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| WEST PAPUAN LEADER-CHIEF BENNY WENDA |
The Black Presence in Australia: Fighting for Survival
Australia was settled at least 50,000 years ago by people who call
themselves Blackfellas, and who are usually referred to as the
Australian Aborigines. Physically, the Blackfellas are distinguished by
straight to wavy hair textures, and dark to near-black complexions. In
January 1788, when Britain began using Australia as a prison colony, an
estimated 300,000 indigenous people were spread across the continent in
about 600 small-scale societies. Each of these communities maintained
social, religious and trade connections with its neighbors.
The dumping of British convicts into Australia proved catastrophic
for the Blacks. Victims of deliberate poisonings, calculated and
systematic slaughters; decimated by tuberculosis and syphilis; swept
away by infectious epidemics; their community structures and moral
fibers shredded, by the 1930s the Blackfellas had been reduced to a
pathetic remnant of about 30,000 people, and perhaps twice that number
of mixed descent.
When the continent was invaded by Europeans in the 19th century, the
white historians who wrote about Australia invariably included a section
on the Blacks, and acknowledged that the original inhabitants of the
continent had had a historical role. After 1850, however, few writers
referred to the Blacks at all. The Blacks were thought of as a “dying
race.” By 1950, general histories of the continent by
European-Australians almost never referenced the indigenous people.
During this period, the indigenous people, whether part or full blood,
were excluded from all major European-Australian institutions, including
schools, hospitals and labor unions. They could not vote. Their
movements were restricted. They were outcasts in white Australia.
Today, the Blacks of Australia are terribly oppressed, and they
remain in a desperate struggle for survival. Recent demographic surveys,
for example, show that the Black infant mortality rate is the highest
in Australia. The original people have the shoddiest housing and the
poorest schools. Their life expectancy is 20 years less than Europeans.
Their unemployment rate is six times higher than the national average.
Aborigines did not obtain the right to vote in federal elections until
1961, nor the right to consume alcoholic beverages until 1964. They were
not officially counted as Australian citizens until after a
constitutional amendment in 1967. Today, the indigenous people
constitute less than 2 percent of the total Australian population.
West Papua in Melanesia: The Struggle Continues
New Guinea is the biggest and most populous of the islands of
Melanesia. Indeed, it is the largest island in the world after
Greenland. It is tremendously wealthy in mineral resources, including:
uranium, copper, cobalt, silver, gold, manganese, iron and oil. Now
split into two by colonial design, New Guinea has until lately contained
a racially homogeneous population of 5 to 6 million Africoid people.
The eastern half of the island became independent in 1975 under the name
of Papua New Guinea. The western half of New Guinea, however, along
with a significant portion of the islands’ total population (estimated
at 3 to 4 million people), has been seized by Indonesia as its 26th
“province.”
For the people of West Papua, (the western part of New Guinea),
Indonesia has been and continues to be a brutal and aggressive occupying
power. Under Indonesian rule since 1963, the Melanesians have been
prone to both physical and cultural genocide. Indonesians generally have
a condescending view of Melanesians, who they consider their racial
inferiors — except, of course, those who turn away from their own
culture and choose to identify with Indonesian cultural values, behavior
modes and language. Additionally, members of the Indonesian military
and other high government officials possess considerable wealth in West
Papua, and are firmly resolved not to share it with the Melanesians.
Melanesians living in the forest communities of West Papua have been
subjected to forced labor schemes, while in urban areas Melanesians face
overt racial discrimination. A major part of the Indonesian regime’s
genocidal policy, in fact, is the physical replacement of Melanesians
with Indonesian nationals. This poses the distinct possibility that the
Melanesians of West Papua could become a minority in their own country.
The struggle of the people of West Papua today is deserving of far more
of the world’s attention, particularly the Black world.
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