|
Charmaine:
Yes, hello. My name is Charmaine Clarke. I'm a Gournditchmara
woman from Western Victoria, an indigenous Australian, and also
a member of the Stolen Generation. I came back to my family when
I was about fourteen and since then have been fighting for indigenous
rights in all aspects - stolen generation through to land rights
and Melbourne is my home. |
|
|
Charmaine: Land rights come at an extraordinary cost. But as Elizabete
said, you can't have your dreams unless you're willing to work for
it and of course, there's always the sacrifices that go with that.
For indigenous people in Australia it's a long time coming. It's a
very different sort of circumstances. Some form of indigenous independence
through the form of land rights or a treaty would be one of the first
steps. |
|
|
A major milestone for indigenous people in this country was the acknowledgment we got a couple of years ago with the Mabo case. That case actually legally recognized that we were here, that it isn't terra nulius*, that there were indigenous people here and we do have prior ownership in that respect, sovereignty to some extent. But for us mob it ís actually getting all the kids home that were stolen ...make sure they all come home. Reviving our culture is very important, but we can't have a good strong revival of our own culture if we don't get our land back cos it's completely and utterly linked with that. Land rights is about indigenous people, it ís the very principle upon which our culture is expressed. Without land we really can't express our culture. White man sees it expressed in just books and stuff. We live our own culture the way it should be lived otherwise it dies, basically. You know, it ís like when you cut a flower off a bush. It dies eventually. It ís like you take us away from our land - we eventually die from the inside out. It ís also about acknowledging the past: making white fellas actually want to acknowledge it, but also importantly we demand compensation, we demand the right to have access to our land and we also demand the right to actually have equal rights and equality in this country like everybody else enjoys. There's still too much poverty among our own people here, despite it being one of the richest, Westernised countries in this region. It still has Third World country conditions for the only black fellas that actually exist here. That's the indigenous people living in Third World conditions, while white fellas live in nice big houses and stuff. And there's still a huge gap between the have and have-nots. My dream is actually to have that gap completely obliterated. But I'm going to keep fighting. I mean the battle isn't over for any of us still. We've still got a long way to go as indigenous people, and as an indigenous Australian I'm absolutely really proud of you mob. You stuck there, it cost you a lot, but you stuck there and you'll have our support and hopefully in years to come we can rely on your brothers and sisters to actually give us support too, when you get yourselves on your feet. |
