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G'day, guys! What's going on? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. The number one podcast for anyone and everyone on wanting to learn Australian English, culture and history. More Australian culture and history today than English. Although it's in English.

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Anyway, so today I had a sort of interesting story for you, guys. I had been chatting with a guy online named Ian Carpenter, who is today's guest and this was a few years ago and we got chatting I think about a film called Sweet Home, which actually never got round to seeing. We were chatting when it was, I think getting hyped up to be released and it was an Australian film about indigenous affairs and issues and history, and so I was chatting to him then and he recently contacted me again, probably a year or a year and a half after our first contact and was like 'hey, Pete! Do you want to catch up some time and we can chat about things, we could do an episode on the podcast? I'm also an English teacher, so it'd be great to catch up'.

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So, anyway today Ian and his student Anna, who is from Brazil, came down to our house in Ocean Grove and had lunch with us and hung out and we started getting into a pretty deep conversation, I heard all about how he ended up being an English teacher, although I wasn't recording it at the time, this was just banter over lunch. Damn, should accept it it was a really good story, really interesting story, but I wanted to get him on the podcast to talk to him about being a fellow Caucasian Australian, who has a passion for Indigenous history and culture. I wanted to get him on the podcast to talk about Australia, Australian history, as well as Indigenous Australia and Indigenous Australian history. Obviously, this is from the point of view of two Caucasian European heritage guys, so you know, take it with a grain of salt, we are still sort of learning a lot about Indigenous culture, but I sort of wanted to give you guys a window into, I guess, what it was like for us as European Australians growing up in Australia and the kind of exposure we had to the indigenous part of Australia, as well as the average Australians views of Indigenous affairs in Australia.

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Anyway, we kind of just set off and started talking about issues and our opinions. Take it for what it's worth, I hope you get a lot out of it, guys. There's some interesting topics in there I'm sure you'll get a load of different language out of it and you'll also hopefully learn a bit about Australian culture and history, Indigenous Australia and yeah, hopefully a lot more. Anyway, let's get into it. I give you guys in Carpenter.

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Welcome to the podcast, guys. This is an impromptu podcast, Kel is sitting in the background. We have a special guest here in the background too, Ana. But I have Ian Carpenter, have I said that right?

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You have.

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Ian Carpenter, and Noah screaming in the background and well, how did you end up here today? Let's start from the start.

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Well, I've... Like many other people, I've discovered your videos and your podcasts and I think we actually spoke a couple of years ago. I'd seen a comment you made somewhere online to do with...

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Hopefully a good one, not a bad one.

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No, I think it was... From memory, It had something to do with a film called 'Sweet Country'.

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Yeah, I don't think I actually got to see that the end, because it was before that was released, right? This was a movie about indigenous Australians.

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It's a brutal movie and I really recommend you see it.

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That's the most annoying thing about Australian films, it's so hard to find online, especially like to remember when they're going to... you hear all the news when they get first hyped up and then I always sort of get...

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I always recommend to anybody living in Australia to tune into NITV, channel 34 and all of these movies will eventually pop up and not only that, but there's so much going on in Indigenous Australia in literature in television, in movies, in so many fields, Indigenous people are excelling and you'll see it all on NITV.

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Yeah, yeah. I wanted to talk to you about indigenous people today eventually, but we can dive into that first. I kind of had my mind blown by that recently because, I guess, as an Australian growing up in suburban Australia, probably in a town of 99 per cent Caucasian British heritage Australians you don't really come across many Indigenous people and, so your view of, quote unquote, Indigenous Australia tends to be pretty skewed, right? I mean, I don't know what it was like for you growing up, but I was definitely as a white Australian privileged male growing up in this safe, well-off neighbourhood, it's difficult to really understand what it's like as life as an Indigenous person in Australia and I recently read a book called Australian Aborigines, I forgot the author, I'll have to include that later on, but that was like... That was like reading a play of someone screaming at you for like 20 hours and like that was just brutal, after brutal, after brutal moment in there. So, I guess, how did you first sort of learn about... How were you taught about Indigenous culture growing up?

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Well, I wasn't. Basically.

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Because that's what I was going to say, we...

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I grew up as you did.

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Kinda of missed that, right?

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In the privileged Australia and it wasn't until well, no, in my years of school, we saluted the Union Jack, we sang God Save the Queen and we were taught that everything started with Captain Cook.

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I think my version of that was everything started with Captain Cook, except now with the Australia, Advance Australia Fair, national anthem and the Australian flag,  the British Australian flag.

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Peter is now showing up my age, is it? But anyway, when I was travelling over in Europe, when I was living in Europe in the 70s, in particular in Spain, I was often asked about Aboriginal Australia, what did I know about our first people? And I was often embarrassed to say that not much.

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And this is why I've wanted to talk about this on the podcast more, because I've had a lot of people ask me about this and besides feeling incredibly unqualified, both in experience and knowledge, to really comment on the topic very well, that's why I thought it would be good to have other Australians on here, hopefully in the future more Indigenous Australians, although they're pretty hard to find around Ocean Grove where I currently live, although I hear Cathy Freeman lives here somewhere.

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You'd be surprised, actually. There are indigenous people scattered all throughout Australia there as we were talking before you don't always know, you can't always tell.

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By just looking at them.

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And most indigenous people even if they're a small percentage indigenous, they still feel indigenous.

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But it's almost a hard conversation to have.

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It is.

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It feels like anyone of any other race it can be quite difficult as, especially as a white person, to really try and ask them about what it's like or, you know, of that race or to learn about their culture, because it tends to come from a position where you feel like or you don't have the right to ask that, right? So, in Australia, was it difficult when you did start learning more about Indigenous culture?

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No, but I had to make a conscious effort to do that. When I came back from overseas. It was something I was determined to do. And one day, in the early 90s, I read one day a pamphlet from Melbourne University showing what courses were available or coming up and there was one they called Understanding black Australia. And it was a course by a guy called Gary Foley. I don't know if you've heard of him, but...

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The surname rings a bell.

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In Aboriginal Australia he's a kind of a Che Guevara.

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Yeah.

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You know?

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I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, though.

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It's hard when you... Well, Marxists think that Che Guevara is a hero, but I think...

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Let's just say he's a freedom fighter.

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Ok. So, he's got a bit of good and bad in him.

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Yeah, well and Gary Foley is actually... He's now Dr Gary Foley, he's finally completed his studies at Melbourne University, which he's been doing for many many years, but in the days of the tent embassy in Canberra and the...

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That's the world's longest ever protest, by the way. 40 years or something, right?

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He was right there in the forefront of that and he was in the forefront of the Bicentennial protests at the...

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In 1988, was it?

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At the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane and he's been fighting for Aboriginal people forever.

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This is how ignorant I am and probably a good representation of the average Australian, when I went to Canberra and I saw the tent set up in front of Old Parliament House, I had no idea what it was. Totally. I was like why there are these homeless people at the front of this? In the middle of this field where there doesn't seem to be much going on, it's an old building, that's no longer used? And only later after I actually moved away from Canberra, because I only ever saw this thing from a distance, I realized that it was a protest and indigenous protests that have been set up there in the 80s, is it? Maybe even earlier than that.

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No, it was the 70s.

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Yeah, 70s, ok. And there's been people there ever since.

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Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. It was removed and then they came back and, I mean, it was brutally removed at one point.

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I think I remember...

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There's a lot of archival footage that you can source on YouTube and on the usual sort of places, but it was a part of an ongoing struggle, which has been going since the beginning of colonization, but anyway, I decided I was going to do this course, it was a weeklong course at Melbourne Uni, and it was one of the best things I've ever done in my life, because...

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How was it set up?

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It was basically just in one of the lecture theatres in Melbourne Uni and it was Gary at the lectern and there were about 30 of us in the in the course. One of the course, one of the people on the course, who I got to spend a bit of time with, was a lady called Judith Durham, who was the lead singer with The Seekers.

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Really?

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Yes. And she had, The Seekers were no longer a group at that time, although since then they have got back together and with a lot of success again, but she was very interested in learning more about Aboriginal culture and she had also had a an education similar to ours, and but she knew there was more to it and she wanted to learn more.

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And why do you think it is that we had that education growing up? I often think like, why were we not taught more about indigenous Australians, do you think, in the classroom?

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Is it partly too because they kind of like not one monolithic unit? You have hundreds of, quiet on quiet Indigenous Australian groups, right? They're not just Indigenous Australians.

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No, they're not.

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There are hundreds of different groups with different languages, with different cultures, different beliefs and, so it's pretty hard to just go to school and learn about all indigenous people, right?

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That's true. That's true, but and it's very complex, I mean, the thing that I often come back to when I think about it is that we're very much a nation, which is we've still got the training wheels on as a nation. It's only been two hundred and thirty odd years, and about the first hundred years we were still pretty much an outpost of Britain, and not until 1901, you know, Federation that we actually became a nation under our own name, with our own flag and and, you know, we're maturing, we've been maturing ever since, and I believe that right now we have reached a stage where we are sincerely believing that we've done a lot wrong when it comes to Indigenous Australia. And I believe that there is a groundswell of average Australians who would like to right those wrongs. And, so things are changing and, as I said before, despite everything, Indigenous people are excelling in so many fields. And, you know, we now have, I think, five representatives in the Parliament and the Senate. We've had, you know, serious discussions about treaties and serious discussions about changing the Constitution.

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Until what year were indigenous people still seen as flora and fauna?

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'68.

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In the Constitution, right?

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'68.

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Yeah, so what's that? 50 years ago?

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Yeah, yeah it's... And that's what I mean.

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They got the vote way after Australian women got the vote, right? Australian women had suffrage in the early nineteen hundreds. Meanwhile, Indigenous men and women were like... Hello?

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That's right.

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Can we have a say?

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That's right, and I mean, the Indigenous servicemen after the first and second world wars came back to Australia and unlike their white counterparts, they got no help with housing, they weren't welcome in the RSL, you know, I mean...

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Some of the stuff they were given, I was reading about a few guys who returned, I think, from first world war and they would often be given land like the other soldiers, but it would be completely garbage and they couldn't grow anything on and then even when they tried to make a go of it, quite often the land would be taken back or they would be forced to sell it or and so they were oppressed kind of, you know, as I guess, it would be like indirectly in a lot of ways, whether or not it was someone coming to them with a gun and saying 'you can't do this', you know, it would be that there were constant hurdles set up in the way of them, where for other people that wouldn't be the case. Like, I think when I was stockmen, I was reading, that was one of the most atrocious things, they became stockmen in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds in parts of Australia where they absolutely dominated at their job, they were doing it amazing, you know, they had an amazing set of skills and they could work as hard as anyone else, but they would be paid a fifth or tenth what the average stockmen would be paid, who wouldn't work anywhere near as high as them and it was simply because of their race.

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That's right. And I mean,  a lot of Australian people would be familiar with the Paul Kelly song 'From Little Things Big Things Grow'.

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About Mabo? Is that about Mabo?

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No, that's about a stockman's strike. The Gurindji in the Northern Territory they were stockmen working for a wealthy British landowner who was paying them a pittance they decided that they weren't going to take it anymore and they went on strike.

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Petition, right? For more money eventually as well, right?

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Well it started out that way, but it grew into basically the first land rights claim. They realized that they were being ripped off, not only financially, but they spent a lot of time sitting in the dust, thinking about their...

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What was the name of the guy? Lingiarri?

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Lingiarri.

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That's who I'm thinking about, not Mabo.

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Yeah, yeah,yeah and I think it a suburb of Canberra that's named after him these days?

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It could be, I'm not 100% sure. there's a lot of Indigenous names suburbs others around there, so...

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But that's a famous story, which it's pretty well told in the song From Little Things Big Things Grow, which was written by Paul Kelly with... in collaboration with an Aboriginal singer, songwriter whose name escapes me right at this moment.

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You guys will know the song, though, because it gets played all over the place, right? And covered by a lot of people too.

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Absolutely. Kev Carmody is his name, but that was an inspiration to too many people and it was as I said the very first of the land rights claims. And they succeeded, but it took years. They literally sat down in the dust and thought about their plight and said, you know, this is not just about money, this is about much more than money, and they eventually won with the help of some good hearted white legal people from Sydney and Melbourne and I might add with the help of Australian trade unions, who had heard about what was happening and, as is usually the case, the trade unions were prepared to stand up for the workers.

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And, so that's a a famous episode in this tragic history, but getting back to the week I spent with Gary Foley that was really enlightening.

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What did you learn about? What was he mainly trying to sort of educate you on?

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The course was pretty pretty straight down the line understanding black Australia.

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But what does that mean, right?

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It just means...

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In terms of their history or their oppression?

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It touched on all of those things and it and it was delivered by someone who had experienced all of those things and it was just incredible because, so much of what I learned in that week was new to me, and yet...

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And that's kind of embarrassing in and on itself, right?

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It is.

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Because that's how I feel every time I find out new things about Indigenous culture. You know, you just kind of like... Why haven't I ever been told about this? Why haven't I ever been in a position where this was easy to learn about.

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And in Aboriginal history there are many great people, you know, Albert Namatjira, Charlie Perkins, you know, Mabo. There have been many great leaders and many great people that have fought for their people in many states, in many places, and as you mentioned before, you know, Aboriginal Australia is a very complex thing, there are many languages, many tribes.

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And people want different things.

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That's right.

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This is what blew my mind. I watched the 60 Minutes story the other day with Pauline Hanson going to Ayers Rock, because she wanted to climb the rock. For background knowledge, Pauline Hanson is, I guess, a right wing nationalist in Australia. I don't really know how to describe her other than that. She's very controversial.

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We will be polite.

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Yeah, she's considered to be incredibly racist, although to give her the sort of benefit of the doubt, I don't hear...I hear her saying many more ignorant things that I think explicitly racist things when she says stuff, but anyway she went to Ayres Rock, Uluru, and wanted to climb it before it gets closed in October. And the weird thing about seeing this was that she went and she explicitly spoke to the elders there and ask them permission to do so and the elders, well, at least from the perspective of the report were saying they want it to stay open because they want tourist money there and they want these jobs.

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And then when Pauline went to, I think she was at a restaurant or a hotel there were all these indigenous women working there as managers and waitress and stuff, and they were like 'no, we need to close it, it's offensive' and you know, 'this is just horrible' and she was like 'are you from this part of Australia?' , and they were like 'no, we're from you know way up north in Darwin', and she's like 'but how can you have this view of land that isn't your land? That's these people's land. This is what they want, but you want this other thing', and then too when she said 'well, where do you think I should like I'm as Australian as you guys, I was born here' and one of them was like 'no, go back home to England' and she's like 'I'm not English' or whatever.

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And, so it's weird that you have this both sides can tend to be a bit bigoted, but also Indigenous people can want exclusive... mutually exclusive things, which make it even more complicated, right? Because you do have people hoisting the flags saying 'we shouldn't climb Uluru because it's a sacred site, it's offensive', and I think my opinion now would be whether or not I can, I'm probably not going to do it because it's I don't need to. I can walk around that, right? But at the same time, there may be people who are indigenous who are from that area who want that thing to, you know, go a different way from the loudest voices. And that's what makes it so screwed up, right? A lot of the time these things have conflicting sides and it's hard.

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I think in today's day and age too with this sort of leftist, the rise of the leftism and... What do you call it again? Identity politics. It's very difficult to know whether people are genuinely trying to do what's best for a certain group or a certain area or if they're trying to score moral points. And, so it is very bizarre, because I think we get that conflation, right? When we ask indigenous people what do you want? Regarding this thing that is say Uluru true that actually should only involve the people whose land it is, you get very different conflicting points, so I can imagine it's very difficult to really work out what's the best thing to do.

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That's right.

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It's a hornet's nest.

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It is but Aboriginal people are no different to every other kind of people in that they will always have differing views, but I have been to Uluru and the experience of being there left me in no doubt, it is a sacred site. I was, I felt a shame to see all these people refusing to... Reading the signs at the base of the rock that are in every possible language, asking you not to climb it. And for those very reasons that it's considered a sacred site, those signs were put there by the people of that area and the disregard that so many people have for that was just shocking, you know? And so they've come to this conclusion after many years of trying passively to ask people politely not to do it, and yet they've just come to this conclusion that alright, we just have to stop people from doing and apart from anything else it's really dangerous.

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Though, well, Pauline didn't even get to the top, right? She crapped herself because it was windy. And people have died on there, they've had heart attacks, they've slipped, all sorts of stuff. You're probably more likely to die on Uluru than to get eaten by a shark.

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And also by the time you get to the top, in the heat, and you've been drinking heaps and heaps of water when you get to the top, there's no toilets, there's no facilities whatsoever. So, you know, you shouldn't be behaving like that in a place that is considered sacred. You know, I wouldn't go and climb all over the Vatican.

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And take a dump on the roof.

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It is pretty weird to think that, because I think a lot of the problems too is like pollution, people crap on top of it, piss on top of it, it ends up getting into a concentrated kind of mass, right? And then it rains and it goes down is the water systems and poisons those and so it is a bit of a problem.

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I mean, you know, I had a similar feeling when I walked around Machu Picchu or when I walked around Granada or Cordoba or places where the that are just so stunningly beautiful and so, you know, and yet, this is something that was not created by man, it's a natural phenomenon, you know, and it's something that is to be, you know, I felt in awe every time I went near it, morning, noon, or night, I just couldn't take my eyes off it, and it was just an amazing...

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Ironically, the interesting stuff is probably all around the outside anyway, not on top of it.

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It is.

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And the thing that you've gone there to see is Uluru, and the moment you get on top of it, it's the only thing you can't see.

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Yeah.

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And to see what everyone sees from above, I saw that in a light plane.

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Yeah, exaclty.

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I went up in a light plane.

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You see even higher, right?

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It cost me a couple of hundred bucks, but it was just the most amazing, you know, and I could do that without, you know, without going against the wishes of the people. And, you know, it was just an amazing experience which I'll never forget, but yeah, I mean, aboriginal people have been swept aside, they've been ignored.

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I think that's the biggest problem, right? People aren't explicitly asking them what they want a lot of the time.

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Yeah.

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They just want to be heard and to have autonomy and I think, whether we're trying to help them or trying to oppress them, quite often the autonomy second away from them, right?

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Yeah.

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And they' re told what they can or can't do.

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Yeah.

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Some of the biggest things for me to sort of work out where I'm for or against is say making alcohol illegal in certain towns because you kind of like...we would never imagine doing that to any other race in Australia or any other group in Australia, and yet we do it to the indigenous people in Australia. Although, I think, most of the time they decide that's what they want to do. You know, in the town, the elders or the people on the council end up choosing that to happen. But that's sort of more of that complexity, right? Of like, you have one set of rules one group of people and one for another and how do you ever get out of this system?

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Well, I think... I think Aboriginal people ought to be viewed as a very special case, because I can't think of another race on earth that has been as dispossessed as they have.

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The Native Americans would be on the same sort of level, wouldn't they? To some extent. Some of the ones that live on reservations.

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Well, yeah, you have to remember that Native Americans signed all kinds of treaties, and they had all kinds of arrangements and they ended up on reservations and places because that was what was decided in in consultation with them.

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Until it was found that there was gold on those reservations.

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Yeah. Exactly, exactly, but in our case in Australia, I mean...

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They were just never asked.

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They were never asked. They were, as we know up until 1968, just considered flora and fauna and, so were not worthy of an opinion, not worthy of an opinion. So, you know, as tragic as it is, as I said before, I feel very positive about how things are heading at the moment. I just think that there are more and more people who are understanding, beginning to understand and doing as I did, learning a bit more, the more you learn about Aboriginal people, the more incredible you see them and, I mean, really, more than anything, we have lost so much by having this attitude. You know, we had, there's so much to gain from embracing them and bringing them in and making them a part of what is we all know that this is a great country. It could be so much greater. That's what's missing. That's really in many ways it's the soul of our country.

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And do you think that's why it's been a bit of a stain on our history for a long time? An embarrassment?

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It's a massive, it's a massive stain on our history. It really is. You know, and in so many ways we have such a great history, but our focus has been in develop at all cost, you know, like all the imperialists in history, we've chosen the best places to build our cities, on the coast, and so the Aboriginal people that were at Sydney Cove and the Aboriginal people that were in places like...

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Pretty much anywhere there's a big city, those people no longer exist.

136
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That's right. Those people were just pushed aside.

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Yeah.

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You know.

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Weather directly or indirectly, right? I remember reading about that in the book and it being, in Sydney Cove, for example, they were there for a long time, although it was a matter of the British setting up shop and being like, so this is where we live now, you guys can live outside of here, but this is where we live. And then the cattle and the sheep pushing out, destroying all the land where they were fishing and all of the grasslands and everything, so that they were pushed out further, diseases going through and massacring people with smallpox and everything, so whether it was a direct thing or an indirect thing, they were constantly pushed outwards.

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One of the interesting things I was reading about too is that they were quite often mortal enemies of other clans and other tribes. So, I think they had a basic rule, broadly speaking, that if they can speak the same language intelligibly, they would be on good terms, but if someone spoke a language they couldn't understand, the assumption was 'enemy, kill them', because it's safer than, you know, trying to just get by when you can't communicate. And, so quite often these tribes got pushed off their land and further and further outwards until they were constantly in conflict, not with just the Australian or the European settlers, but also with the other indigenous people that are being forced to interact with.

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Yep, yep. And you know, I mean, anyone who has grown up in Australia and has enjoyed the wealth that the country has produced in, you know, whether it be from mining or from sheep or from whatever, needs to consider that this has all taken place on land that was never seeded. You also we also need to consider that our beloved country was founded on a lie and that lie being terra nullius.

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'Empty land'.

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Which we all now know to have not been the case.

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I think they knew at the time.

145
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Of course they knew at the time.

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Yeah.

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But, you know, it took many years later and a few scientists to disprove it, you know, which the lie that was known fully well.

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It seems to be all of these sorts of things there, right? Where it's like, we're here now, so what do you do? You can't change anything, right? And yet, you know, you get a lot of hate towards British colonialism, but had it not been the Brits, it would've been the French, or it would have been the Dutch, it would have been the Portuguese, you know, it would have been another group that would have come in and done the exact same thing eventually. And, so it's so hard to work out what's right and what's wrong, and then on top of that there's a layer of 'how do we make it right?', by giving, by channelling the wealth of Australia back towards the Indigenous community without further screwing it up, right? Because if you... Say with the inherent problems that a lot of communities currently have with violence and drinking, if you would just throw money into that community without controlling it in one way or another, it might make things worse, right? But at the same time, if you were the kind of person who's a bit more libertarian and you say well, people should have the right to do whatever they want, you might say well, you don't have the right to tell them they can't drink when they can't, you know, spend their money on whatever they want, so it's it seems like it that's also is such a difficult thing to work out what the best course of action forward is, right? Do you have any thoughts on that?

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Well, I do. And I think that what a lot of money over the years has been thrown at indigenous affairs in one way or another, but very little has been achieved with the consultation with the elders or with the people of whatever place, whether it be the Northern Territory or far north Queensland or Western Australia, and that is pretty much what Aboriginal people are saying today, is you know we have the answers, they are saying, we know what our people need and I believe that they are a special case. I don't subscribe to the view that everybody should be treated the same, I think this is a special case.

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But guess that's the difficult thing, right? Because you may have people in Australia who are in effectively the same circumstances as another group of people, but because of their race don't get treated the same and that's where it at least on my sort of level, that's what seems difficult for me to justify. I mean, I can understand it, but at the same time it's tough when you're at the level of say saying well this person's a different skin colour from you, so they deserve X and you don't it.

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It would all have been so much easier if we had done the right thing in the beginning. I mean look at New Zealand.

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Yeah, yeah.

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You know?

154
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But I think too with New Zealand they tended to... They had to make an agreement, right? They were fighting the Maori who were a warrior a group of people and we're one homogenous kind of nation, right? As opposed to a lot of conflicting nations and pose a significant threat.

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Well, I think the first settlers in Australia couldn't believe their luck, you know, when they ran into such a passive people who, you know, they were they were able to bribe them with sugar and tea and things like that.

156
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They were getting paid with that for quite a long time, weren't they?

157
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Yes. Yes. And, you know, I mean it really is a tragic story, but...

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Another aspect of that that's really tragic was the way that the women were treated, right? Where, again, whether indirectly or directly of their volition and quite often because the women could be, obviously, used by indigenous and British or immigrant men, they quite often ended up having children with those men, the children were treated differently by both sides, and so it led to like all these other more complicated relationships and things happening with the people that further decimated their kind of...

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That's right.

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The homogeneity, right?

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Yeah, and, you know, I mean, one of the things which eventually came out and is common knowledge to all Australians today is the stolen generations. You know and...

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Do you want to give people a bit of a history background on that quickly if you can?

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Well...

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Just the basic idea of what happened with the stolen generation.

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Well it was, to be as nice as I can possibly be, it was well-meaning, the powers that be at the time believed that by taking black children from their, or Aboriginal children, from their families...

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Quite often who tended to be... What would called at the time 'half caste', right? They had a white parent and a black mother or father.

167
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But not exclusively, but in many cases.

168
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But that was justification, right? We need to save these half European children.

169
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That's right, and so many of those children were taken from their families and taken in many cases a long way away from their families.

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You guys'll see this in Rabbit-Proof Fence.

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Yeah, Rabbit-Proof Fence. Yeah absolutely fabulous movie and in many cases those families were never reunited, and you can imagine that those families suffered immense grief from that separation.

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That was a cultural warfare to some extent, right?

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Absolutely.

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Where they wiped out language, wipe out culture, because the children were banned from speaking that culture. They were quite often put in a place where other children had different languages, so they couldn't communicate with them, but for in English.

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And, you know, there are people who believe that one of the reasons for doing this was not only to benefit those children, to give those children a chance of a better life, but the idea was also to speed up the demise....

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The breeding out and yeah, I mean, a lot of people in our history, people who are regarded in our history as, you know, celebrities or people of great wealth and, I'm trying to think of the name of... Gina Rinehart's father's name? Lang Hancock. Hancock.

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Yeah.

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He had the idea that, and this is common knowledge, this is you can access this in Wikipedia or wherever you like, but his idea was to poison the water to speed up the demise of the Aboriginal race.

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There's a few stories like that, right? When they were poisoned by white people.

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And he today is considered a great Australian, because he made billions and billions and billions of dollars mining the land that was never seeded, you know, and I mean recently Australia lost a man who was considered to be a great Australian, Tim Fisher, he was the leader of the National Party for many years and he was a very, very nice man, but he was one of the people who when the Mabo decision was up in the court and it looked like it had a chance of succeeding, he was one of the people who was warning Australians that Aboriginals were coming after their backyards, you know, and yet you know he was a great Australian, I felt quite sad when I learned the news that he'd passed away, but  I just couldn't help it, I couldn't help but think, you know, why would he do something like that?

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Fear, you would imagine.

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Yeah, I mean...

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And embarrassment.

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And as we now know the Mabo decision was successful, that was something that Aboriginal people went through the courts for well over a decade fighting that and eventually they won. And as far as I know nobody has lost their backyard, you know.

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Just one guy, but we don't care about that guy, you know?

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So, you know, I mean, through history there has been a lot of opposition to any kind of leg up to Aboriginal people, there seems to have been a desire on the part of people in power to rub their noses further into the dust, you know?

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It's so complicated because I remember in some of the stuff that I was writing too there was a very rigid hierarchy in tribes, right? Where the elders were, obviously, the conduits of knowledge, and so everyone had to back down to the elders, but the moment that colonists came in and started giving away things that were of great value in these tribes, like axes and everything, all of a sudden the younger guys could now, you know, get a lot more power a lot faster and sort of undermine the tribal structure as a result. And, so yeah, it was very... And the same when I think they started working full time jobs as stockmen, all of a sudden men disappeared and the tribes broke up and people went to different places and you had men who are now self-sufficient at a younger age, and so it was so interesting to find out how, at least the indigenous culture as it was in Australia prior to us arriving, was inevitably disrupted by capitalism and the way in which our society is evolved and how you reconcile that today is so difficult too, right? Because, ok, we want to help Indigenous people become wealthier, become better off, move up in, quote unquote, societal class or whatever, but how do you do that without education? Western education, so that they can flourish in Western society, but which requires, quite often, the loss of their own culture, at least to some extent, right? Or their own language skill or their own understanding of their land because they have to move to Sydney for a substantial part of their young life or something.

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And that's what I find so... I'm so conflicted because you're kind of like...on one level you want to say 'we want to conserve what you guys have and we want to encourage that', but at the same time we're saying 'really we need you to become like us and leave that behind', and so it must be so difficult being an Indigenous person too in isolated parts of say the Kimberley or Darwin and deciding do I want to... Do I identify as wholly Aboriginal and I want to stay here forever and do this? Or am I looking for opportunities to better myself and my current situation and have to leave part of this behind? And have to make a choice, right? That must be a rock and a hard place.

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Well, there are some amazing Aboriginal people that are managing to do that.

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Yeah.

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They've been through our schools and our universities and they've risen to very high levels of journalism or, you know, in many fields and they have become very powerful spokespeople for  their people and they have a really good understanding of both cultures. And one of the things that we could learn so much from Aboriginal people about is family, you know, family is everything to Aboriginal people. And that is why Aboriginal people they often refer to each other as brother and uncle and aunty and they feel part of, they all feel part of the same family, and also, I believe it has, because as we touched on before, the stolen generation, so many people, so many Aboriginal people to this day still feeling lost because they've never regained that connection. And it's not like the stolen generation is something that happened in history and now it's all over it's all healed. It's not, it's going on.

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The ramifications are still rolling out.

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Absolutely.

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I said, when I was looking into Indigenous languages, especially in Victoria, I was talking... I had an interview with a guy who was, I think, the person in charge of the conservation of an Australian language is somewhere in some part of Melbourne and he was saying it's a really tough thing to try and talk to people about it, especially in Victoria, because the languages have all gone extinct, even though the people are still here, and so they rightly or wrongly might blame you, or be offended by you wanting to learn that language or learn something about it because it's being taken from them historically and they no longer have access to that or that knowledge. And so it is, it's one of those things that's like... And that's what's so hard I think today with all the languages in Australia that, I think there's still 250 or so of them, but I think only 15 of those have more than 1000 speakers. And, so we're going to lose a lot of them pretty soon, but at the same time there's no push for it to kind of the government is not doing a lot, I don't think, at least from my limited understanding, trying to conserve these things and encourage the passing on to the next generation in schools and that sort of thing.

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You know, there are there are pockets of hope as far as that goes. There are some schools that are that are doing things off their own back, you know, if they have the community around...

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I think in Central Australia a lot of that is happening around Alice Springs, right? And in the Kimberley.

197
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Yes, and I think, you know, Aboriginal people know that and education is the key and, you know, we know that as well.

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It's putting the two together, right? Like, trying to really foster the culture and their language maintaining that, but at the same time giving them the skills to be able to flourish in today's society as well.

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Yeah, yeah. That's right.

200
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And the problem, I guess, too is that you have a huge number of different groups that aren't just Indigenous Australians in terms of one homogenous group. You have Indigenous Australians of all these different tribes, from different parts of the country that want different things that may be at different levels of integration into, you know, quote unquote, civilization where they don't necessarily need your help or there's other ones that are isolated from everyone and need massive amounts of help.

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Yeah. But I think I come back to the thought that I do believe that Aboriginal people have a special case in Australia. I don't think we can think that everybody must be treated the same. I do believe they are a special case because they have been dispossessed of everything over such a long period of time and it's really going to take, you know, I mean, our prisons are full of Aboriginal people. A lot of work needs to be done there. You know, those, a lot of those people if they don't get some kind of a break, if they don't if they don't get some kind of rehab, you know, in a serious way, they're just going to continue, the cycle will just go on and on and on.

202
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Or the funding needs to be putting the communities, right? To prevent them forever going to prison, or whatever reason they're ending up there, right?

203
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Absolutely, and and this idea that you can't do, you know, you can't give everything to Aboriginal people or that, you know, they're are no more deserving than in some other part of the community is just crazy because, you know, I mean...

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I guess it's one of those questions still where you can probably do the most good with the least amount of probably resources, right? Or at least in a very short period of time.

205
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But as we started off with in this conversation, I do believe that the groundswell of Australia just everyday Australian people is growing stronger and stronger all the time, and as with most things...

206
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Do you think that's due to the Internet? Sorry to interrupt you there.

207
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No, no, no it's probably got a lot to do with that.

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Yeah.

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And knowledge. Well, the Internet helps with with with all of that.

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Because you can imagine, I guess, back in the 1800s and 1900s, even in the 19... when my parents were born, it wasn't so much that people were actively trying to oppress indigenous people, I would imagine that 99 percent of Australians just knew nothing about it.

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That's right.

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And there was no way to learn about it unless they dived into books in a library. There were probably written by someone who had an agenda.

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Yeah. And the other thing I'll say about Aboriginal people, and this is a really practical thing that every Australian can do is, you know, go out of your way, make a point of of meeting some Aboriginal people and getting to know some Aboriginal people. You will find that they are, you know, they have very funny people there, they love a laugh, they they're very sociable people. They love the fact that you are interested in their culture, you know, just do yourself a favour and, you know?

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How would you suggest people do that? Anyone listening right now, if they were saying, you know, 'you know what, Ian? I'm going to go do that tomorrow', what would they actually, what would be the way of doing this?

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Well, there are in depending where you live, but there are groups, there are reconciliation groups, there are... If you are involved in a sporting club there are likely to be Aboriginal people involved in the sporting club, you may have an Aboriginal person at your school, you may have...You may go on holiday to an area where there are Aboriginal people. Well, you know, just don't stay in your hotel with your... in your comfort zone with your white Australian friends.

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iPhone out.

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Also for people living in Melbourne, I should just mention that there is a fantastic app that people can get, it costs about five dollars, but once you've got it you've got up for life, it's called Melbourne Dreaming.

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Yeah. So, what does it say here? A guide to important places at the past and present by AIATSIS, that's Aboriginal Australia Institute, right? Up in Canberra.

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Yeah.

220
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And that's a fantastic app, it shows you places of interest around Melbourne, lots of stories you can listen to, lots of little guided tours you can do, you can explore so many, so many things around Melbourne and also in Melbourne, at Federation Square, is the Koori Heritage Trust, a 'Koori' is a name for an Aboriginal person from Melbourne or from southern... the southern states of Australia.

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Sort of surrounding, it's all the clans of the surrounding area here Victoria.

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Yeah.

223
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And as far as South Australia as well, but not the West, and could be even into southern New South Wales, but yeah, that's just a name.

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I remember Koori Cream I used to have as a kid it was a brand of hand cream and my mum was obsessed with it because it was like really, really good. And then I think that went out of business or it disappeared. I remember I think that was where I first learned the word Koori Cream.

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But at the Koori Heritage Trust, which is in Federation Square, there's a gallery there, which is constantly changing, a lot of young Aboriginal artists get to display their work there. There is a lot of historical archival material there, there's a shop where you can buy all kinds of indigenous wares.

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Made in China.

227
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No, no, no.

228
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I said that because I want to bring up, make sure, if you guys are going to buy indigenous products of any kind, make sure it's not made in China. Because a lot of those places, say if you walk down Swanston Street in Melbourne or probably in the middle of Sydney, you'll see a lot of these souvenir shops and most of the stuff they're selling is made in China. So, it's ripped off or it's made in Indonesia or something. So, makes sure that the money is going to Indigenous people.

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Well, that's another thing, I mean, in more ways than one Aboriginal people have been ripped off ever since colonisation, and that's one way that they're being ripped off today by their incredible art, but also you can do special Indigenous tours around the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne at different times, especially around NAIDOC Week, which is in July, but they do at other times of the year as well, and the other thing I was going to mention was, yes, you could if you would like to try some indigenous food, there is a restaurant in Gertrude Street Fitzroy called Charcoal Lane, which is a training school for Indigenous students of hospitality, but it's also an active restaurant and pretty much the menu changes all the time. You can go online and have a look at it.

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And it includes indigenous food only or just partly on the menu there?

231
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No, well, mostly things like sauces and condiments and all that sort of thing made from what we call 'bush tucker'.

232
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Brilliant. What is 'bush tucker' for those who don't know what that is?

233
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'Bush tucker' is basically food that is produced from wild, wild...

234
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Plants or animal plants, right? Because 'tucker' means food, right?

235
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'Tucker' is an Aussie expression for food.

236
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And they they will have on the menu, most days, they'll have wallaby, occasionally they'll have crocodile, barramundi. It's a great place and it's been going for a long long time. Ironically it's housed in what used to be the venereal diseases clinic.

237
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It just ran out of business, did they?

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In Gertrude Street Fitzroy, but it's a fantastic restaurant and all the people that are working there, the chefs and the waitresses and waiters and the admin people they're all trainee Aboriginal or Koori students, and it's also quite an educational experience because there aren't just all these things on the menu that you eat you, you can learn about all the different ingredients and you can buy ingredients.

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So, a big thing here is just show curiosity, right? Be interested in indigenous culture, indigenous people, indigenous languages, and just don't be afraid to dive in and try and learn more about it and make connections with people.

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Yeah, and don't just sit at home and watch whatever comes up on the telly, switch under NITV, channel 34, and you will find night after night, day after day, incredible programs, documentaries, sports, movies all kinds of, you know, even children's programs through to dramas, soap operas there's every kind of program being made by Indigenous people in Australia, and it's a 24/7 channel and I I think it's all over the country, it's not just Melbourne, it's all over the country.

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34, yea, that's been around a long time, I think.

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And NITV is National Indigenous Television and I think the main, I'm not sure whether the main studios are in Sydney or whether they're in somewhere like Alice Springs, I'm not sure, but in any case, it's one way that you can, from the comfort of your home, find out a lot more about Indigenous Australia.

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Cool, Ian, so, last question, I guess, before we finish up. If you had a magic wand and you could, make any changes that you wanted, try and level the playing field, what would it be? What do you think needs to be done? What are the biggest changes that would lead to the best results?

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I think....I think if we, if the people in power, the people that have the power to make big changes could be more respectful and take more seriously the opportunity that we have as a nation to really mature, to really come of age as a nation, that would go a long way towards truly, truly becoming a very, very special place in the world.

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I mean, we are already a very special place in the world as we all know, but we could be so much better.

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Ian Carpenter, thanks so much for coming on.

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Cheers, mate.

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Ana, you too, in the background, quietly the whole time.

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Allright. Thank you so much again, Ian, for coming on the podcast. It was an absolute pleasure having you down for the day. I had a lot of fun, it was great to meet you, it was great to hang out. Guys, I hope you enjoy this podcast. Again, take it with a grain of salt, take it for what it's worth. This is just sort of our personal views and our experience learning about Indigenous culture and our views on indigenous culture. I definitely have a great deal more to learn on this topic and I'm going to, hopefully, get some more Indigenous people on the podcast in the future because, obviously, it's much better to hear from the horse's mouth than from mine, but besides that, guys, I hope you enjoyed it, I hope you have a great week and chatty soon. Peace.