Mabo’s Justice Comes on the Winds of Landmark Change

Eddie Koiki Mabo proves that anyone can stand for justice and win.  He represents the principle of equality and truth.  I loved watching ABC television documentary on Eddie Mabo,  the Murray Islander who won a native title claim over Murray Island from the Australian Government.

I am amazed at the blindness of white cultures across the world who supported apartheid.  It hasn’t been talked enough about in Australia.  I did some research on it on the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies Program in Bangkok, Thailand.  We were asked as Peace Scholars to write something about our countries.  I chose indigenous rights. I did this as I didn’t know enough and was astounded at the protectorate system and they deemed wards of the State.  They had a Minister who decided their fates, they were regarded as native, primitive people.  Oh how ignorant my people were.  I began my education into genocide of indigenous people when I was studying economics at university.  I was shocked to discover they were wiped out in Tasmania. I wondered what it must have been like to be them and how they felt.  We learned in recent decades of the Stolen Generation where indigenous children were placed in white homes to assimilate them, imagine the pain of the parents.  That was the beginning of my awakening to the two countries that existed here.  

I remember driving around Australia with my partner Paul when I was in my 20’s and coming to Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia.  I recall seeing the indigenous people sitting around a tree on the ground.  We drove in with our caravan.  It was the first time I felt white.  I’d grown up in Canberra and mostly people were white or from Europe.   I felt for the first time I was in someone else’s country.  It was a distinct feeling. Then when I travelled Australia solo with my little car I drove into Alice Springs aged late 40’s.  A wiser older person and with joy I saw them sitting around.  I loved that they could sit on the ground, we would go to a coffee shop for a cuppa.  I saw the great diversity and divide between us,  like the great MacDonnell Ranges.  When I travelled to Uluru (Ayers Rock) I remember their sign at the base of the rock saying not to climb the rock.  I decided to respect their culture.  I asked the spirits to send me a sign if I was not to climb the rock.  Well bugger me (an Australian term – surprise), indigenous women came to me in a dream and impressed on me to walk the base of the rock.  I did just that.  I sat on the ground under trees imagining I was them, feeling the peace of this vast red country.  I felt the stillness and understood the true peacemakers they were. A gentle people that would have been shocked beyond belief with the aliens (Europeans) that arrived and the harshness of their culture and system.  In this culture we feel we have to be busy (still haven’t learned) they sat with nothing to do, just be.  I’ve watched them not talking or making things, just sitting. This is the great wisdom we are barely beginning to understand.  Some people in the West are looking east or within to discover the true peace of stillness.  This is how one makes contact with their inner self, their high self that does not require justice, laws or ownership, it connects to universal law as the person begins to see themselves as the land and indeed the cosmos (dreaming).  They are one with all life forms, this is translated awkwardly as empathy, feeling for the other, but in truth, being the other.  That is the oneness some are starting to awaken to.  In truth the indigenous were an advanced civilisation (identifying spiritually) and the white Europeans were primitive (identifying outwardly, materialism).  In truth the white people had lost their connection to themselves and overtime, each other.  This is why today we see 1:5 with mental health issues and a sense of meaningless.  There is great wisdom in knowing who you are and feeling the meaning of life.   We have much to learn.

Visit the link to learn of Eddie Mabo’s life, a hero that should be taught in every Australian school  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Mabo

Here is a poem I felt inspired to write for Eddie Koiki Mabo, a wonderful soul of freedom.

Land rights!

The right to land!

What is inalienable?

What is inevitable?

For without a right to land,

Independence is forfeited,

For property rights is to own land,

Inherited rights is to pass land from one generation to the next,

Is lineage continuous occupation?

Or is continuous occupation of other lands?

Terra nullius?

The Torres Strait,

An island girt by sea,

Australia,

For those who’ve come acoss the seas

We’ve boundless plains to share,

in history’s page,

Mabo’s legal cage,

Advance Australia fair,

For this is the human right,

That shares

the bounty,

of freedom.

Is justice won in a High Court?

Or in the moment one declares he is not a slave?

When he comes out of the cave,

For his home is where his heart is,

It cannot be taken away by occupation,

For Terra Nullius was a deception,

“Land belonging to nothing, to no-one”

Excising property rights from native lineage,

Extinguishing natives from the modern age,

A subterfuge for indigenous were the land,

One sees an economic interest for security,

The other has an interest in the security of family,

One views power over,

The other dances with power within,

For justice is recognised by a frame of reference to anglo common law,

Wigs and gowns represent the crown not the clan,

Whilst universal law shares what is in common as kin,

The whites see sin as ungodliness in custom,

The blacks see kin as spirits in the dream time,

To see black or white is a chess board for or against us,

Never as a test case to advance Australia fair,

For apartheid is the greatest sin where no-one wins,

Trouble makers are freedom fighters,

For they do not accept the status quo,

No rights to drink in a white pub,

Separate places to sit,

Natives versus civilisation purifies the lies,

For apartheid is a global wave of conquest,

Separating the races as god intended,

Yet humanity is one race as nature blended,

Division was an unnatural order that set one against the other
in submission without permission,

For power seeks advantage not heritage,

And native title recognised equality over slavery.

A window opened in the high court,

From the mountain top a fresh wind blew
tracing the face of Murray Island,

Recognising that in the end everything comes to you,

Those you love come to you on the winds,

For no case is fought alone,

Mabo’s spirit cannot be contained by grave misdeeds,

For greed and status was not his motive,

He was the motif reminding all subjugated people that human laws can be redefined,

By those who are no longer blind,

To prejudice.

For real justice stands silently contemplating inner truth,

She is blind to corruption,

She is fair,

Apportioning equal distribution of administration,

She is the oracle of Delphi predicting a re-new-able future,

For wisdom is only found in divine law,

Bringing peace as freedoms pearl,

Echoing across the winds

beyond space and time.