Dances and Dust

This poem was inspired by discussion over the condition of indigenous Australians and the vexed issue of 'race'.

'Race' and 'racism' have become such toxic terms, it has become almost impossible to have honest conversations around these subjects.

In the still semi-tribal areas, indigenous society faces triple ruin. The first is the trauma of a very old and conservative hunter and gatherer society losing its land to modern production. The second has been its general unwillingness since the first European colonizing fleet arrived in 1788, to embrace the modern way of life in general and its education offerings in particular. And the third is 50-70 years of indulgence driven deregulatory libertarianism that has turned liberty into disinhibition and rights into entitlements, for which there is no responsible moral agency or training for them.

The combined results have been ruinous and intergenerationally laid waste to substantial parts of aboriginal society, that is reflected in a pandemic of terrible outcomes across any measurable vector of social performance.

There are very powerful libertarian humanist interests within the dominant society that use the language of liberation to maintain a dysfunctional status quo that keeps them in charge of enormous government budgets and bureaucratic stipends...indefinitely.

And the way this regime partly entrenches its white libertarian humanist sponsors and a small handful of educated mostly European 'metrobigenes'' (who have been lucky enough to have been brought up in non-tribalized households committed to modern education) is to use anti-vilification laws to suppress truthful discourse that might falsify their ideological narratives and reveal just how corrupt, disabling and defeating their governance really is.

This poem is dedicated to calling the bluff of the race card that the current bureaucratic and ideological beneficiaries of the status quo pull out to shut down regime criticism.

Colour and movement,
dances and dust,
didgereedooing*
‘till it all goes bust,
debauched by welfare and idle hands
can you stand me a drink to return to my lands?
for dreams are my waking
and waking my sleep
As I lift up my spirit
And swallow it neat…

till I drown and I drown
to the end of the town
with the end of the world at my feet….

*Didgereedo: An Australian aboriginal base note drone vibrato woodwind instrument
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUGytDzsgew