She who stumbles

I want to scream. I want to cry.

The Indigenous Land Council has announced that it will set up a system of boarding houses to give Indigenous children an education… This article is so disgustingly racist that I need to make fun of it to make sense of the fact that the things it’s reporting on are deathly serious.

“Think of the children!” has been uttered before in Australian history. It produced the Stolen Generation.

Prime Minister John Howard has just announced a series of extremely repressive measures for Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, including taking control of Indigenous townships through a system of leases and increased police intervention into Aboriginal communities.

Did I mention that there have already been proposals for nuclear waste dumps on Indigenous lands in the Northern Territory despite the PM’s assurances there never would be?

And oh gods, I need a rest so I’ll just offer you these two terms for consideration:
“divide-and-rule”
“comprador”
Seriously, they explain a lot more than you’d imagine.

from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Eighteen anti-gold mine activists have been charged following a protest in central NSW, which concluded with a man allegedly ransacking the protesters’ campsite while armed with a knife.The activists, who included members of the Wiradjuri people, Friends of the Earth and the Australian Student Environment Network [ASEN], were arrested about 1.30pm yesterday after allegedly breaching the perimeter of the Lake Cowal gold mine, which is run by the world’s largest gold producer, Barrick.

They claim the mine’s operations are environmentally damaging.

“Barrick … is stripping NSW of its precious water resources, internationally significant wetlands and destroying Wiradjuri history and culture,” ASEN’s national convenor, Nicola Ison, said in a statement released by Friends of the Earth yesterday.

“Barrick is transporting over 6000 tonnes of cyanide annually from Gladstone, Queensland, to Lake Cowal, New South Wales, creating risk of spill and lethal contamination of waterways along the 1600 km transport route,” Ms Ison said.

The activists were each charged with entering enclosed lands. They were granted conditional bail and are due to appear in West Wyalong Local Court on April 26.

Police said a 32-year-old man was arrested yesterday evening after allegedly driving into the protesters’ campsite and damaging vehicles and tents.

He was charged with malicious damage, failing to undergo a breath analysis, stalking/intimidation, carry a knife in a public place, as well as driving offences.

He is expected to appear in Griffith Local Court this morning.

I’ve been lax with my blogging over the past few days because Real Life intervened. I wrote about 3000 words of thesis in 2 days and then family from India came to town.

I’ve been busy busy busy busy and no signs of life slowing down are emerging.

Wiradjuri campaigners at Lake Cowal have also been busy. Along with a Corroboree to celebrate Easter, campaigners are occupying the offices of Barrick Gold to protest the illegal and dangerous gold mine on Wiradjuri lands.

There are also refugees in Villawood immigration detention centre on a hunger strike to protest against a new wave of deportations.

About 60 prisoners at one of Australia’s notorious immigration detention centres launched a hunger strike on March 28 to protest against a new wave of refugee deportations

In the face of massive, life-threatening issues like deportation and cyanide poisoning of indigenous waters, I feel a bit intimidated in expressing the doubts and difficulties of trying to start up an anti-racism collective at my university.
But we have to start somewhere. Hopefully we can start tackling issues around the Block once we kick things off.

I have to organise a reading group to get it all started, but I’m not sure what’s a good starting point. If anyone has any suggestions for a reading (preferably a self-contained chapter from a book, or an article, bonus if it’s available as a PDF), I’d really appreciate it. I want to discuss anti-racist activism broadly, as well as delve into the political/psychic/ontological/material/historical/social dimensions of race.