And there is sometimes a very fine line between indentured servitude and slavery.
I wasn't taught it at school. It was something I was told by my Grandfather, it was passed down along with other family stories, I grew up in that area, in sugar cane country and his father's family were cane cutters and well, they worked alongside kanakas.
Then when I went to school in Mackay, half the kids in my class were pacific islander, and one day we had to tell the teacher about where our ancestors came from, and this one girl told us that her great-great...whatever was taken from the Solomon Islands and forced into work as a slave.
It wasn't until a few years ago that I thought to look it up.
The thing about Australia, is that our identity, and indeed our history is very much caught up with the convicts. The first white people in Australia were convicts, usually Irish, and it wasn't a nice place. So I believe (and I'm not an expert, and maybe another Australian who studied these things could elaborate further), came about our distrust of authority, and the ideals of egalitarianism, or a fair go...
This of course didn't pass on to the Indigenous population. The first white people in Australia weren't educated, came from a low class and had been, back in the old country, seen as the lowest of the low (irish, criminals etc), so it was probably normal human behavour to take it out on the indigenous people. Australian Indigenous peoples weren't recognised as human and the weirdo Darwin dudes had them on the bottom of the human gene pool.
Then there came about years of genocide (life and culture), massacres, forced assimiliation, religious conversion, the stolen generation etc. But for most Australians, that is, most White Australians, the knowledge of this was non-existent. The Indigenous population is so low, in a lot of places you can live your entire life not living with, or working with Indigenous people. So I can understand why some Australians find it hard to understand that there is racial, problem, even today.
You can't see racism if you live in a white community.
The major difference I see between Australia and the United States (and granted, I've never lived in the US, so yeah), is that it's almost taboo to discuss racial issues in our country. Australians are very reluctant to bare our dirty laundry, we want the world to love us, we want to be seen as the ideal, to be the lucky country, the fair country. Even for me, I don't really want the rest of the world to see my country is racist. I won't pretend it doesn't hurt my pride, because it does at times.
And I come from a part of Australia that is considered the most racist. I don't like it, I don't like admitting it. Because I know we're more then just that.
For me, I see Canada and New Zealand as the ideal nations when it comes to race relations, the countries which do the best out of the...at least, Commonwealth nations.
no subject
I wasn't taught it at school. It was something I was told by my Grandfather, it was passed down along with other family stories, I grew up in that area, in sugar cane country and his father's family were cane cutters and well, they worked alongside kanakas.
Then when I went to school in Mackay, half the kids in my class were pacific islander, and one day we had to tell the teacher about where our ancestors came from, and this one girl told us that her great-great...whatever was taken from the Solomon Islands and forced into work as a slave.
It wasn't until a few years ago that I thought to look it up.
The thing about Australia, is that our identity, and indeed our history is very much caught up with the convicts. The first white people in Australia were convicts, usually Irish, and it wasn't a nice place. So I believe (and I'm not an expert, and maybe another Australian who studied these things could elaborate further), came about our distrust of authority, and the ideals of egalitarianism, or a fair go...
This of course didn't pass on to the Indigenous population. The first white people in Australia weren't educated, came from a low class and had been, back in the old country, seen as the lowest of the low (irish, criminals etc), so it was probably normal human behavour to take it out on the indigenous people. Australian Indigenous peoples weren't recognised as human and the weirdo Darwin dudes had them on the bottom of the human gene pool.
Then there came about years of genocide (life and culture), massacres, forced assimiliation, religious conversion, the stolen generation etc. But for most Australians, that is, most White Australians, the knowledge of this was non-existent. The Indigenous population is so low, in a lot of places you can live your entire life not living with, or working with Indigenous people. So I can understand why some Australians find it hard to understand that there is racial, problem, even today.
You can't see racism if you live in a white community.
The major difference I see between Australia and the United States (and granted, I've never lived in the US, so yeah), is that it's almost taboo to discuss racial issues in our country. Australians are very reluctant to bare our dirty laundry, we want the world to love us, we want to be seen as the ideal, to be the lucky country, the fair country. Even for me, I don't really want the rest of the world to see my country is racist. I won't pretend it doesn't hurt my pride, because it does at times.
And I come from a part of Australia that is considered the most racist. I don't like it, I don't like admitting it. Because I know we're more then just that.
For me, I see Canada and New Zealand as the ideal nations when it comes to race relations, the countries which do the best out of the...at least, Commonwealth nations.