G'day from London ! #Gweagalshield UK Tour Update Part 1
Much has been achieved in the short time since we arrived in London.
In just under 3 weeks we have ;
Filmed an Al Jazeera Global News story at Kamay (Botany Bay), Cambridge Museum and the British Museum (which will be played Globally on tv soon)
Rodney: "It's important we have to tell our story we have to tell what happened on that first day we've got to let everybody know that Australia wasn't peacefully settled and there were gunshots, gunfire a man was hurt all these things have to be told, they were stolen we did not give them these artefacts they are spoils of war. There was 40 – 50 marines against two people and all of a sudden they walk up and take their implements after shooting them. It doesn't belong to them it belongs home in Australia. Me and my people."
Oct 18/19 Met with the director of the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology about returning the Gweagal Spears & Lectured at Cambridge University.
"I hope that one day the rich history, the rich culture of Botany Bay can be revived again, taught to our kids, to our family member. I hope to bring my Gweagal culture alive one day and I hope to see these artefacts (The Gweagal Shield & Spears) returned and be part of us again, because my people never forgot over 246 years they still talk today the elders.
My only hope is that maybe one day my family my tribe could speak our tongue speak our language and practice our culture again. I hope we can one day go out and make spears and take the young kids out and show them how it was done before white men came to our shores. All our stories passed down generation to generation, they tell us who we are, tell me who I am.
Why these artefacts are so important to the Gweagal people of Botany Bay is that we were the first Original Australian people to have contact with the British and we were the first to lose our culture and language. We haven't practiced our culture for many years. It's slowly returning to us word by word, artefact by artefact."
Spoke to primary school children at 2 schools in Cambridge.
Oct 21 Performed at the British Museum with Bunna Lawrie from Coloured Stone and British activist / performance group BP or not BP ?
Rodney: "It's our resistance. It symbolises our resistance against Captain Cook. It doesn't deserve sitting in this cabinet right here with so many things that have nothing to do with Aboriginal Australia. It;s been 246 years from that day and we've lost so much. My people on the east coast, Botany Bay people. First Contact. Our culture. Without our artefacts our culture will die. We need our culture back, Our artefacts back. To rejuvenate pride in our youth, to be proud of who we are. The shield proves a lot of things. It proves there was no terra nullius because we were here before that proves we were there before we had trade routes we had laws we had tribes we had boundaries, ceremony. From that first day we were never thought of as people . The first musket shots that rang out that day hit my ancestor and it just proves that the British weren't there...were only there for one reason and that was to invade our country."
“We never gave up our sovereignty, we never gave up our stories, we never gave up our culture. History is not just kept by the victors it is kept by all those with the courage and will to remember it.” - Roxley Foley
Oct 24 Met with a top QC lawyer in London to discuss the legal case for possession of stolen goods against the British Museum.
Visited the site of Captain Cook's house
Oct 25 Met with the deputy director and curator of the British Museum about returning the Gweagal Shield.
"They can never tell our stories they don't know our stories they can read our stories from a book that's how they can tell them. Our stories are in our minds passed down thousands of years only we can tell our story. We want to develop a relationship where we have the communities themselves telling the true stories and that's something the British museum can benefit from we can help revolutionise their collections to make it something that is truly a gem to be seen " Rodney Kelly
“The hole in that shield is the symbol of our dispossession. The first moment of violence in a history of violence. If you look through that hole to now, to where Australia is today you will see that dispossession and the laws upon which that dispossession is still in existence, the abuse that is taking place of the children under the care of the government, the incarceration rates, the suicide rates. In Australia they are now they are talking about recognising us in the preamble of their constitution...there are two other words missing from that debate. One is Sovereignty and the other is Treaty. We must fix up unfinished business. That is what the shield symbolises to us” -Vincent Forrester
Oct 27 Filmed by the ABC & Al Jazeera & UK Independant Media at private viewing of the Gweagal Shield the British Museum (already aired in Australia as a feature story on ABC News 24)
"We are here looking at the past through the present but there's the future to come. Today we are also here to talk about tomorrow when we are addressing these sorts of questions. We come from a land that has.... the pen is mightier than the sword, obviously, and the rewriting of history. They say the “settlement of Australia” but we are the survivors of a frontier war.
I am the last contact of this frontier war so the importance of our oral history is there for us to carry on. Talking about the past but also talking about the present. It is not a very nice place to be an Aboriginal in Australia at the present time.
We look at the genocides but we look [at] the continuing genocides or at the cultural genocides, a more sophisticated form of genocide where the governments still today, when they're looking at our rights for the future but we look at how they term it.
The ol' Aussie, he will make a joke about our plight in a humorous way because they do not have that attachment to the land or that spirit of the land. So today we're going to talk about tomorrow.
The symbol of these weapons here but also the shield. But don't forget there are also women involved in this story too. I wonder where the women's artefacts are... I wonder where those are stored." Vincent Forrester
Met with the Guardian at their headquarters in London to produce another Guardian article (to be published next week)
Nov 1 Lodged a formal application to the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology to repatriate the Gweagal Spears.
Nov 2 Spoken at an independent media seminar hosted by 'Real Media' in Brighton about Racism in Australian Media.
( http://realmedia.press/ )
"Since my father sat on the original Royal Commission into deaths in custody we haven't seen a slowing down of the rates of deaths in fact of the over 100 recommendations that were made in that report, very few have been instituted and those that have have been withdrawn and defunded across the country." Roxley Foley
Nov 3 Met with the Dean of the Birbeck law school and been interviewed by Dr. Sarah Keenan to be published in an article about us in an academic magazine that reaches the legal intelligentsia of the UK.
Began a social media campaign to give the British Museum a 1 star review and message to return the shield back resulting in over 1200 posts in under 48 hours
Nov 4 Visited the Grave of Indigenous NSW man Yemmerrawanyea in Eltham Who Arthur Phillip presented to the King of England with Bennelong in the 1790s to pay respects.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemmerrawanne)
Nov 5 Drafted a formal repatriation request for the trustees of the British Musuem to repatriate the Gweagal Spears
