

Members of the "Stolen Generations" have said that being taken from their families amounted to kidnap, from which they suffered great trauma.

Senior officials say the apology will not attribute guilt to the current generation of Australian people, nor will it offer compensation.

From the Malaysian Sun :

The Australian government has said it will make a formal apology to Aborigines for centuries of discrimination.

The previous government had always refused to apologise to aborigines.

Aborigines make up only 2 percent of the Australian population and often live far below the poverty line.

Until the 1970's, aboriginal children were forcibly adopted by white families, with the objective of integrating them into society.

Much of the historical summarisation in the international media regarding racist and colonial policies towards Aboriginals is harsh indeed, as it well should be, for the most part. But for an issue that is rarely mentioned in the international mainstream media, it's still a bit shocking to see how this part of Australian history now reads to the rest of the world.

Which is yet another reason why 'Sorry' is a first and important step towards long-overdue reconciliation.

Nelson's Liberals : Sorry, We Still Won't Say Sorry

With the 'New' Liberals me-tooing on gay rights, canning the election-losing bits of WorkChoices, ratifying Kyoto and acknowledging that Australians had stopped listening to John Howard's ideas, about the only key issue they've got left that separates from Rudd Labor is the Nelson-led objection to saying "Sorry" to the Aboriginal people for past crimes and injustices.

Nelson's explanation that they shouldn't have to apologise for something they didn't actually do, because none of them were born during the worst of the Aboriginal land-stealing, massacres, rapes and slavery, is both sad and bizarre. That Nelson's Liberals won't say "Sorry" because they fear an onslaught of compensation claims is cold, calculating and downright offensive to most Aborigines.

The "Sorry, No Sorry" position now hangs over Nelson's Liberals like a curse. During the 2004 election, an Aboriginal elder pointed a bone at Howard, cursing him. It clearly took a few years for the curse to come to fruition.

But it will keep acting on Nelson's Liberals until they follow the will of the majority of Australians and make this modest, and painless, gesture of reconciliation.

Philip Adams points out here that you cannot claim the 'Feel The Pride' parts of our generations-past history, Gallipoli for example, and then refuse to claim the dark and ugly parts as well :

The brave bits of history, the proud moments belong to us all and we collectively bathe in the glory. It's the nasty bits of the past we don't acknowledge. They had nothing to do with us. They were no part of our business.

This is a lopsided view of history. Let us share in past glories while shunning past guilts. Moreover, we will do our best to deny that they happened. Enter the historical revisionism of a Keith Windschuttle. Massacres of Abos? Where? When? Show us the documents! Show us the receipts for the corpses! If there's no paperwork, it never happened. Oral histories of Aborigines? Vivid, detailed accounts of slaughter and atrocities can be discounted. They're not worth the paper they're not written on. No need for sorries there.

Howard's classic cherry-picking of 'We Own This' bit of history but 'We Don't Want That' should be left behind with the (hopefully) old Liberal Party, and its blinkered view of this nation's history, he led to such a shattering defeat ten days ago.

More from Adams :

(Howard's Liberals) want to choose the bits where our ancestors behaved decently, bravely, selflessly, and turn them into mythology, sentiment and, from time to time, the worst sort of patriotic pap. Look at us! Look who were are! In the same breath they turn their backs on our shames and crimes. They've got nothing to do with us. We weren't there. We hadn't been born. Sorry, Brendan, but that's not on.

Britain has to live with the potato famine in Ireland, Germany with the Holocaust, Japan with Manchuria, Turkey with the Armenian genocide and the US with slavery. You may be able to mount a convincing case that Australia's history, colonial as well as recent, in regard to Aborigines hardly compares. But the atrocities and tragedies occurred and continue to affect Aboriginal lives and Australia's sense of itself. And saying sorry is such a small thing.

Aboriginal Families Flee The Police, Military 'Intervention'

Howard's "Invasion" Of Aboriginal Lands Begins Today

Prime Minister John Howard said he was left with no choice but to act immediately to stop the rape and molestation of children in a number of Northern Territory Aboriginal communities, after the release of a report detailing the living horror that is daily life for thousands of Aboriginal children, living in Third World conditions.

For many who have spent years and decades trying to help Aboriginal communities devastated by alcoholism, petrol sniffing, gambling, social decay and sexual exploitation, Howard's move to action has been years overdue.

But the speed of Howard's 'emergency intervention' has reportedly left some Aboriginal communities reeling, and horror-struck, and there is much angst that Howard did not consult enough with Aboriginal leaders before setting his plans into immediate action.

Howard said the time for talk and discussions was over. It was time for action.

Today, the first wave of police, backed by Australian Defence Force soldiers, will enter Aboriginal communities to start rounding up the more violent, abusive offenders, and to close down pubs and liquor outlets.

According to Howard's rushed, vague and possibly disastrous plan, medical professionals will follow the police and military and will conduct medical examinations of all children under 16. The examinations will be compulsory, and parents will not be required, according to Howard's comments, to give their consent.

Howard's stated mission is for health workers to examine the children for signs of sexual abuse, or infection by sexual disease. Many of the doctors who are taking part said they will use the opportunity offered by the intervention plan to do complete check-ups of the children they encounter, and they will not be rushed in their work by the politics that will overshadow the intervention as the federal election draws near.

Neither Howard, nor the vast sprawl of critics of his plan, know what the eventual outcome of the intervention will be. But few, obviously, are hoping it will fail. Virtually all Australian want the exploitation of Aboriginals, by their own, and by outsiders, to cease. Today.

But it will be a dream many years in the realisation, with some extremely ugly and possibly deadly confrontations to come.

It is not only a small number of Aboriginal elders who don't want the social order, the power of their rule over their communities, by decree or by sheer force of violence and threat, to change, or to be lessened by the presence of police and soldiers.

There is also a lesser known number of white Australian males who have grown rich and powerful from the illegal trafficking of alcohol and drugs into remote Aboriginal communities, and who control pedophile rings where Aboriginal children are prostituted and traded between communities, and between mine workers.

Howard has vowed to stamp out alcohol and pornography in more than 60 Northern Territory communities, and not all of them are dominated by Aboriginals. There is a small number of camps filled with white Australian miners, who will also be told their days of heavy drinking and watching hardcore porn, and buying sex from Aboriginal kids with a few litres of petrol, are well and truly over.

To believe that all of the people in the isolated communities of the Northern Territory will relent to the police and military is a fantasy. For a few months, at least, the police and military may be facing their own mini-insurgency, as hundreds of members of Aboriginal gang members go bush and possibly begin to fight back.

The police, and the military, already have their 'hit lists' of the more violent and abusive and dangerous members of the communities they will be entering.

There will be jubilant scenes in some towns as drunken thugs are taken away and the sober grandmothers and community elders are able to take back control of what alcohol, rape and violence had desecrated for so many years.

And it all begins today.

In the first community to be targeted, located near the base of the majestic Uluru, reports claim that Aboriginal families are packing up and fleeing their community, terrified that their children will be taken away from them, and a replay of the 'stolen generation' stories of their parents and grandparents, will become their reality as well.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

Panic about the Howard Government's crackdown on child sexual abuse has spread widely throughout remote Aboriginal communities, where parents fear their children will be taken away in a repeat of the stolen generation.

Some families have already fled the first community to be targeted, Mutitjulu at Uluru, but the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, blames "liars" who have something to hide from police and military personnel for terrorising people and spreading hysteria.

"The reason people are scared there at the moment is because people are putting around that the army are coming to take their children away, that the army is coming in to shoot the dogs and the Government is going to take away their money and make them sit there and do what they're told," Mr Brough said.

Social workers and indigenous MPs in the Northern Territory are being swamped with phone calls from Aborigines wanting to know what will happen in their communities.

An indigenous MP, Alison Anderson, said she had been trying to persuade families in her huge desert electorate south of Alice Springs not to take their children and flee before police and troops arrived, which in some places could be within days.

"In one telephone hook-up last night people told me they were going to run away to a waterhole 50 kilometres away," Ms Anderson said. "I have heard from many people thinking they may do the same thing. I've urged them not to panic and to stay on the communities and work with the people who arrive."

Marion Scrymgour, a Northern Territory Government minister, said: "There's a lot of fear, particularly among elder woman. Not so long ago - 30 to 40 years - children were being taken out of the arms of Aboriginal mothers. There is real fear that is going to happen again."

The Chief Minister, Clare Martin, told MPs yesterday to travel to their bush electorates as soon as possible to tell people "what is fact and what is fiction" in an effort to halt the panic.

Lesley Taylor, one of the Territory's most experienced child abuse workers, said: "They are scared stiff … This is creating very stressful environments that could lead to even more children being at risk."

Sixty to 70 communities will be targeted, and small teams of police, military and government officers will begin arriving today to audit people's needs. They would be replaced by teams who would stay to meet those needs, Mr Brough said. Public servants will oversee the programs, with a manager in each community responsible for what happens.

This is only the beginning. The road ahead will be hard, long, historical and will hopefully change the nature of how Australian state and federal governments deal with Aboriginal communities forever.

Hundreds of Aboriginal tribes survived more than 50,000 years in this country, in some of the harshest environments in the world. It wasn't sheer luck that saw them survive, and in some regions absolutely thrive. Aboriginal culture holds knowledge and secrets about this land that we can barely comprehend, that we have barely begun to understand.

It's no time to tell them all that they were wrong, that they don't know what they're doing, and what they believe is bad for them, and destructive for their children and societies.

Australia stands on the edge of a new beginning for its Aboriginal people. But the 'emergency intervention' cannot last only to the federal election. It must mark the fresh start of a new life for the tens of thousands of people left behind, and it must usher in decades of rehabilitation, rebuilding and re-integration.

But it is not only into the dominant white society of Australia that Aboriginals must integrate. We must meet them halfway, and protect what they hold sacred, and preserve the knowledge and traditions that helped them survive for hundreds of centuries before white man arrived in their lands, and changed their societies forever.

We may believe we still have much to teach them. But they have so much more to teach us, about this land, about their ancient knowledge, that we are only beginning to understand after 200 years.

We all have a long way to go.

But something, finally, and hopefully for the better, has begun.

Boxer Anthony Mundine Likens The Decimation Of The Australian Aboriginals To The Jewish Holocaust

By Darryl Mason

There's a few Australians, including the NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, who would prefer that Anthony Mundine just shut the hell up and do what they say he's supposed to be doing - preparing for a title boxing match due in a few weeks time.

And he is one hell of a boxer. But world champion Anthony Mundine is also an Aboriginal, and he's a Muslim. Plus, he's getting mouthy. He's got plenty to say, on behalf of Aboriginal Australians, whether most of them want him to speak on his behalf or not.

But an Aboriginal Muslim with high media exposure spells 'Danger Zone' for those who live in fear of the day coming when Islam becomes the predominant religion of Australian Aboriginals.

You can read a previous story here about the music video Mundine's made, where he tries out his chops as a rapper-storyteller, while Redfern Aboriginals shred photos of the prime minister, John Howard, and a Union Jack flag goes up in flames.

But it's the words Mundine spoke today that are likely to set off fires in the media far bigger than his controversial video.

Mundine has claimed that the decimation of the Aboriginal population under the invasion and occupation of the British, from the 1770s onwards, is comparable to what Nazi Germany did to the European Jews in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Governors of the early colonies estimated the Aboriginal population of Australia at around 200,000 in the late 1700s. By the early 1900s, there were fewer than 80,000, by most reputable estimates.

Aboriginals have lived on the Australian continent for 60,000 to more than 100,000 years. Although there was never a written language, Aboriginals developed incredibly complex social, tribal and family structures, and used a language of symbols, paintings and rock carvings to communicate with other tribes, and to leave markers for where to find the best hunting and food stocks in thousands of areas across the continent.

Some of the hundreds of Aboriginal tribes that lived and thrived in Australia for thousands of generations worshipped the sun as a creation entity, tens of thousands of years before Ancient Egyptians came up with the concept of Ra.

From the late 1700s onwards, Aboriginals were massacred, hunted for sport, exposed to alcohol (close to a deadly toxin for many Aboriginals), decimated by viruses brought in by colonists and treated as slave labour, sometimes in conditions that led to a premature demise.

There has been a rigorous attempt by the extreme right wing of politicians and historians in Australia, in the past two decades, to whitewash such facts out of our collective history. Prime Minister John Howard dismissively refers to "the black arm band" of Australia's history, as though we are supposed to forget what happened here, as though it is unimportant to the state and fate of the nation.

But as the reconciliation movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s showed, along with the unofficial 'Sorry Day', most Australians would agree with Mundine's words below : that there was a Holocaust of Aborigines, and it was conducted under the Union Jack.

Or as some Indonesians still call it, 'The Butcher's Apron.'

From the AAP :

Boxer Anthony Mundine has likened the British treatment of Aborigines to the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

"John Howard has got to step to the plate, admit he is wrong, just like the Germans did back in the day and admitted under Hitler what they did and then moved forward," Mundine told Channel Nine.

He said the Union Jack was not a symbol to be proud of.

"It symbolises murder, raping, pillaging of the native people of the land," he said.

"The burning of the flag, we burn it, or the people burnt it, because they want to wash away with the dark side, with the dark past that Australia's got in its history and let's move forward, get a more unified place for the people."

Story continues below...

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Mundine is right.

The majority of Australians are waiting for a true reconciliation, but John Howard refuses to let this become part of his political legacy, even though in decades to come such a move for reconciliation would feature more prominently, and positively, in the history books than just about anything else he has done in his decade in office.

Mudine waits, Aboriginal Australians wait, as we all wait.

Australia is not a British colony anymore, we're not an outpost under the Union Jack. And the sooner we truly, officially, recognise what has been to the original people of this land, the better.

For everyone.

John Birmingham Gives One White Man's Response To Mundine: Shut Up And Box

John Howard's Image And Union Jack Torn To Shred And Burnt In Mundine's Video