"We will remake our future so it is as beautiful as our past, but to take this path we need to prepare ourselves, discipline ourselves and believe in ourselves. If we have to start again, working in the sand, with dedicated teachers, then so be it."
The former Australian of the Year (1992) was the first Aboriginal to become a school principal.
I didn't know that until I Googled him. I knew he founded the band Yothu Yindi.
Love this song which was co-written with Paul Kelly: Treaty (1992 Best Song of the Year ARIA)
These guys are basically cultural superheroes in Australia - or were once. They even got a treaty promise from then Prime Minister Bob Hawke.
Of course, it didn't happen. The Australian Constitution is a fearful creature which assures the Constitutional Monarchy, Massive Government and well, I suppose they did manage to change it to recognize the Aboriginal people as citizens in 1967.
Yothu Yindi's song was a powerful political statement that resonated in the hearts and minds of many Australians - perhaps a band of "illegal asylum seekers" or "queue jumpers" (Joke! I see them as refugees if they have a legit claim to asylum) should put out a hit song, hey? I'm sure Channel Ten's Australian Idol could feature them in their upcoming season - or even Seven's new talent X Factor.
Culture actually makes culture - it's organic. Politicians they react to culture and if people feel fear it's easy to fear monger than to allay fears - isn't that how WWII started?
It's amazing the impact poets have on a society - if there's no poetry in a person there's probably one hell of a lot of arrogance and ignorance.
There's a lot of poetry in Galarrwuy Yunupingu - and he learned his ABC's drawing the alphabet with a stick in the sand!
On the weekend, he wrote a column in the Weekend Australian about education which contains some really good power points.
Pity the newspaper didn't put it up online so I could link to it.
I'll just quote a few lines.
He starts:
"The first time I heard the word "school" I was about seven, living with my extended family on the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory under the strict eye of my father. I spoke no English and knew no white people."
He goes on to explain how he only went to school out of respect for his father who decided that it was as necessary to learn the white man's language and culture as it was to maintain his traditional heritage and language.
Yunupingu explains how his father was taking his lead from an ancestoral hero named Ganbulabula who made a habit of looking up and to the future.
I don't know but this sounds like a worthy kind of Australian hero to me - don't you think? I think that as we head to a national election politicians generally should keep these few things in mind as they formulate the words they speak and policies for our future.
At the recent X/Media conference I attended there was an Indian entrepreneur, a former journalist, who is busying himself with building a comics/animation studio that produces native stories about the superheroes from their ancient culture.
Gotham Chopra's Liquid Comics is collaborating with the likes of John Woo and Guy Ritchie, Nic Cage and Hugh Jackman in a fight against terrorism - yes you heard me!
He explained how as a TV journo a few weeks before 9/11 he was in Pakistan visiting an Islamic school to talk to the Imam about whether the fears of the West were justified. The school had a large poster of Osama Bin Laden on the wall. Chopra was on a plane bound out of New York when the planes struck the Twin Towers. His plane was diverted and he made his way to Ground Zero to cover the story and then help out as a volunteer.
But it was something he saw in Pakistan which made him think: Where the hell was Superman? He could've stopped this.
He had talked to a student, a boy who was wearing a Superman t-shirt, at the school. And the Imam then answered his question about whether the West need fear with another question. "Who do you think should be afraid of who?" - he was referring to cultural domination as an act of terrorism against their heritage.
And so Liquid Comics was born.
Galarrwuy Yunupingu laments, not disbanding Yothu Yindi but the disbandment of his school which deprived people in his homeland the opportunities he enjoyed to stay home and be educated in both English and Gumatj. He ends his column with these words of hope:
"My father's vision will be renewed at this year's Garma Festival which starts on August 6 at Gulkula near Nhulunbuy. The theme is "looking up to the future".
"We will remake our future so it is as beautiful as our past, but to take this path we need to prepare ourselves, discipline ourselves and believe in ourselves. If we have to start again, working in the sand, with dedicated teachers, then so be it."
