Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

Black to the margins

After the government's eviction of the National Museum's former director, and the conduct of a partisan review which described museum exhibits as "boring" and decried the "lack of emphasis on [white] explorers", the new director has ordered redevelopment which will "better reflect European exploration and Australia's development". Effectively, this is a return to the parochial repression of aboriginal history and the avoidance of issues such as the attempted genocide and culturcide of this country's original inhabitants. The director denies the changes "reflect concerns" the museum has previously presented a "black arm view of history" - though there is really no other explanation for the changes except as an attempted whitewash. Some would venture that this action is akin to holocaust denial, though a politically acceptible denial, apparently. The NSW parliament had a motion before it recently that supports the culturcide perspective, even from the mainstream of politics: 

This is not about a black-arm view of history, as Prime Minister Howard so keenly proclaimed. This is not about living in the past. This is about acknowledging the involvement of the various government and church groups in committing an act of cultural genocide. Honourable members know that the best way to bring about genocide is to destroy language and we, in this country, have tried very hard to do that during the past 209 years. 

In describing aboriginal history as "boring", and in lamenting the lack of emphasis on the most recent, european-majority history, is nothing less than a racist white paintbrush graffiting a white-arm view of history across more than 60,000 years of unique Indigenous culture. The aboriginal view of history will be confined to "stories about Aboriginal people's experience and their relationship to white settlement" - that is, black history will be seen through a white perspective, or not at all. This is shamefull, unrepresentative politicing at the expense of the most marginalised citizens of this land, and I am truly sorry.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 11:09 am ::