Occupy Something
21/10/11 19:15![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsOn a friend's facebook today, she was asking what the point to a demonstration like this is and how they expect to achieve anything. I gave examples of the sit ins in the US in the '60s (and I'll concede that that's a debatable issue, but not one I'm wanting to get into here). I also gave the example of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy that got set up in Canberra in the 1970s.
The tent embassy was set up by a group of disaffected indigenous people who felt that they were lacking in political representation in order to agitate for land rights. Land rights, for those no au fait with the concept, relates to the idea that seeings as this country was built on the concept of Terra Nullius (ie. the land belonged to no one, therefore no declaration of war was needed to take it), and that Terra Nullius had recently been ruled to have been wrongly and illegally claimed at the time, that the entirety of this country still belonged to it's original inhabitants and that the rest of us were at best squatters and at worse and illegal occupying force. Now, these blackfellas weren't unreasonable and suggesting that we all up stakes and leave, but that perhaps there was room to hand some of the millions of square kilometres of government land, especially sacred sites, back to the traditional owners (TOs). Of course, most of the clans from around places like Melbourne and Sydney were long dead and forgotten (or so it seemed at the time, but that's another story), but for people like the Yolngu in Arnhem Land, who were still living in the way they had for tens of thousands of years and had only been in serious contact with white people for a few decades, that there was an opportunity to, if not reverse the damage of the past, at least to stop its continuation. One of the main points of contention was that in the Northern Territory, people were being forcibly removed from their land so the mining companies could dig it up, without any compensation for the TOs whatsoever.
The embassy was quickly declared illegal and busted up by the police, but they kept coming back. Some ingenious fella discovered that according to the law, it was all totally legal, so long as it didn't go over 11 tents (then it would be considered a camp ground and would fall under different categories of law). So it continued. It continued to be a symbol of aboriginal resistance, a place where activists could gather and share ideas and information. Out of the group of original protesters, out of this symbol have come things like the development of aboriginal legal and medical services, advances in land rights (though still a long way from the original demands), the creation of a national indigenous governmental structure (since closed by the Howard government) and the idea of "reconciliation"; that blackfellas and whitefellas had to stop hating each other and move forward together, which culminated in reconciliation marches of over a million people in the mid 90s (as a percentage of population, this makes the million man march look insignificant).
It has to be remembered that until 6 years previously, aboriginal people were not counted as humans under the law (they were governed by the flora and fauna act) and needed government permission to work, marry, be out at night and travel outside their local area. This symbol became the rally point for the whole gamut of issue indigenous people across the country faced.
The embassy still stands to this day, and it still hasn't gotten it's original demands, but it's symbolic power as a force for justice cannot be denied.
This post is not to agree or disagree with the motives and goals of the occupy movement, just to give an example that sometimes change only happens when you get in peoples' faces and stay there. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is justice.
The tent embassy was set up by a group of disaffected indigenous people who felt that they were lacking in political representation in order to agitate for land rights. Land rights, for those no au fait with the concept, relates to the idea that seeings as this country was built on the concept of Terra Nullius (ie. the land belonged to no one, therefore no declaration of war was needed to take it), and that Terra Nullius had recently been ruled to have been wrongly and illegally claimed at the time, that the entirety of this country still belonged to it's original inhabitants and that the rest of us were at best squatters and at worse and illegal occupying force. Now, these blackfellas weren't unreasonable and suggesting that we all up stakes and leave, but that perhaps there was room to hand some of the millions of square kilometres of government land, especially sacred sites, back to the traditional owners (TOs). Of course, most of the clans from around places like Melbourne and Sydney were long dead and forgotten (or so it seemed at the time, but that's another story), but for people like the Yolngu in Arnhem Land, who were still living in the way they had for tens of thousands of years and had only been in serious contact with white people for a few decades, that there was an opportunity to, if not reverse the damage of the past, at least to stop its continuation. One of the main points of contention was that in the Northern Territory, people were being forcibly removed from their land so the mining companies could dig it up, without any compensation for the TOs whatsoever.
The embassy was quickly declared illegal and busted up by the police, but they kept coming back. Some ingenious fella discovered that according to the law, it was all totally legal, so long as it didn't go over 11 tents (then it would be considered a camp ground and would fall under different categories of law). So it continued. It continued to be a symbol of aboriginal resistance, a place where activists could gather and share ideas and information. Out of the group of original protesters, out of this symbol have come things like the development of aboriginal legal and medical services, advances in land rights (though still a long way from the original demands), the creation of a national indigenous governmental structure (since closed by the Howard government) and the idea of "reconciliation"; that blackfellas and whitefellas had to stop hating each other and move forward together, which culminated in reconciliation marches of over a million people in the mid 90s (as a percentage of population, this makes the million man march look insignificant).
It has to be remembered that until 6 years previously, aboriginal people were not counted as humans under the law (they were governed by the flora and fauna act) and needed government permission to work, marry, be out at night and travel outside their local area. This symbol became the rally point for the whole gamut of issue indigenous people across the country faced.
The embassy still stands to this day, and it still hasn't gotten it's original demands, but it's symbolic power as a force for justice cannot be denied.
This post is not to agree or disagree with the motives and goals of the occupy movement, just to give an example that sometimes change only happens when you get in peoples' faces and stay there. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is justice.
(no subject)
Date: 21/10/11 08:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/10/11 09:12 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/10/11 17:05 (UTC)— Frederick Douglass
(no subject)
Date: 21/10/11 18:41 (UTC)OWS *could* do that if they had coherent aims, Hell, the Tea Party's shown the benefits of becoming an auxiliary of a political party on the basis of nothing more than screaming angrily and being opportunistic slimeballs. OWS, if it succeeds, will do the same for the Democrats, but if it succeeds it will wind up having to side with one corporatist party against another. If it stays in the shadows and shouts but remains ineffective, then it won't have any power to speak of, the Tea Party got into power by using the system very effectively to pursue a theocratic agenda. This is no New Left/Civil Rights movement, this is more a bunch of people who are really pissed off.
(no subject)
Date: 22/10/11 03:30 (UTC)