In Australia, Indigenous people seek justice through our courts and parliaments in a country that still finds itself unable to speak the truth of history or fully reckon with its great sins. Yet brave people fight on because it is all they have, and savour those precious if too rare victories — those glimpses of justice that the family of George Floyd saw this week. If Martin Luther King and Barack Obama were right that the moral arc of the universe bends to justice, then it is justice a long time coming. For too many people the final words of George Floyd speak to a greater truth: “I can’t breathe.”
Tag: Stan Grant
Stan Grant can’t not but see that 200 years have passed but Colonial thought and the systems that came with it haven’t changed that much in Australia. To our shame we aren’t able to face the truth of our history which remains an unhealed wound scabbed over rather than pealed back and aired, (ODT)
Will we stand with the protesters of Hong Kong? Crucially would Australia, among others, be able to keep talking to Beijing, to keep diplomatic channels open?
The coronavirus crisis has brought front-and-centre the question of how the world lives with an increasingly-powerful authoritarian China. We have already seen a descent into insult and threat — from both sides.
It has been called a new Cold War, perhaps so, but China is far more critical to the global economy and more interconnected with our lives than the Soviet Union was.
The China challenge also comes at a time when freedom and democracy is weaker in the West. The world was always heading to this moment.
via Hong Kong and China’s fate has been clear all along. Xi Jinping is seeing it through – ABC News
Democracy is under attack, authoritarianism is on the rise, dissidents are being locked up without trial, journalists are declared enemies of the state, corruption is rampant and champions of freedom are harder to find.
The international watchdog Freedom House has now recorded 13 straight years of declining global freedom. It isn’t just countries like Russia and China, but now that historical beacon of democracy the United States is also in retreat.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The latter half of the 20th century was boom time for democracy, which accelerated after the end of the Cold War 30 years ago. Yet, countries that embraced democracy are now winding back those reforms.
There are no Jacinda Arderns here! All we have is Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce, Pauline Hanson, Fraser Anning, Cory Bernardi, and their ilk; the pitiable list goes on. What hope have we?
The only hope we have is to rid ourselves of this pox upon our nation. We want an Ardern. As we can’t find one among our current crop of ministers, let’s start again when next we get the chance. We might not do much better, but at least it’s worth a try.
via The Tragic Toll of Hatred – » The Australian Independent Media Network
One of 66% of people that have managed to close the gap the 66% rarelytalked about. They hear “you can’t be Indigenous” from Australia (ODT)
Let’s start with a history lesson. Lieutenant James Cook did not “discover” what became known as Australia, or as it then was in the logbooks of early Dutch mariners – Terra Australis Incognita (the unknown southern land).
Indigenous people have become a postscript to Australian history thanks to a belief in the superiority of white Christendom, writes Stan Grant.
If a nation can so easily erase a grand palace from its memory, what else can it forget?
Two elections, a world apart in the same week, has some delivering the last rites to the wave of populism that has dominated global politics, writes Stan Grant.
The ABC has axed the Friday broadcast of the 7.30 program just under two years after it replaced the eight state-based editions of the show.
Source: ABC axes Friday edition of 7.30 program to make way for Stan Grant show
“Treaty yeah, treaty now.” The words of Yothu Yindi’s hit song of two decades since may have been premature but they have proven prophetic. The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has said a treaty is way overdue. He has begun a process to drafting such a settlement with Victoria’s Indigenous people. It is an historic moment.
Source: Stan Grant: Without a treaty and constitutional recognition, no Australian is truly free | NITV
Provocative ‘poor me’ column in Australian Financial Review targets prominent people. Plus China Daily seals a deal to run monthly supplements in Fairfax papers
Source: Spectator editor Rowan Dean rolls to the bottom of offensiveness barrel | Media | The Guardian
Stan Grant strides towards me. It is easy to see why the television camera so loves his face. We meet at the plush Sofitel Hotel in Melbourne, where tea is poured from an elegant pot. Halfway through our conversation, the NSW honorary consul for Mongolia comes up for a chat. He seems in awe of Grant and tells him that his children are great fans: they’ve watched his speeches on YouTube. He thanks Grant for appearing on TV with him once. “Give my regards to President Elbegdorj,” Grant tells him.
Source: The advocate: On Stan Grant’s radical hope | The Monthly
We need to create human societies from people of many different backgrounds.
Journalist and Author Stan Grant addresses the National Press Club on the topic Talking To My Country.
Guardian Australia’s Indigenous Affairs editor tells ABC’s Q&A program the positive response to his racism speech made him consider the ‘responsibility and obligation to the words in that speech’
The overwhelming response to my speech tells me we are better than our racist history, says Stan Grant
Leonardo DiCaprio has raised the issue of indigenous representation in film at the time that local Indigenous talent has come into its own
“Racism is at the root of the Australian dream.”….Not to be missed!!!!
Family and noise and tar-melting heat and flies and cricket and all the love in the world. And Christian teachings mingled with Indigenous beliefs
The prime minister said he would ‘sweat blood’ for my people, that his personal mission was to redress Australia’s ‘national shame’. But words are easy
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