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Tell him his dreaming
Issue 107 - 15 Jun 2006
ISSUE 107, June 15, 2007: The movie The Castle struck a chord with millions of Australians. NICOLE WATSON* wonders why white Australians can’t also identify with the black fight for land, particularly given the leaders of the Indigenous land rights movement are so much greater than fiction.
Darryl Kerrigan is one of the most loved characters of contemporary Australian cinema; the doting father and husband who took his fight for the family home all the way to the High Court.
Being young lawyers at the time, my friends and I revelled in the phrase, ‘it’s the vibe’, but it was not only lawyers to whom The Castle appealed. Rather, the film spoke to all Australians about our love of the underdog and the sanctity of the family home.
So why don’t Australians have the same affection for the real-life Darryl Kerrigans of Indigenous communities, whose love for their ‘castles’ saw them pursue battles with tenacity and resourcefulness surpassing anything that could have been dreamt up in the Kerrigans’ hallowed pool room?
In spite of widespread concern over the Howard Government’s industrial relations reforms, it is difficult to imagine a time in the future when food rations will replace cash wages.
Yet this was the remuneration received by Gurindji workers from Vesteys, the lessees of Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory.
On 23 August 1966 the Gurindji leader, Vincent Lingiari, declared a strike that grew into a decade long battle for the repatriation of their traditional lands.
The Gurindji’s victory was later immortalised by the image of Prime Minister Whitlam pouring dirt into Vincent Lingiari’s hands.
Ordinarily, Australians would take pride in a story of humble workers who fought an immensely powerful British Lord and won.
But most have little knowledge of the Gurindji Strike.
Years later a former gardener from Mer in the Torres Strait took on a Government notorious for its lack of respect for the rule of law.
Though the man’s formal education did not extend beyond primary school, he was a charismatic advocate and had a profound sense of justice.
In 1981 he held his own with the lawyers and academics at the now historic conference, ‘Land Rights and the Future of Australian Race Relations’.
By the end of the conference, he had inspired them to mount a legal challenge that would span over 10 years and shatter the racist doctrine of terra nullius.
That man’s name was Eddie Koiki Mabo. Although we now have ‘Mabo Day’ in commemoration of his courageous fight, it lacks the significance to justify a national holiday.
Australian audiences could empathise with the forces that drove Darryl Kerrigan to the High Court but most are yet to comprehend what inspired individuals like Vincent Lingiari and Eddie Mabo.
Like Darryl Kerrigan, each wanted to protect his family’s way of life, but that is where the similarities end.
As precious as the family home is, it does not define one’s cultural identity, it is not the source of one’s law and history, and while separation from the family home may cause grief, it is not irreplaceable.
For Indigenous people however, land is all of those things and more.
Another crucial distinction between The Castle and the real-life black Kerrigans lies in how each story ends.
While the Kerrigans strode off into the serenity of Bonnie Doon, Indigenous people continue to struggle to regain some of what was formerly their ‘castles’.
Although State and Territory Governments occasionally resolve native title claims by agreement, they are not averse to lengthy and draining litigation.
For example, the recent case of Risk v Northern Territory concerned native title applications over land and waters in Darwin.
Among the evidence received at the trial was the tragic history of policies of separation of ‘mixed descent’ children from their parents and legislation such as the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918 (NT), which compelled Aboriginal people to live in a compound notorious for its lack of edible food and inadequate water supply.
Ordinarily the mere survival of a people in spite of such adversity would be viewed as both a triumph of the human spirit and a blight on the nation’s history.
But far from feeling any contrition over the acts of its predecessors, the Northern Territory played legal hard ball, successfully arguing that the claimants had lost their traditional laws and customs.
Despite the grave consequences for the claimants, most Australians would be unaware of this case, let alone even question whether the ‘public interest’ is best served by the vociferous scrutiny of Indigenous identity and religion.
In recent months the Commonwealth and conservative commentators have sought to blame communal land ownership as a cause of Indigenous poverty, ill health and the lack of a police presence in remote communities.
Some have even suggested that grants be paid to individuals as an incentive to leave.
It would be ludicrous to suggest that anyone in Mosman or Paddington should abandon their castles in order to enjoy access to infrastructure or law enforcement.
Residents would rightfully argue that such matters were entitlements of citizenship. But as distressing as forced removal from Mosman or Paddington would be, it simply wouldn’t be the same as leaving a place that has been held by your family for so many generations that it is literally a part of you.
Darryl Kerrigan would exclaim ‘strewth’, but Vincent Lingiari and Eddie Mabo would probably shake their heads over the revelation that after so much struggle, so much pain, our fellow Australians are yet to understand us.
* Nicole Watson is a Senior Research Fellow of the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney.
• SEE ALSO: The long held ambitions for a bad black land law
• SEE ALSO: Pulling apart the spin...
• SEE ALSO: The final solution
 
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