Birkbeck, School of Law, Gweagal Shield Interview
OUT TAKES FROM LAW SCHOOL INTERVIEW
Dr Sarah Keenan
Lecturer in Law
School Academic Equalities Officer
Birkbeck, School of Law University of London
Present : Stewart Motha, Dean of law, Birkbeck
Roxley: Since the intervention what's been going on in Western Australia has been pretty scary. Where they used siege tactics out in the Northern Territory and bureaucracy they didn’t even wait in WA they just went out and forced people on onto the buses and dumped them on the outskirts of the cities.
Vincent: And bulldozed their houses.
Roxley: Something you thing would have been resigned back to the 16th and 17th Century but...
Sarah: My students are always shocked and they asked me last night when the Intervention was announced, what were the white Australians doing, where were they?
Vincent: They believed all the propaganda that came from the Lateline program and they character assassinated my community and Uluru changed shape. They had different hills in the background when they showed the petrol sniffing and said it was our community.
It was coming up to an election obviously the election prior to that they had the children overboard and Tampa crisis.
I was in the living room in my own community we were there when Mal Brough came with the media contingent, the generals, the soldiers, the commissioner of police and all the troops came. All the young women fled into the sandhills taking the children away they thought that was going to happen.
When they introduced that piece of legislation it was the quickest piece of legislation that ever went through both houses of parliament from all political persuasions...
Shock horror look at what's happening in the community.... When they came in they extinguished our rights as citizens of the Northern Territory, suspended the racial discrimination act, but then…. that was the commonwealth government but then there was the Northern Territory government to where the Commonwealth made an agreement straight out that they will take away the governance.
Our communities had a governance with their organisations and that sort of thing. We had our own businesses we had money in the bank, shops, out at Uluru we had our own tour companies and whatever but when they introduced the shires they came in and took all our equipment like graders, bulldozers, buses etc and then they took all the contracts we used to have, grading and repairing, maintaining the roads etc but then they took our garbage truck they took our garbage truck it may not sound like much but you have to pick the bloody rubbish up and they cut all the wages.
Sarah: But why did they take the garbage truck?
Vincent: Exactly. It's called racism. They didn't want us to have anything like that and cut all our wages and all this stuff and they kept I think it was $145,000 in our community which is at the base of Uluru (Ayers Rock), Uluru being the crown jewel of the tourist industry of Australia.
From our community, at the base of Uluru when you look at Yulara Village down the road that's where all the economic activities take place. The only thing left to us is the cultural capital. The only thing. Telling the story at the base of Uluru and they're even trying to get that one.
But then from them saying all our men are alcoholics, we all bash our wives, we're all pedophiles and we all will not work. When they took our community control away from us, the Aboriginal control they put in government business managers. The government business managers were like old superintendents and then they stopped our control over our own economy and introduced the Basics card. So that's where we could only spend our money.
They took control of our shops. In some communities that's our only economic activity to get them dollars flowing around. Taking control out of the people's hands and the government controls you like that.
All these problems have led to a number of issues. Obviously primary health has suffered but also mental health to where we have an epidemic of suicides amongst our young people and then they take our young people for "protection" and they go and put them in youth detention.
If you're an Aussie and you've seen the Four Corners program on the torture of Dylan Voller. That is torture , that is torture. Australia has ratified international covenants against torture and they're using an 11 year old child. An 11 year old! Some of the kiddie in there (the Dondale detention centre) were 9, 10 , 11.
They've even gone for our children. Where is the humanity in that?. Where? There must be some sort of observance from the international community about that Treaty (between Aboriginal Australia and the Australian Government).
I tried to expose the suicides then they wrote a story about me being corrupt instead of looking at the issue of suicide, of mental health, those kids 14, 15 year old kids hanging themselves. They haven't even seen bloody life. Why are they made to feel so worthless and why are they told that they're useless and this type of thing?
And then they attack our schools. No more bilingual education in schools anymore. Native title is not only about land it is about language too and self identity. See there must be language rights in the native title rights recognition of that. English in my family is a 4th or 5th language. They are disempowering even the children. A deliberate government policy of disempowerment.
Roxley: Not only that, with the case of changing the school systems and education programs out there, what ended up happening was..
Vincent: Got rid of all all our teachers aids, got rid of all our teacher training programs..
Sarah: Is this just in the Northern Territory?
Roxley: It's been extended into Western Australia and South Australia now. By getting rid of all the bilingual education, the truancy rates started skyrocketing because that was one of the few things that were actually encouraging children to come to school.
They then used those truancy levels to take the children away from there parents or to cut people's payments. It's a vicious cycle like Vince was saying like taking the garbage trucks...
Have you ever seen what's happened in a major city when the garbage collectors go on strike? It doesn't last very long because the city falls apart when the basic civil infrastructure is disrupted and it doesn't take very long for things to go down and so by the time the TV crews and the people who are doing the investigations come along you have a massive situation of disrepair that has been purposefully engineered to help encourage that sort of storyline. It's pretty messed up.
Vincent: They compulsively acquired our houses. Our houses. Now, if you' re an Aussie you know about the overcrowding. 30 people living in one house. They are probably, not probably they are on Social Security and so every person on Social Security get their rent taken out so the rent on an asbestos riddled house with 30 people living in it, they are charging the same rent as a property on Sydney Harbour
Sarah: What?
Roxley: It's not about the property it's about how many people you have there. So by forcing overcrowding you can charge literally thousands upon thousands in rent a week.
Vincent: Then if your sewerage is blocked up or if you've got a leaking tap you cannot repair it because it's got to come from Alice Springs 700 kilometres away from some of the remoter communities to fix it up.
Meanwhile the skills are in the community they've cut all the wages and that type of thing giving NGOs and contractors all that work. Disempowering people that way too. So you cannot, you are not allowed to go repair the dam shower and the toilet, 30 people using one loo in one day and when the kiddies go to get up in the morning they have got to go have a shower and bath and everything ready for school but they are wallowing around in raw sewage.
Sarah: Is that just in the Territory, the housing and the rent stuff, per person...
Roxley: I can't speak about Western Australia and South Australia too much but I know there are similar tactics being used. Like I said in Western Australia they didn't even bother with these sort of things they just outright pulled people out of their communities and bulldozed their homes and just dropped them on the outskirts of Perth with no transitional services or anything.
After that they would start arresting people for issues of vagrancy and start taking children away for issues of homelessness. It was a strange coincidence that around that time they had just completed 3 or 4 brand new privatised super prisons about two of which were specifically declared they were going to be all Aboriginal prisons so there was a conveinent population to fill these prisons after the forced removals and we've seen a very direct systematic approach to removal of people from their communities, put in positions of vulnerability and then herded off into prison. The thing that makes you angry is that some company is making money out of this imprisonment too. It's a very profitable business.
Vincent: Now, you've got a Royal Commission in the Northern Territory. It doesn't only happen in the Territory it happens all over now. A Royal Commission is good, it can give you some guidance but then you have to implement those recommendations.
In 1995 the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody made recommendations but how do you get a redress, of abuse? Ultimately the Attorney General, the Chief Minister for the Northern Territory and the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs federally. The buck must stop there.
Hhmhmmmm... maybe a question we gotta ask is ; how do we get where the buck stops? How to we have a right of redress against those perpetrators of state sponsored abuse? ...That state sponsored abuse.
The government make these draconian laws then you have got these big pot gutted cops standing around these children, torturing them, tear gassing them. Guantanamo Bay tactics. For Christ's sake they are 9, 10 , 11 year old babies. Babies. Where is the decency?
Where do we get a redress of these wrongs? There is really no place but we really need to get some learned peoples around the world to challenge that and they have to be made responsible for the actions they have taken. These are the sort of questions we need to ask. We really want someone.....to kick 'em in the ass.
Sarah: Let me introduce my colleague Stewart Motha, Dean of the law school
[introductions made]
Vincent: Then we've got, obviously, what Rodney's here for.
Mark: So, you say they're not allowed to fix their own plumbing what happens if you just do?
Vincent: You're not allowed to , they've got this white person in charge tell us how to wipe our backside, eh?
Mark: But what if you just do it anyway...
Vincent: You're not allowed to you get in trouble.
Mark: What trouble do you get in?
Vincent: If you live in Alice Springs and you rent a house you sign a tenancy agreement. If anything's wrong, you ring up the landlord: “Hey my toilet's broken here”. Then if that landlord don't act within a reasonable time like a day or two ...but when you've got wait for months, you know.
We pay rent. On our own houses that they compulsorily acquired. They're compulsorily acquired our house and they're making us pay rent on our own houses. If you pay rent, surely repairs and maintenance can be done, you know.
Then you've got...the health of the little ones don't start when they are born it starts in the womb. Inside. When you have a young mother living in those sort of conditions.....The health of that young mother is important while she's pregnant but then you bring home a newborn baby gotta let 'em live in that crap. Yeah, that's bad ....you at fault...that's your fault you are living in those conditions..... When you have all these tiers of authority oppressing the people. That sort of abuse needs to be addressed. You mob in England won't believe it but it's bloody true.
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Concerning the Gweagal Shield
Sarah: Would you say the way that it is displayed now is breaking Gweagal laws of care and custodianship?
Rodney: It is because the man who held it, his grandson had the same name, he was destined to hold that shield himself and his grandson, they would all have the same name so it is breaking the law taking it off our country.
Sarah: do you have the name ?
Rodney: It's “Cooman”. There are a few different ways that it can be said but his name was Cooman. His real name was pronounced Gu-Mung and that means grandfather-grandson. So yeah, he would have been destined to hold that shield himself. It's breaking the law taking it off our land where we traded for it. It couldn't just go off our land again without certain protocols. So yeah, they broke various laws by just taking it.
Roxley: I think we've been quite generous in our offers. We've come from a position of building a relationship and wanting healing on these issues. We're not here to make demands or not yet.. We'll see what kind of game they want to play but we've come here saying that we want to help develop a relationship with communities where our stories can start being told from our perspective as well so they (The British Museum) are not going from that colonial state of taking our knowledge or misinterpreting it.
We said we can actually help you build something that makes our collections in the museums something you can be really proud of that can be a real jewel and bring people in from over the world, not just to help the museum but to make sure our culture is being maintained and maintained properly because that is one of the real problems we have in Australia that our history is being killed off at an alarming rate.
From traveling around the country a lot because I operate as a delegate speaker for my community where I have to travel and speak to a lot of people and I come from a grass roots level not a bureaucratic land council level and a lot of the old elders I talk to they are talking about reopening the songlines and bringing out this history which has been hidden for the better part of two centuries and we want in a way for them to be a part of that.
In order to do that we need to get some of these sacred objects back and we need the museums to play a part in that process.
It's coming home to Sydney to its rightful resting place where it can have the most profound effect of educating people and helping in that process of repairing our culture and history which is something that needs to be done in Australia. Not creating, more restoring.
*******
Roxley: I think the history we're being left with at the moment is the creation. To this day. We were out at Botany Bay and there was a schoolteacher taking around school groups around that point and the fact that there was even people on the shore that day which was written down in all the diaries of the explorers was completely erased from their teachings. There was no one on the shore. Captain Cook got to an empty shoreline he made his way through the bush to an empty camp and he just happened to go through some of these huts and found some spears and shield and “traded” some axeheads and some beads, well, took the spears and shield and left this other stuff behind. It's playing out even today and it's completely false. For our entire history our entire resistance has been erased from the history books. It's important to let people know that that resistance took place
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Legal people that's what you need to know is Captain Cook's secret instructions. Secret Instructions for Lieutenant James Cook Appointed to Command His Majesty's Bark the Endeavour 30 July 1768 is the actual title.
http://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-34.html
That was his letters patent if you will, that was his instructions to go discover Australia so that's where all the law stems from for this case.
James Cook carried 'Secret Instructions' from the British Admiralty. These contained an outline of the route of the voyage, described the activities he and his men were to undertake.
The Secret Instructions provided that, in the event that he found the Continent, he should chart its coasts, obtain information about its people, cultivate their friendship and alliance.
His instructions from the admiralty state ;
"You are likewise to observe the Genius, Temper, Disposition and Number of the Natives, if there be any and endeavour by all proper means to cultivate a Friendship and Alliance with them,"
The interaction with the Gweagal people at Botany Bay on April 29 1770 prove that Cook BROKE THESE INSTRUCTIONS !!
Obviously it's theft but if I can comment on the legal aspects of this case which are fascinating and many. We have been consulting people. We consulted Slater and Gordon back in Australia and that was awesome and they were really super keen but in the end they didn't take the case because they didn't have any money.
Now were seeing Bindmans. Basically they looked through the case and Slater and Gordon says yes there's a case and Stephen Grosz said there's not much of a legal case you think it would be a cut and dried case of theft because there's all the evidence we need and there's all the genealogy we need to prove who Rodney is. So, anyway according to all these legal people who are looking at the British law of it. There's two laws relevant here, there's sovereign Gweagal law and then there's British law.
You can prove every step of the way that the British broke their law. You have to look at Cook's Secret Instructions. Pretty much they say if there's any natives cultivate an alliance with them and then if you read his diary from the day that he landed you can see that he obviously didn't do that.
So what the legal case that Slater and Gordon determined there was at British common law was, and this is the sad thing, that you have to dig so far back into the common law to say that shooting someone and taking all their stuff is wrong.
*******
Roxley: I think what's interesting as well is that after we are scheduled to leave the UK after this weekend to go to Germany we're meeting with a lot of Museums out there and also in the Netherlands and maybe even Sweden.
These other institutions have come forward and they are really keen to actually give some of the stuff back.
So it's also about working with other institutions of the same calibre that can put the British Museum to shame and also facilitate the return of a lot of other things.
I guess the way we can play into this too is that we've got the position and the standing within the community to make the connections with the people right here on the ground and I guess one of the reasons Iwe haven't been so brash headed and just slapped writs on them is that we don't want to sour the relationship for others of our communities that might follow in our footsteps because the Museum will just keep getting more and more defensive the more they go through these processes.
So it's about building a relationship of respect where we want to make sure our culture is presented properly and also not just as a dead culture but it will give us the opportunity to say if we have this respect of what is truly Sacred and inappropriate for you to be keeping we can give you actually other things and we can help you build your collections from a position of partnership.
*******
Vincent: I have my own shield. More than 600 years old and I still got it. That goes to my grandsons. 400 years before Captain Cook come.
Our objects can be traded over centuries throughout generations and if you look at the condition the shield is in now it's obviously not been taken care of. It hasn't been given that physical and spiritual maintenance that can only be given to it by someone it belongs to and who has that connection to it and that's incredibly important.
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