‘Participants expressed disgust about a statue of John McDouall Stuart being erected in Alice Springs following the 150th anniversary of his successful attempt to reach the top end. This expedition led to the opening up of the “South Australian frontier” which led to massacres as the telegraph line was established and white settlers moved into the region. People feel sad whenever they see the statue; its presence and the fact that Stuart is holding a gun is disrespectful to the Aboriginal community who are descendants of the families slaughtered during the massacres throughout central Australia.’[13]
It’s difficult to avoid seeing commonalities between the feelings of the people of Charlottesville and the feelings of the people of Alice Springs.
These events and their consequences on vastly different continents encapsulate the transgenerational suffering and trauma among Indigenous and African American peoples. This writer can only hope that – post-Referendum – Aboriginal Australians will come around to believing that their trust has not been wasted, that despite the awful, politically-manipulated rejection of the Referendum, there remain great swathes of non-Indigenous Australians who will continue to stand with them through ‘Makarrata’ and beyond, no matter what it takes.
By Frances Goold Voice Crash Investigation [1] 1 ‘Mario, what’s your relationship to this park?’ ‘This is the park where my wife and I got married, roughly eight years ago.’ ‘And what did you father say to you at the wedding?’ ‘My dad told the photographer he didn’t want that statue in our wedding pictures’.…
Source: Voice Crash Investigation: Transgenerational trauma – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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