Dr. John A. King responds to someone who asked why Aboriginal Australians don't just "get over" historical dispossession. He uses an analogy: imagine your family's ancestral land, water, and food replaced with a cinder-block house and token money. Tens of thousands Indigenous people are still being relocated each year, and millions have suffered loss over centuries.
So, well, this is my third attempt at taking this. I'm a little rattled by what just happened this morning. I'm sitting at coffee, you know, by myself and at a breakfast place, just about to go to church. And this guy who is having a conversation at the table next to me, he's talking about the black problem, the blacks in Tennant Creek. And look, there's challenges here, you know. Blind Freddie can tell there's challenges here. Stevie bloody Wonder can tell you there's challenges here. Um, So then he starts talking to me. He says, "Look, I just need your insight on an issue." Said, "I don't know. For thousands of years, people have been dislocated from their home, and they've moved into the city, and they just made the most of it. Like the Hungarian Jews, for example, made the most of it in in Australia or in America. So why don't the Blacks just get over their stuff and just make the most of it?" You know, I didn't know what to say, to be honest. I I was flabbergasted by the question. Like, why am I doing his work? Work for him. One like dude, and I just I could I still can't believe that he would be even you know it's just it's not it's not a similar situation. It's not a similar case. Yeah, just imagine you've had a property in your family for not not seventy thousand years as as some anthropologists say that Imbrani or Aboriginal culture goes back to not fifty sixty. Not even, not even 1,000 years, but just say it's 150 years, 100 years. Okay, it was your great-grandfather's property, your grandfather's property, your father's property. You grew up there. This property had water on it, it had food on it, it had a shelter that you'd built on it, that your whole family had raised. A very simple shelter, but it served your needs. It did everything you wanted to do, and it was your land, your family's land. Your memories were there, everything. Then one day someone walks up and says, you know what, you've got water, we want your water, we're going to take you and we're going to give you a really fancy cinder block house down the road. It's got no running water in it, it's got no electricity with it, there's no capacity to get food or grow food or hunt food. You're just going to be there, but it's in town. It's in town. And we'll give you sugar and we'll give you blanket and we'll give you a little bit of money every month and you can buy alcohol for that. And it'll be great for you, won't it? It's not. It's not. It's an absolute cluster. And you would not like that. You know what you'd do? You would probably spend the rest of your days and your children's days and your children's children's days trying to get your great-grandfather's house back. That's what it's like. That's what it's like. But there's a whole continent of people who've had to suffer this and go through this. There's tens of thousands of people still dislocated every month, every year in Australia. You're talking millions of people over the course of history, not only slaughtered but moved. And I don't know if it is an Umbrani issue. I don't know if we have to get over anything. I just can't understand why there can't be some empathy and understanding. As to why it's not okay to take someone else's fucking house and expect them just to come to terms with it. Anyway, I'll go to church, rub me some Jesus on me, then go home and rub me some gum leaves.
