Michael Coghlan wrote to reprove me for my "Whitie" reading of that
paean to colonialist reconciliation, Eleven Ships, wherein white
australians, while adverting that they weren't "black austrailians,
celebrated the gift of white culture bestowed upon the benighted. I had
asked:
jk
> >No offense, Michael, but I'd be interested in how well it sold among the
> >indigenes. A lot of "black Australians" went around humming that little
> >ditty, did they?
>
> Not quite,

I have to ask, is that a bit of the well-known anglo-australian
understatement? I mean, did the song sell to the aborigonals? If not,
why not? It matters.

Michael continues:
> But I have checked it out with a number of Aboriginal people and
> they understand it.

Just what about it do you think they understand? That first verse,
wherein the white ubermenschen tell them they had better get used to it?
vide:
>> Eleven big ships left England one day
>> They’re going to sail in to Sydney Harbour one day
>> And all of the people with their skins black or brown
>> May well see it as a day to frown
>> And remember the day they lost their land

Why would you think that the aboriginal Australians would be reconciled
to merely frowning at the memory of their dispossession, which didn't
happen the day the whites landed in Botany Bay, but actually took place
with extraordinary cruelty and malice over the course of some 150 years,
and continues to this day? To reduce the rigors of those 150 years of
cruel displacement, dispropriation, and dispatriation, to the
realization of a day is to practice reductionism of a scale that defies
understanding. Why do you think the aboriginals are meekly succumbing to
this political and rhetorical hogwash? Because they don't care--or
dare--to confront you (all whites) with their resistance? Let me put it
another way. Say the japanese had prevailed in WW II and Australia were
today part of the greater east asia economic codevelopment sphere
administered out of Tokyo? Do you suppose that the whites would not
truckle to the public blandishments of their overlords while plotting
and planning the way to regain their "due" influence and power?  Ewed
better beleive they would. So why do "white austrailians" think that
"black australians" have given up hope that the whites wouod someday
simply re-board those 11 ships and decamp. please? Resistance is
resistance, and to imagine that those you have ioppressed would be more
compliant than you would be under the same circumstances is to demean
the spirit of those who would resist your oppression.

> They appreciate and respect the conciliatory tone. They
> are certainly not offended by it.

I guyess that you think that they are telling you all they know. Yeah,
right! I refer to the position you yourself might occupy in a greater
east asia co-prosperity sphere. Would you tell the Japanese manager of
your economy that you hated his guts? Bloody doubtful. Convicts in
Austrailia didn't WIN their rights--Ned Kelly notwithstanding. It was
establishment people coming out from England who raised a stink and
gained some relief from the prevailing conditions that had relegated the
convicts to virtual slave status.
> It's a strange thing about racism that
> enlightened victims of it feel less anger towards its exponents than many
> whities do.

Or they feel less inclined or less able to confront their oppressors
than someone whose future you don't hold by the short hairs.

> It often makes me wonder if we are in fact being arrogant when
> we presume to speak about something of which, in terms of first hand
> experience, we know nothing. I'm more interested in Aboriginals' opinions.

What makes you think that they would confide their true opinions with
you?

I had observed previously that the song
> > ...obviously made you feel swell, and I guess that's
> >something, innit? A little like seeing how the lads look up to
> >Paul"crocodile" Hogan out in the bush, taking on those drug lords.
> >        I mean, it isn't a little patronizing, by half, is it? These folk
> were
> >hunted for sport until the '30s, werney? They were treated less well
> >than koalas? Remember "Let me Abos go loose, Lew, Let me Abos go loose.
> >They're of no further loose...so tie me kangaroos down"? Sounds a little
> >like manumition, don'nit? Their children were taken away from them
> >almost at birth, in some cases, and placed in "White" homes to
> >assimilate them. Was Evonne Goolagong one of those? Or she was what we
> >in the states call a mulatto?
>
To which you replied:
> This is all a little off track isn't it?

I don't think so. Do you actually believe that people subjected to this
kind of abuse would simply accede to its relegation to the status of
historical curiousity? Why do you think that the aboriginal
australians--not their name, and neither is "black australians," come to
thnink of it-- do not harbor hopes to this day that include staking
colonials out over an anthill?

So I asked:
> And this little bit of tin=pan alley
> >doggerel, bugger it's accompanied by the whole Sidney Philharmonic
> >(though it probably echoed with "quaint and haunting" strains from an
> >amplified didgerree-doo),
>
> No - but it does make quite an engaging reggae song.
>
> This is gonna make it all alright? ?  Sounds
> >like something out of bloody monty python to me.
>
>  The Pythons never did anthing this serious. And if that's your reaction to
> these lyrics they have obviously failed to make its point on you, or you
> missed it.

Don't think so. Pythons were ever adept at noting lunacy, which it
appears to me the ditty you furnished us with emblematizes in excess.
So here again is the song entire
> THIRD FLEET
>>
>> Eleven big ships left England one day
>> They’re going to sail in to Sydney Harbour one day
>> And all of the people with their skins black or brown
>> May well see it as a day to frown
>> And remember the day they lost their land

A couple of points: This verse takes it as a given that the
"land"--which I shall take to be a rhetorical figure, a metanomy (or is
it synechdoche? I can never remember), collapsing into itself the whole
ways of life of the indigenous peoples--was "lost." But even a blind
person can see that the land isn't lost at all. It is still there. It
was "appropriated," or stolen, or some such other way of seeing it. But
"lost?" That's the colonizers' word. I doubt the aboriginals would see
it that way, becasue that way, you obscure and sanitize the events.
Because, if something is "lost," well, you can't have been paying too
close attention to it then, could you. That's why, when ships are
"lost," there's a court of inquiry. Further, in anglo culture, a very
definite moral blame--a kind assertion that if you couldn't hold onto
something, you didn't deserve it in the first place--accrues to the
loser, not responsibility to the winners--to strain the analogy in the
other direction.
>>
>> But I’m  gonna be there when those boats sail in
>> I wanna feel the thrill and remember the day
>> That the white people came and paved the way
>> For people like me to be here and say

I dealt with this passage in my previous post. To me it celebrates what
the song purportedly wants to be an apology for. Some apology. More
like, in your face, an' if you don' like it, well, we got the guns
still. Remember?
to recap:
> >Isn't that claiming a kind of pride for participation in events
> >antecedent to your possible expereince of them? Is't this a claim that
> >the singer is entitled to glory in the events that are being celebrated,
> >even though those events initiated an absolute catastrophe for the
> >"black and brown." Lost their land? Lost their land, their history,
> >their living, their lives, and became sonsigned to the absolutely lowest
> >rung of the culture. Invisible. Ant that's not the same as being able to
> >vanish. How can you, in conscience celebrate the "positive" (from your
> >perspective) without acknowledging responsibility for the rest of it? It
> >is incomprehensible to me.

Now here's where it get REAL hegemonic, so mebbe Ill take it a line at a
time:

>> I don’t expect you to cheer with me
 Well that's big of you. Because we all know you could expect it, and no
small part of  the population takes it as affront that "they" wouldn't,
failing to see all the  "progress" as much of an advance on the
historical traditional cultures.
>> But I’d like you to know that I’ve travelled the sea
So why did you come back, if you can go anywhere you like, which until
very recently was not something that an aboriginal could realistically
expect?
>> I keep comin’ back to this land you see
 Yeah, we noticed. We keep hoping that those 11--or now 11
thousand--ships'll come back and take you away.

>> Cos it’s the best that I’ve seen north or south

For the indigenes, it was always that, before you came along. They have
no reason to see the present as an improvement, and from their
perspectives--am I wrong that the Aboriginal peoples in Australia suffer
disproportionately from the ills of "civilization" such as drug and
alcohol addiction (i don't use the term "abuse," which is nothing more
than another way to blame them for craving a way out?)--how can it be?

>> I wanna thank you for sharing this land with me
>> And mine

Like they have any choice? Kind like the rapist thanking his victims for
sharing their bodies with him, isn't it?
Next verse as bad as the first

>> I’m sorry we didn’t treat you right

Like major understatement. What about the treatment of
aboriginals--either there or as I hasten to acknowledge, here, has ever
been "right?"

>> We can all get together and make it right

Any suggestions? Like, mebbe, redistributing the ground? Nope. Can't do
that. Agains the law? Can't dispropriate the interlopers? That's the
law, right. So even if someone who holds "title" to formerly aboriginal
ground and dies intestate, it reverts to the state, right?

>> There’s enough room for black brown and white

When did this start, this "Let's all share and share alike" stuff. Where
does it start? With pledges by commonwealth governments that they will
not dispropriate aboriginals from the meager holdings that have survived
to this point? Nope, not if "national interest" interferes. And
pacifying the whites is of far greater importance to officialdom than
the claims of indigenes.

>> Can’t you see that I love this land

This is inane. Like the rapist saying "i love you" over and over while
doing the deed.

>> I’m no black Australian but I call this home
 A line that makes it quite clear that there are claims that supercede
the original owners'. Claims of non-black australians, based on the
ability--the privilege--of calling home that which manifestly isn't.

>> The hum of this land is a part of me
It's always hard to write the last line of any song, so i'll let the
symbolism--how the sound of the diggeree-doo is produced by a kind of
breathing hum.

You replied to my earlier exegesis that:
> I agree with most of this, but there's no suggestion in this song of
> abrogating these responsibilities. The song does in fact in its meek way
> say sorry.

Absent, btw, putting any money where the mouth is, a common failing of
imperial or colonial apologies.

> As you may know it's extremely weird to grow up in a country
> that has usurped the rights of its indigeneous peoples, feeling dreadful
> about that, and at the same time knowing that the dust and the light and
> the flora and the landscape of that same country are part of your very
> soul.

Having grown up in New Mexico, I do know. Close up contact with
indigenous peoples for a long time and at a lot of levels is
disconcerting. And it is as much me and mine that I excoriate as you and
yours...Glass houses (vs mud ones), and all that.
Some social theorists speculate in fact that this element of white

> Australia's consciousness - a love of the land and its desolation and
> mystique are in fact a consequence of contact with Aborigines.
>
> >It'd be like having a holiday celebrating the
> >500th anniversary of the first slave debarcation in Charleston, and
> >Randy Newman's song, Sail Away, be the anthem.
> >

>
> We live in hope,

I guess I'd agree, on the caveat, "Hope in one hand and shit in the
other and see which one fills up first."

> - Michael Coghlan.

konopak