The Official Nonsense Thread

[Ollie]

Quote:Yesterday I went to look at the Indigenous Australia exhibition at the British Museum. It included some terrific art including huge paintings formed from dots of colour and some ginormous masks, including one of a crocodile that was wider than I am tall! You were supposed to wear it as a kind of hat but I'm sure I would just fall over. It was very interesting but also, of course, quite depressing, since the Aboriginal people and Torres Strait islanders have been so abused and oppressed. It seems amazing that Australia didn't even count them in the census until the 1970s. And, as ever, while some of the items on display were gifts from the Aborigines or were commissioned from their artists, so much was simply stolen from them. On one display you have all this information about how the Aborigines have maintained their culture for over 60,000 years and how important their land and their ancestors are to them, then on another you have information on how the British Museum accepts the fact that they'd like the human remains of their ancestors to be returned but the museum refuses.

Indigenous Australians do have a fascinating culture and art. Last year in English we watched a film, Samson and Delilah. It was pretty interesting, presting issues that occur today in poorer aboriginal communities. In the same class we also read a playwright, Stolen, by Jane Harrison, focusing on the lives of indigenous Australians affected by the child removal policy.
I find it so sad that took so long for that law to be abolished, and then they had to wait until 2008 to get an official apology from the government.