Concealing colonial strings of control

Governments operate successfully, because of the chaos and dysfunction they have created in our communities. The creation of a Black middle class and Black elite is a crime against innocent First Nations Peoples, because our grassroots people continue to be the losers.

Ghillar, Michael Anderson 11 September 2018

The Australian government is attempting to perfect its own spin to deny that it is an industrial-military society protecting its ill–gotten gains on behalf of itself and its motherland, Britain.

Australia will never accede to any demands for a truth-telling commission relating to its historical processes of colonisation, because of the consequences that will have to be faced by England and Australia alike for their wrongdoings.

The international community is generally horrified when they realise that somewhere in Europe military dictators had shot and killed, or gased, millions of people, whether it be in WWI or WWII, or during the civil war of liberation in the former Yugoslavia. The horrors I speak of are the mass murders and the mass burials that were conducted secretly, in attempts to hide the horrors. In recent times, similar events have occurred in Africa, but what is not accepted, nor admitted to, are the horrors of the mass killings of Aboriginal Peoples throughout Australia during the colonial development and expansion. The euphemisms ‘peaceful settlement’ and ‘settler colonialism’ are clearly spin to cover the denial of the frontier killings to ‘clear the land’ of First Nations Peoples.

If we are to take just a little bit of time to look over our shoulders, we can see that Governors, such as Macquarie, did not have within their terms of office the power to make Proclamations to kill the native inhabitants. Quite the contrary, he, like Governor Phillip, was supposed to conciliate the affections of the native inhabitants and enjoin them in the development of the colony. Typically the militia and the thieves that came saw great opportunities for themselves and thus ignored all instructions from the parent government. These rogues of the colony manipulated great power over the governing authorities within the colonies. So it does not surprise to truly understand that the British colonies throughout Australia stole from the First Nations all that they had and as a society the colonial Britons, and later some licensed Irish and Scottish prisoners, became the Aboriginal Peoples’ worst enemy. Angus Macmillan in Victoria is a case in point.

In Western Australia people like Hammersley, Monger and Forrest became the absolute beneficiaries of criminal wrongdoings. In Queensland, the Quilty family in the Far North Gulf region gained from the proceeds of crimes against the First Nations Peoples, as did 14 South Australian families, who basically 'cleared the land' of First Nations' resistance in four years in the Gulf Country, with the backing of the SA government, which supplied .45-calibre Martini-Henry elephant-killing guns and unlimited ammunition. Former Minister for Foreign Affairs and High Commissioner to UK, Alexander Downer, is the grandson of Sir John Alexander, who was Attorney-general in the SA Bray government, during part of this period and denied Aboriginal Peoples 'full and free' access to their lands, leased without consent.

The list goes on and includes the family of Fraser Anning, whose maiden speech in the Senate praised the White Australia Policy. A PhD thesis which includes Anning’s family’s murderous exploits on the North Queensland frontier is available here:

The Land Rights movement of the 1970s shifted the political focus from condescending assimilationist approaches, to gaining recognition and control of our lives and to win back title and ownership of our lands, waters and natural resources.

The move by Prime Minister William McMahon in 1972 to suggest a policy approach to Aboriginal land was to lease tracts of the land to Aboriginal people, sparked a more aggressive approach to the Land Rights movement, culminating in the Aboriginal Embassy, which truly shifted the focus from Aboriginal demands being merely a domestic issue, to one where the world started to watch. Only this time the Embassy’s stand included that the Aboriginal people are sovereign and that the Embassy represented sovereign Peoples seeking to be recognised by the international community. In reality one country recognised that Australia had a problem in claiming and asserting sovereign rights and that country was China. China does understand that Australia has little to no territorial claim over waters in the seas because its sovereignty is in right of the Crown of England and not their own.

Since then we have had governments constantly seeking to play this inference down. The Whitlam Labor government, on the other hand, understood the call for self-determination and made efforts to direct funding to Aboriginal organisation for local development, on our terms, to take place.

In previous articles I have written about how governments were concerned about what was developing through the process of self-determination, e.g. in That Word – Treaty.

In the mid-1970s I recall a major backlash by First Nations against the integration of Aboriginal programs into the mainstream. This united objection of mainstreaming was very effective, but unfortunately the more our people got educated in the white system, the more they saw an integrated approach as being a possible way forward. This was understandable because out there in our communities, dysfunction and chaos tends to reigns. This dysfunction and chaos is very cleverly manipulated by the powers that be.

Let’s look at some examples of colonial control, cleverly disguised as ‘Aborigines being self-determining’

 
Under State Land Rights Acts senior staff, the Registrar, the CEO, the Chair and the Ministers have final say and total control over the affairs of those organisations and Peoples. These control mechanisms manipulate the minds of those administering these organisations, or in the alternative, senior staff.

Let’s look at an example of this power and control. Our people in NSW constantly argue about the excessive power vested in the Registrar of the Land Rights Act. In the South Australian APY Land Rights Act, the General Manager has absolute power with very little authority by the elected executives to govern according to their wishes.

Now let’s look at the power of the Registrar of ORIC (Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations). Based upon one non-verified complaint, the Registrar can step in and assume total control of multi-million dollars of assets. He can then appoint an administrator and require him to sell assets to pay for his administration’s high fees. This character of governance is replicated in NSW Land Council system, and the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC), etc.

The Native Title Act (NTA) is little different and has created more dictators than at any time in history! An example of this is the establishment of Native Title Service organisations, funded by the Commonwealth Government, to settle and conclude land questions in the States and Territories. The Native Title Service organisations are established by a Federal Act to operate in State jurisdictions, to settle conflicts over land within the States and Territories.

These Commonwealth funded authorities, e.g. Native Title Service organisations, are dictators and are in fact committing major offences against First Nations and Peoples. They achieve this by falsely leading the people to believe that they serve their best interests and must be trusted, but this is not so.

Then we have Land Councils set up during the 1980s, like the Kimberley Land Council (KLC), Central Land Council (CLC), Northern Land Council (NLC) which have become the beneficiaries of the Federal process called Native Title. The wrongdoings by these organisations, if investigated, would fill the National Library of Australia! (gammon!) But investigations are proceedings, e.g. Wrong Skin podcast by Richard Baker of The Age and the Western Australia Attorney-general is investigating a significant complaint, where the details have not been made public.

All of what I am describing can be traced to one factor - power and control over First Nations Peoples by the colonial military industrial complex, while presenting to the world that billions of dollars are being spent to address ‘disadvantage’ and ‘closing the gap’.

If we look over the left shoulder we will see all of the State Aboriginal Protection Board Acts, or, as they became known later as, Aboriginal Welfare Acts, in which Aboriginal People owned nothing. In fact, the NSW Protection/Welfare Acts clearly stipulated that the clothes and blankets given out as rations were on loan only. If people other than mission-controlled residents were in possession of these blankets and clothing they could be prosecuted and fined.

Now we have other regimes, such the Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC), where the ILC caveats retain a legal interest in the land in favour of the Commonwealth and the original owners only have access and use of the lands, not ownership and can in no way become economically independent in this modern world of trade and commerce, because they are financially handicapped, even to the point where they cannot receive the equivalent of government assistance due to floods, droughts or other natural disasters. I know this because it happens to me and my People.

Let’s look at Native Title lands. Native Title lands have no economic value to First Nations Peoples, but the lands can be leased by the Prescribed Body Corporates (PBCs) to non-Aboriginal people, who can then make massive profits from industry, because they have the appropriate start-up finance and a long-term lease from the people.

The communistic element of control is demonstrated by the fact that governments do not allow First Nations Peoples to have, and maintain, absolute ownership of land and this is courtesy of do-gooder politics by such bodies as the Greens, who believed that they are looking after the best interests of First Nations Peoples, when they argued in the parliament that First Nations Peoples, by the nature of their society, are communistic in their lifestyle, because they do not sell land which is held communally and should not be sold or lost by way of irreversible acts, where the wrong kind of people may get control of the land and sell the land off.

As a consequence, the land may be lost for ever from that community, but this is not a restriction for any organisation, other than First Nations Peoples. Although the intent may be honourable, the fact is Native Title lands are worthless in the full scheme of economics.

The absolute destructive elements are the fact that First Nations Peoples will always be economically dependent and have little to no chance of being economically competitive within the mainstream system, because of the nature of the created pervasive welfarism.

The circumstances of these legislated policies prevent the common law holders (aka Traditional Owners) from borrowing money, using the land as collateral. First Nations Peoples are then restricted to having to deal with their own organisations e.g. Indigenous Business Australia (IBA). If this does not make sense, then you can understand the frustration of the true owners.

To add pain to hurt, one only has to look at how Traditional Owners hand over so much of their knowledge when claiming land through the Native Title process, only to find that the Prescribed Body Corporate under the Native Title Act does not restrictive membership to common law holders (TOs) only, but rather, opens it up for public membership.

Because of the great numbers of deaths of TOs during colonisation, many were brought in from outside, by Governments and resettled away from their Homelands 80-100 years ago, and now have historic association only, but because of their numbers they often gain control of Prescribed Body Corporates, which ultimately results in the true common law holders (TOs) losing power and control over decisions on their lands, such as desecration from mining.

Unfortunately, this has now created a more insidious method of land threat and has undermined the decision-making of the true common law holders (TOs) and, in most cases, they are not the beneficiaries of their Native Title win.

There is much to be looked at. There is much to be done. We must correct these wrongs.

Governments operate successfully, because of the chaos and dysfunction they have created in our communities. The creation of a Black middle class and Black elite is a crime against innocent First Nations Peoples, because our grassroots people continue to be the losers.

We have the answers and we must act together to stop this genocide.