-=> Quoting uv583@freenet.victoria.bc.ca to All <=-
 
 uv> Robert Bropho is a respected Aboriginal elder, an activist, a film
 uv> maker and a "stirrer". He is a member of the Nyungar group, living on a
 uv> tiny remnant of bushland surrounded by Perth suburbs.  His interview
 uv> with "New Internationalist" in May 1997 is printed below. He is
 uv> presently a fighter for Aborigine land rights in Australia for all his
 uv> peoples. We hope that he wins.
 uv> 
 uv> Like other Aboriginal communities across this immense country the
 uv> Nyungar are fighting for both land rights and cultural survival.
 uv> Robert, now age 67, is right in the forefront of those efforts. Years
 uv> of activities may have etched his face but they have only honed his
 uv> mind. He has one foot planted firmly in the old ways and the other
 uv> planted in the present struggle of his people to secure title to their
 uv> land, and hold onto their identity against powerful forces of change.
 uv> He speaks the truth ..... 
 uv> "I worry about what is going to happen to us blackfellas. I'm worried
 uv> about the young girls and boys who will become the adult women and men
 uv> of tomorrow. What will their chances of survival be?  Who will they
 uv> turn to if they lose their roots? Will they just be forced to accept
 uv> whatever the white man says: that we must leave behind what we once
 uv> were, that we must forget our rituals, our religion and cultures?  The
 uv> white man says there's a bloke named Jesus Christ and a god in the sky.
 uv> And there's a devil down in the ground. They build their cities. They
 uv> destroy the land, the forests. They pollute the water.
 uv> 
 uv> Right in the middle of all their main cities, they've got their
 uv> worshipping places. Five days a week they go about their business.
 uv> Saturday they go shopping, and one day a week they go and pray for
 uv> forgiveness from the god in the sky who knows what's right and what's
 uv> wrong.  But we are a nation and our religion and culture is a long way
 uv> older than Jesus Christ. He was only on the earth 2000 years ago. We
 uv> were the first race here before the white man came.  We've got sacred
 uv> sites here dating back over 100,000 years -that's a hell of a long
 uv> time. 
 uv> Black people today go to the white man's school, and what they are
 uv> taught is how great the white man is. They leave out all the bad parts
 uv> -how in the early days he'd come upon a group of Blacks and just shoot
 uv> them all; how white men used to travel from a town called Busselton
 uv> (down south of PerthWA) on three months excursions, killing blackfellas
 uv> for sport. They'd catch them, then kill the men and rape the women. The
 uv> kids they'd bury in the ground up to the neck and have a sport of
 uv> kicking their bloody heads off. Those things have got to be told.
 uv> 
 uv> The white men today can't say, "Oh, that's all history now, just
 uv> forget about it". He talks about his wars, "lest we forget," and how
 uv> Sunday is the day to pray, and the 25th of December is the birthday of
 uv> Jesus. He wants to remember all this. But in Australia he wants us to
 uv> forget about who we are and what we've been through. He came, he stole,
 uv> he raped, he killed our kids and then he turns around and says: "What's
 uv> in the past, what we did to you, forget about it."  We can't do that.
 uv> 
 uv> My own hope is that Aboriginal culture should be taught in all schools
 uv> and white kids should understand it, so that the old hard-core people
 uv> that's got hatred for Blacks will die out. My only hope for this
 uv> community is that those white kids of today will have a clear
 uv> understanding when they take their place in society.  The gov't here is
 uv> trying to have absolute control over aboriginal people. They've got
 uv> total control over the land, now they want total control over us human
 uv> beings. Until that's done they won't stop. So where is it all going to
 uv> end? I can predict what's going to happen. You can bear witness, if I'm
 uv> dead when it happens, that violence will come to the streets of each
 uv> capital city. 
 uv> I believe we now have a good chance to show the world this lack of
 uv> justice for Aboriginal people. We are planning therefore to disrupt the
 uv> Summer Olympic games in Sydney in the year 2000.  Indigenous people the
 uv> world over should work towards stopping them. We've already started
 uv> this effort and have received some feedback. If these Olympic games are
 uv> stopped, if indigenous people come together to make this happen, then
 uv> the white man has no-one to blame but himself, because he's inflamed
 uv> all that hatred. 
 uv> I've lived my life studying things and I'm a pretty good judge of
 uv> men's and women's attitudes. And one thing I've always taught is that
 uv> if you have anything to say to somebody, you say it. You know then
 uv> where you stand. This goverment in power believes old Aboriginals like
 uv> me are living in the past. I think they're hoping I'll die out beside
 uv> the road. 
 uv> But you've got to have a past to have a future. If you haven't got a
 uv> past, you haven't got a future. You only have the present moment.
 uv> You're going up the road with nothing planned in your bloody head."
 uv> 
 uv> from Robert Bropho
 uv> 
 uv> 
 uv> (JC. Our present white leaders derive their plans, decisions, dreams, 
 uv> and attitudes from the brutality of Western man represented in North
 uv> American/ European imperialist traditions and the need to kill off the
 uv> indigenous/ native peoples of the world, just to steal their lands,
 uv> degrade their bloodlines, rape and steal their children and enjoy the
 uv> necessary killings that they believe they are entitled to perform.
 uv> 
 uv> Australian politicians have currently decided that no recompense will
 uv> be paid or recognised for the mass stealing (with the assistance of
 uv> politicians, police, priests and parsons) of native children. They were
 uv> to become cheap labor in, and sexual alternatives in the squatters'
 uv> homes and cattle industry. All were told that their parents were dead.
 uv> All contact with their tribal relatives was forbidden. Some were
 uv> disciplined in Church schools and turned into christians; but their
 uv> future lives and innate beliefs have now caused a great surge of family
 uv> tracing. 
 uv> There were about 150 separate tribes with differing languages.  The
 uv> babies and children were deliberately sent to faraway areas.  But
 uv> Aborigine specialists can now tell exactly where each person
 uv> originated. Many wonderful reunions are recurring even among the
 uv> squalor that has been forced on them by white power. Some have become
 uv> professionals and thus, with ability in English, are able to represent
 uv> their brothers at Law, who have never been able to protect themselves
 uv> from the police or the squatters or anyone else, using their limited
 uv> words to try to prove innocence.
 uv> 
 uv> Australia's jails have a very large proportion of Black people.
 uv> Australia's christian, dumb police still brutalize and hang them as
 uv> suicides in their 'lockups'. As in America, police are there to
 uv> protect MONEY, ASSETS, the SYSTEM; but not poor people.     JC)
 uv> 
 uv> ** End of text from cdp:reg.easttimor **
 uv> 
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