I let myself get wrapped up in yesterday and I got angry at a mountain of things. Things that wont change, things that cant change and things that are so damn hard to change. You start to get the overwhelming feeling that you’re fighting a losing battle against Ignorance… and it wears you down!
I was so angry before I even sat down to watch the film Utopia, which is unsettling to put it mildly but was nothing i didn’t expect to see. Point is I had a shitty day but it turned around and as i was reflecting last night, i realised its the same thing that always turns my day around.
I got reminded of Vincent Lingiari and the Wave Hill walk off… I know this story inside out, but it always stops me in my tracks and makes me reflect - firstly because of the collective sense of unity and belief from the workers, their families and communities that they could change what needed to be changed and that they didn’t stop until they got what they were asking for - the Wave Hill walk off is still the longest strike in Australian history.
Then there is Vincent Lingiari who to me represents the type of leader that anyone black or white should aspire to be - sadly our kids still don’t learn about him in school - they learn about MLK and Mandela but not Lingiari. You know how people say that this person or that person didn’t know at the time that there actions would continue to change peoples lives… Lingiari to me is different, even though he was a humble man, I always feel like he did know that what happened at Wave Hill would continue to be a catalyst for change for Indigenous people for years to come.
There was some footage shown from the walk off that i cant recall if I’ve ever seen before, but yesterday it really captured me - the reporter was asking one man about what they wanted etc, then he asked him if all the families and workers supported them, the man said yes, he asked if communities supported them and the man said yes, then he asked if the whole of the Northern Territory would support them and the man said yes and that was it.
The thing that inspires me most about Wave Hill is that today - in my lifetime - I know men and women who are leaders like Lingiari, they work tirelessly because they know that change in our communities will happen eventually and they know that they are supported by our communities.
Im paraphrasing here but one old aunty was responding about racism and she said that the reason we don’t respond with violence and the reason we keep moving is because we have too much dignity. As soon as she said it, it picked me straight up. Truth is Indigenous people aren’t defined by stereotypes, ignorance, struggle, statistics or anything that the media says. We are defined by two things only Resistance and Dignity.
I got more then a few facebook deletions yesterday - but I wont apologise for the things that I write, its how I feel and not intended to offend you. My whole identity is as an Aboriginal woman and as an Aboriginal and as a woman, that may seem like double dutch but its true, these 3 things sit on par with each other at the top. Its difficult to explain to people who live with the idea that everyone is Australian that the part of me that identifies as Australian is very insignificant - to me its 9 or 10 letters that you fill in a box - nationalism has never appealed to me, i believe that the world is a bigger place and the only things of importance here are the people in it and the land we live on - not boarders.
I’m not saying that I’m better than you, Im saying that to me being Aboriginal is more than being Australian, and yesterday I was proud of being Aboriginal.
‘That was the story of Vincent Lingairri but this is the story of something much more. How power and privilege can not move a people, who know where they stand and stand in the law.’
I’ve been writing a 1500 word essay about Indigenous Rights and Aboriginal Activism throughout Australia’s history today. So proud to know that these are my brothers and sisters!
So moved by what Indigenous political activists like Charles Perkins and Noel Pearson have done in regards to achieving native title, land rights, equality and constitutional recognition in our past.
Please don’t put Noel Pearson any where near Charles Perkins or Vincent Lingairri… unless you can actually point out the good that he has done.
I’ve been noticing some confusion in the notes regarding what culture this is, so here’s some more info!
The girl in the video is Sámi. The Sámi are an indigenous people from the region of Sápmi, which encompasses northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
The traditional clothing of Sámi people look different depending on which area tradition they belong to. This girl is north Sámi and she’s wearing a Lyngen dress (ivgu gákti in the north Sámi language), which means her family/ancestors came from Lyngen, Norway. Lyngen’s proximity to the sea made fishing a common means of livelihood for the Sámi living there, which earned them the name “sea Sámi”.
The girl in the video mentions that Sámi people get harassed a lot on the 17th of May, which is the Constitutional Day / National Day of Norway.
It should be noted and known that Sweden still hasn’t signed the ILO convention on the rights of indigenous peoples, and that it’s just in recent years that there’s been some awareness raised about the historical and ongoing colonial relationship between Sweden and the Sámi people. https://fuf.se/en/magasin/europas-enda-erkanda-urfolk-bor-i-sverigre/
I’m sorry I’m posting this without a description but it’s imperative that I post this now, I will add a description in the future.
This has been in my drafts for months. This woman is upset and angered by the kind of harassment we here in the USA have been ignoring forever.
This video predates the whole swedengate reddit post issue and it is EXACTLY the type of racism that the Norse countries need to be taken to task for now that they’re in the spotlight.
Support Sami people, indigenous rights extend beyond the Americas.
What’s wild is that like just last year there was a long legal battle between the Ainu people and a university because the university refused to give back bodies of the Ainu dead and kept them for “studies”…
(Pet peeve: Seriously people, link the sources to articles. If you’re engaged enough to be enraged by this, you should make sure people can read all of it and get more information about the issue.)
happy PRIDE i’m here i’m queer and i believe the land should be given back to the proper indigenous stewards.
Non-Natives reblogging this are great and wonderful
Please remember that “land back” does not mean “indigenous people are mystical elves with innate epigenetic wisdom of land stewardship and they don’t belong in big cities,” nor does it mean “non-indigenous people can’t be farmers.”
What it DOES mean is that “non-indigenous farmers should be paying the equivalent of property taxes to the native governments their land was stolen from.”
It means, “there’s a great deal of indigenous scholarship on sustainable agricultural practices that farmers should be taking into account, because indigenous agriculture was more advanced than European agriculture at the time Europe invaded the Americas and western agriculture *still* hasn’t caught up in terms of figuring out how to produce equivalently high crop yields without compromising the ecosystem.”
It means, “non-indigenous farmers should be in an intellectual discourse with indigenous agricultural scientists and indigenous peoples that still do traditional farming, figuring how to repair the damage western farming practices have done to the ecosystem.”
Faith Bandlerwas a very important figure in the fight for indigenous rights in Australia. The daughter of an indigenous father forced into cheap labour on plantations, she faced the same discrimination while working on fruit farms and getting significantly less pay than white workers.
She began her activism in 1956, tirelessly campaigning for the removal of several discriminatory provisions from the Australian Constitution. Her efforts led to a historical referendum in 1967, which attracted the support of more than 90% of the population, and offered indigenous Australians the same civil rights as white citizens.
