News

[blamebrampton]

This is simply ridiculous. Three weeks and I still can't use my little finger to tension the yarn while I knit. Absurd! shiv5468's brilliant craft posts have me all inspired!

In other news, East Timor's president was shot and he is in serious condition in Darwin, but apparently this was not reported widely in the US according to my literate and reliable friends. Sigh.

The Australian Prime Minister will apologise to the indigenous population in just under six hours, partially for the whole dispossessing them against contemporary international law thing, mostly for the more recent stolen children thing, which ended some time after the previous Prime Minister was in Parliament, yet for which he always insisted he felt absolutely no personal guilt. Happily, new PM KRudd has a soul.

And I have shorter, chestnuttier hair, because I desperately needed to procrastinate today.

Comments

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

Hi! *sends vibes of rapid improvement to your finger*

I'm downtown,waiting in line for a sandwich. Do you like the new hair? And what's this about stolen children?

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

It's a little shorter than I had intended, but a nice colour. And it grows quickly.

Much of Australia, for many years, had this crackpot policy that said "Hmmm, you appear to be a blackfella, but your kids are a bit pale. We reckon you're probably a bit black to raise em up right. So we're a. just taking them, b. having you sign a piece of paper you don't understand and then taking them, or c. having you declared unfit and then taking them."

A lot of the kids were thrown into institutions which ranged from Dickensian to perverted, while others were adopted. Some had great childhoods, many didn't. All had a strong sense that they'd quite prefer not to have been kidnapped by the state, thanks all the same.

It is generally considered that this was a Fucking Appalling Idea. But the previous PM said that such a picture was to hold a Black Armband View of Australian History. (NB, the chap before him was all for reconciliation and probably owned a couple of black armbands made by Zegna, it's just the last 11 years have been a timewarp to the fifties in Oz politics). Now that Howard has been summarily booted from office, an official apology was seen as a positive step. Fingers crossed it will even be followed up with first world health care and education for remote communities!

[norton-gale.livejournal.com]

That always happens when I say, "Just a trim"- they take way more off than I wanted!

This is shocking, but the US history of treatment toward its indigenous population is just as appalling. So there's a whole lost generation out there, right? That would make a great subject for a documentary.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Several great documentaries, and more than a few brilliant songs.

While it wasn't universal, it's the sort of thing that fragments communities. How do you believe you're part of a nation when that nation denies your basic rights? (Oh, look, gay subtext again!) To be fair, there was this wacky belief that the Aboriginals were a dying race. I remember school in England where we were taught the Tasmanian Aboriginals were extinct. Then I came here, went to Tasmania, and met a few who were very definite that having the odd whitefella in their family tree did not invalidate their existence.

(It's just below the top of my hips, so not short short by any stretch, but I was expecting a couple of inches more at the end of the process.)