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Australia
Australia
Bec2004-09-17 15:09:03
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Darwin
Darwin is a small city of about a hundred thousand with a bit of everything, commerce, shipping and tourism. It is also a road, air and sea hub for the North.
It was raining most the time I was in Darwin. February is summer in Australia and this one was hot, hotter and more humid than the last time I was here in 1996.
On several occasions, I tried to start a conversation with Aborigines that I saw in public places but I almost always met distrust and sometimes even hostility. Wherever I went, I noticed that there was very little communication between the Whites and the Aborigines. It was obviously "politically correct" to show a positive attitude towards aborigines in the media and in anthropological museums but in practice they were completely excluded from society.
The situation is complex, those who survived the first extermination campaigns that followed colonisation, were used as cheap labour while their children were removed to "missions" to wean them from their ancestral culture and mould them into docile Christians. Then, they were isolated in reserves where the state took charge of their subsistence. No wonder they're marginal!
Félix Leclerc was right to sing that the best way to destroy a man is to provide for him instead of giving him work. The results are the same in Australia as in Canada, alcoholism and abuse of all kinds of drugs, delinquency and astronomical suicide rates. In Canada the Amerindians who have managed to escape from the reserves by becoming responsible for themselves, can integrate the mainstream society and many of them have done so brilliantly, but in Australia this social mobility is extremely rare for Aborigines because of the high visibility of their heritage.
The Whites with whom I have talked about this are fully aware of the human drama before them. They say they wish to respect the culture of the Aborigines but they don't want them as
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See photographs from:
Australia Gallery
