.... the history mystery ...

Magpies sing their throaty, musical notes as dawn brings shafts of sunlight through the eastern window, laying light right through the house. The contrast between the deep, still and pleasant warm morning here and the winter storms raging elsewhere couldn’t be more pronounced. Here, it’s the first days of Autumn – a beautiful time of year. Elsewhere, local conditions prevail.

It’s still the case that there is no treaty with our Aboriginal population, no acceptance by our political leaders that the need for an Aboriginal advisory body, attached to parliament, is a wise move.

Another stark contrast as the gay/lesbian community celebrate the acceptance of same sex marriage within the context of an annual Mardi Gras while nothing happens to alleviate the ongoing pain and suffering of our Aboriginal community. Why not? They both represent a small percentage of the wider population but the wealth, power and influence of the one compared to the other is immense.

It’s sickening to witness the silence. I write to the local newspaper to no avail, they don’t print the sort of letters I write yet their pages were full of the angst regarding same sex marriage.

Gatekeepers are everywhere.

I’ve been watching Bettany Hughes’ ‘Seven Ages of Britain’ – a BBC production, complete with computer generated imagery, very well put together but completely missing any reference to the Welsh who were, of course, the ancient Britons that she was supposed to be illustrating within those programs.

History is not only written by the victors but the myths and legends, the truths and half truths are also rearranged and re-purposed to suit the status quo. This doesn’t need to be a conspiracy theory as such but can arise when the Professor of History happens to be a religious bigot and thus dismisses anything which contradicts his prejudice.

The late 1700’s and into the 1800’s reflected just such a situation in Britain. An unpopular Hanoverian king on the British throne, the French revolution and American War of Independence still fresh in people’s minds and the established order requiring a history which took no account of the already established ancient British history.

As that ancient British history took itself back to Troy and Troy was yet to be rediscovered, it was relatively easy to dismiss that history and give us the incomplete and basically false early history which Bettany Hughes now presents.

Why should this matter? Surely King Arthur was myth and legend ... not so, a King Arthur existed in Wales as King of Glamorgan and is recognised and noted as ruling in the mid 300’s A.D. and six generations later, another King Arthur fought the Saxons in the 500’s A.D.

It’s worth noting that many British kings were uneasy about the Welsh. Printing presses were banned in Wales until the end of the 1600’s. Welsh teachers were replaced, wholesale, with English speaking teachers in schools across Wales. The speaking of Welsh was forbidden in schools. These are easily verified facts.

I suppose my main point is that you destroy a culture by dismissing its history, its language and its religion ... and it’s still occurring. It’s not a theory, it’s fact.

When I arrived here in the late 1960’s, Aboriginals hadn’t been counted in any census, they were considered part of the fauna and flora which indicates that, at least by previous generations, they weren’t necessarily seen as humans.

Change had to wait until the 1967 Referendum when more than 90% of Australians voted to give the Commonwealth Government the power to legislate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to include all Indigenous Australians in official estimates of the Australian population.

It’s only fifty years ago and it can be argued that not much changes.

While people believe what they choose to believe, those beliefs are moulded by those with the power to do just that.

It’s a strange word is Discrimination. I discriminate between right and wrong and that’s considered o.k. ... but if I draw attention to the dreadful conditions being foisted on the Palestinians by Israel, it’s considered discrimination of a different order. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s not anti Semitic but it is anti evil and more than sixty years of failed, half hearted efforts to provide a two state solution is exposed as the lie and the illusion it always was. The power lay with Israel, the Goliath of that story.