Australia: Day Two: The Morgans

We woke up bright and early, ate a quick breakfast, and were off to the Morgans. Usually, this is the day where we were supposed to head up to the upper peninsula in the Kimberley, but because of the recent cyclone and all the rain that came in, the roads were all flooded out and we may even get trapped up there. The Morgans were so nice to let us all stay at their house. They have a huge garage where we all set up tents in.

They were two person tents and Lezlee and I shared one.

Before we set up our tents, we sat around the garage and chatted with Colin (our father for the week) for 2-3 hours about his culture and racism. That is a long time to sit around and chat, but he held our attention the whole time. He talked to us about the Stolen Generation and how it affected him personally. I never knew what the Stolen Generation was until I got here, but that is actually what I wrote my research paper on. The Australians kind of keep it hidden. For 100 years, the government had control over the Aboriginal people. They wanted to make Australia more of a "white county" and thought that the way the Aboriginal people lived was a barbaric lifestyle, so they wanted to make their lifestyle more like the European Settler's life style. The government devised a plan to take the Aboriginal children away from their mothers without thier mothers permission and put them into camps or foster homes to try and make them "more white". A half-caste child is a child of half Aboriginal and half white descent. Some of the Aboriginal women were raped by the white people and so many half-caste children came about. Since the white gene is the dominate gene, the children were more white then black and so the government wanted to also weed out the black color over time from the Aboriginal skin and make this county into a white country. This is a form of cultural genocide and many Aboriginal people were affected by these government laws. Colin's mom was one of the children taken and put into a camp. They gave her a new name and told her that she could only speak English and not her native tounge. A lot of the Aboriginal languages are lost because of this. This happened up until the 1970s, but the governement didn't acknowledge anything happened until 2008 when the government made a public apology. Colin and Maria (my mother for the week) were both very greatful for the apology, but they have now asked the question--now what?! Actions speak louder than words, and the government still has ridiculous laws that pertain to the Aboriginal people.

This story and hearing Colin talk about it, gave me a whole new perspective on the Native American culture in America. Colin talked a lot about how there is a huge gap still today between the white Austrlaians and the Aboriginal people. He said we are all human and all Australian, why should we be treated any different. This situation and what we all heard from Colin is hard to describe the impact on us that we heard from Colin. It was an intense conversation and he told us that no question was too touchy of a subject. He wants his story to be known and the Aboriginal people's story to be heard. He stated that it is great that we are there listening to him, but Australian students never come to listen to him. They don't teach a lot of this stuff in Australian history books, nor talk about it all together. The two cultures do not collide and stay away from each other.

WE ARE ALL HUMAN.

Later that day, we finally got to go on our camel ride.