'Welcome to Country!' - Our Lands of Poverty and Devaluation

2 March 2019

The Role of 'Welcome to Country' and land without economic value in the politics of poverty

We now come in all sizes and colours, but you cannot take away the spirit of our forefathers and foremothers and our absolute connection to Mother Earth. The divide and rule by colour distinction will no longer work. We are who we are, always was and always will be.
 
But once you welcome non-Indigenous people to Country, whether you mean it or not, in their world you are opening the door and letting them in and what is your's becomes their's. Right now their only legitimacy on Country is when they are welcomed in. Such is the influence of the politics of poverty. One way to deflect Welcome to Country is to Acknowledge Country!

Ghillar, Michael Anderson 1 March 2018

The continuing pauperisation of First Nations Peoples within Australia now can be traced to the absolute guilt of the colonial squatter so-called 'settlers', supported by the colonial monarchs of Britain, who put their head in the sand and hoped that the First Nations People in Australia would disappear from the face of the earth as was expected. But such is the resilience of the longest continuing culture on earth and its Peoples that this mass extinction did not occur.

As was stated the other day by First Nations person, we now come in all sizes and colours, but you cannot take away the spirit of our forefathers and foremothers and our absolute connection to Mother Earth. The divide and rule by colour distinction will no longer work. We are who we are, always was and always will be.

The attempted separation of us from our lands almost succeeded, but for the assertiveness of the Gurindji pro-active action with the Walk-Off, which led the way. Initially, this movement was called the Gurindji Walk-Off when, in fact, they walked back on to their own Country, Dagaragu, and simply did what the squatters did, only this time they squatted and took their own land back - a far cry from walking off.

Now thanks to the church-educated Blackfellas, especially the northern conservatives, land Rights has been traded away and we have Native Title forced upon us, without any real input from the cross section of First Nations Peoples. I wonder of the people of the A and B negotiating teams of the Native Title period understood what they were really doing. For my part, I believe they were swindled by much smarter people than themselves and I put it this way: the conservative Blackfellas, who are nominated, will always argue they participated because it's better to have something than nothing. But I wonder if they truly understood what they were saying.

Father Patrick Dodson, the image left was taken in the chapel of the Sacred Heart monastery, Croydon, Victoria, Australia, 1975. (National Archives of Australia). Catholic Bishop Saunders was reported in 2016 to say: 'Patrick Dodson is Catholic to his bootstraps'

It is like those who participated in aiding the grand theft of New South Wales, when they said let's take the New South Wales Land Rights Act and we build from there. I ask: What have they built since 1983 in New South Wales, when there are still over 20,000 land claims yet to be dealt with by the New South Wales government? Even with the Native Title Act, governments around this country continue to give all the Vacant Crown Land to their white farmer constituency, including Travelling Stock Routes (TSRs), Crown Reserves, Commons and Water Reserves. So what are the so-called Black organisations and leaders doing about this? Like the sovereignty debate, they put it in the too-hard basket or just roll over, because it seems it is beyond their capacity to be engaged in and create positive outcomes at that high level political and legal school of thought.

But let me say this: We are losing everything every day of the week, because our fellow conservative Blacks know very well that the real fight is beyond them and they sell us out for expediency.

The resultant effects of the Native Title Act have created a massive industry for lawyers who know how to cheat and deceive. Sometimes I think we should be looking at their genealogical background to see who they are and where they come from. We need our own experts to do their genealogies. Clearly, they do not read all of the Native Title Act, otherwise if they knew all the different sections of the Native Title Act, they would not be advising First Nations People to give up and surrender all that they really own.

The Native Title lawyers should also be telling the claimants, whom they purport to represent, that Native Title land once granted is not worth a piece of cigarette paper, let alone one dollar in the whiteman's economic world. This land devaluation is because of something that was said long ago in the colonial days. Let me remind you of this. There was a man called John Batman, who negotiated directly with the Wurundjuri original owners for 240,000 hectares of prime farming land in the Kulin Nation. He 'negotiated' for the land by way of a private treaty and land-use agreement for 20 blankets, 30 tomahawks, 100 knives, 30 mirrors, 200 handkerchiefs, 100 pounds of flour and six shirts. On 26 August 1835, however, Governor Bourke issued a Proclamation that was beyond the Terms of Reference of his Commission, when he ruled that no-one other than the Crown of Britain could negotiate land transfers and conveyancing. Governor Bourke had proclaimed that the treaty was "void and of no effect as against the rights of the Crown". British records show that Governor Bourke went against the King's Orders in regards to negotiating with First Nations People for the use of their lands.

Now we have ended up with the Native Title Act, that basically confirms Governor Bourke's position, where it says that any land owned by First Nations People through the Native Title process can only be sold/transferred back to the Crown, not to any private individual or corporation. It is this that we must focus on in order to understand the realities of the continued level of control that the monarch of England maintains to this day.

We should be asking Lowitja O'Donoghue, Marcia Langton, Peter Yu, Gatjil Djerrukura and Patrick Dodson what agreement they reached, for and on behalf of all First Nations People in this country, when they met with the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 1999. Clearly, the Queen's political party in this country, the Labor Party, made sure that Dodson and other First Nations People became part of the legal and political system of her federated colonial states to legitimise her power over this country and our lands.

Un-elected 'Aboriginal leaders' outside Buckingham Palace in London, where they met with The Queen. (L-R) Professor Marcia Langton, Dr Lowitja O'Donoghue, Patrick Dodson, Gatjil Djerrukura and Peter Yu

(Photo by Matthew Fearn - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)

H. C. "Nugget" Coombs

Lowitja O'Donoghue

We need to remember that it was people like Patrick Dodson and Lowitja O'Donaghue who were at the centre of bringing down the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC), a grassroots elected organisation, when they each took their own path to double-bank the NAC. They worked with the main catalyst and architect, Dr H.C. Nugget Coombs, who facilitated a strategy to set up the Federation of Land Councils, all of which now control Native Title Land Claims in Western Australia, Central Australia, Northern Territory and North Queensland. Nugget Coombs also worked with Lowitja O'Donaghue and Patrick Malone to collapse the Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC), the Department of Aboriginal affairs (DAA) and the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC) into one organisation that was called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission (ATSIC). As Lowitja ODonahgue desparately exclaimed one night at the Aboriginal Embassy, after John Howard's Liberal National coalition shut down ATSIC: "It all wasn't supposed to happen like this."

Clearly, these events must be telling us a story about an insidious evil group controlling First Nations Peoples from the highest levels, and it's not a conspiracy theory, it's for real and its bipartisan.

The deceitful operations of the Native Title Act are the key to our current dilemma for many First Nations Peoples. As Nugget Coombs said in his Book Aboriginal Autonomy, the Native Title Act was not for the benefit of First Nations Peoples, but instead was written for the benefit of the mining companies and multinational corporations. Thus, the racially discriminatory Native Title Act and processes have an underbelly controlled by colonial evil.

Now we know the Land Councils are making many of the directors and administrators very rich, while the constituency, who depend on integrity and transparency, are waiting behind in a world controlled by seemingly endless welfarism. Noel Pearson's solution is to suggest commercialising welfare and make the people work for him, which is yet another modern form of slavery.

There are many issues identified here, but they are all tied together and, if one wants to look close, can be traced to a select band of people, who are linked to one political party with a string connected to the insiders of the opposition. In other words, they belong to one chord controlled by our occupying monarch. There is, of course, another chord controlling the conservatives. Our Old People have always told us to name names, identify the connections and talk it up. If we stand by and say nothing, we will be the losers.

The 2019 Invasion Australia Day marches showed that we have enormous support from places we least expected. Our young leaders must now become aware of the blue-print that was layed down to curb the Black Power movement. To free ourselves from this blue-print you must learn who the players were, who they are, and where this blue-print strategy leads. The result of this strategic plan is for First Nations Peoples to be included in the constitution; thinking and speaking white (just as Tony Abbott admits); being influenced by the same desires and aspirations as the colonisers; seeing ourselves as a relics of the past; with the survival of some of the arts, literature, museum pieces and dressed up performances - song and dance routines, without any real connection to Country, representing a mere facet of an ancient tradition.

We are so much more than this and will always hold the wisdoms of the oldest culture on the planet.

In order to break the mapped pathway of this blue-print strategic plan, our first port of call is to stop welcoming them to Country.

How serious can one be with a Welcome, when you are paid to Welcome them to Country? That cannot be serious at all. It's a money-making venture, a community income stream, without any real substance and meaning, but the invaders take it seriously, even though they pay you. Once you welcome them to Country, whether you mean it or not, in their world you are opening the door and letting them in and what is your's becomes their's. Right now their only legitimacy on Country is when they are welcomed in. Such is the influence of the politics of poverty. One way to deflect Welcome to Country is to Acknowledge Country!

Contact: Ghillar Michael Anderson
Convenor of the Sovereign Union,
Head of State of the Euahlayi Peoples Republic
Contact Details here