Aboriginal Women Quotes

First off, as has been well stated by many Indigenous Feminists before us, the idea of gender equality did not come from the suffragettes or other so-called "foremothers" of feminist theory. It should also be recognized that although we are still struggling for this thing called "gender equality," it is not actually a framed issue within the feminist realm, but a continuation of the larger tackling of colonialism. So this idea that women of colour all of a sudden realized "we are women," and magically joined the feminist fight actually re-colonizes people for who gender equality and other "feminist" notions is a remembered history and current reality since before Columbus. The mainstream feminist movement is supposed to have started in the early 1900s with women fighting for the right to vote. However, these white women deliberately excluded the struggles of working class women of color and participated in the policy of forced sterilization for Aboriginal women and women with disabilities. Furthermore, the idea that we all need to subscribe to the same theoretical understandings of history is marginalizing. We all have our own truths and histories to live.

And yet now and then he let himself steal a glance at her. Lovely dark colors of her skin, hair, and eyes. We are half-baked compared to them. Allowed out of the kiln before we were fully done. The old aboriginal myth; the truth, there.

Violence against Aboriginal women was not prosecuted: in a scenario that may sound all too familiar to many women today, one newspaper reported that the rape, torture, and murder of an Aboriginal woman in the late 1800s was not prosecuted because the effects would be too detrimental … to the lives of the four white men responsible.

I speak of a Canada where men and women of aboriginal ancestry, of French and British heritage, of the diverse cultures of the world, demonstrate the will to share this land in peace, in justice and with mutual respect.

If you are an Aboriginal person in Australia, he writes, “you perform and display the paint and feathers, the pretty bits of your culture, and talk about your unique connection to the land while people look through glass boxes at you, but you are not supposed to look back, or describe what you see.

When I say I am Black, I mean I am of African descent. When I say I am a woman of Color, I mean I recognize common cause with American Indian, Chicana, Latina, and Asian-American sisters of North America. I also mean I share common cause with women of Eritrea who spend most of each day searching for enough water for their children, as well as with Black South African women who bury 50 percent of their children before they reach the age of five. And I also share cause with my Black sisters of Australia, the Aboriginal women of this land who were raped of their history and their children and their culture by a genocidal conquest in whose recognition we are gathered here today.

As the car disappeared down the road, old Granny Frinda lay crumpled on the red dirt calling for her granddaughters and cursing the people responsible for their abduction. In their grief the women asked why their children should be taken from them. Their anguished cries echoed across the flats, carried by the wind. But no one listened to them, no one heard them.

In short, connection to culture is so much more complex, rich and diverse than anyone who is non-Indigenous can understand. There's this unspoken feeling that comes with identifying as Aboriginal and being around mob that you'll never know if you aren't an Aboriginal person. Identity for us, is built on family lines, connection to country, stories, traditions and something that can't be measured according to levels of melanin.

And barbarians were inventors not only of philosophy, but almost of every art. The Egyptians were the first to introduce astrology among men. Similarly also the Chaldeans. The Egyptians first showed how to burn lamps, and divided the year into twelve months, prohibited intercourse with women in the temples, and enacted that no one should enter the temples from a woman without bathing. Again, they were the inventors of geometry. There are some who say that the Carians invented prognostication by the stars. The Phrygians were the first who attended to the flight of birds. And the Tuscans, neighbours of Italy, were adepts at the art of the Haruspex. The Isaurians and the Arabians invented augury, as the Telmesians divination by dreams. The Etruscans invented the trumpet, and the Phrygians the flute. For Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians. And Cadmus, the inventor of letters among the Greeks, as Euphorus says, was a Phoenician; whence also Herodotus writes that they were called Phoenician letters. And they say that the Phoenicians and the Syrians first invented letters; and that Apis, an aboriginal inhabitant of Egypt, invented the healing art before Io came into Egypt. But afterwards they say that Asclepius improved the art. Atlas the Libyan was the first who built a ship and navigated the sea. Kelmis and Damnaneus, Idaean Dactyli, first discovered iron in Cyprus. Another Idaean discovered the tempering of brass; according to Hesiod, a Scythian. The Thracians first invented what is called a scimitar (arph), -- it is a curved sword, -- and were the first to use shields on horseback. Similarly also the Illyrians invented the shield (pelth). Besides, they say that the Tuscans invented the art of moulding clay; and that Itanus (he was a Samnite) first fashioned the oblong shield (qureos). Cadmus the Phoenician invented stonecutting, and discovered the gold mines on the Pangaean mountain. Further, another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the instrument called the nabla, and the Assyrians in the same way the dichord. The Carthaginians were the first that constructed a triterme; and it was built by Bosporus, an aboriginal. Medea, the daughter of Æetas, a Colchian, first invented the dyeing of hair. Besides, the Noropes (they are a Paeonian race, and are now called the Norici) worked copper, and were the first that purified iron. Amycus the king of the Bebryci was the first inventor of boxing-gloves. In music, Olympus the Mysian practised the Lydian harmony; and the people called Troglodytes invented the sambuca, a musical instrument. It is said that the crooked pipe was invented by Satyrus the Phrygian; likewise also diatonic harmony by Hyagnis, a Phrygian too; and notes by Olympus, a Phrygian; as also the Phrygian harmony, and the half-Phrygian and the half-Lydian, by Marsyas, who belonged to the same region as those mentioned above. And the Doric was invented by Thamyris the Thracian. We have heard that the Persians were the first who fashioned the chariot, and bed, and footstool; and the Sidonians the first to construct a trireme. The Sicilians, close to Italy, were the first inventors of the phorminx, which is not much inferior to the lyre. And they invented castanets. In the time of Semiramis queen of the Assyrians, they relate that linen garments were invented. And Hellanicus says that Atossa queen of the Persians was the first who composed a letter. These things are reported by Seame of Mitylene, Theophrastus of Ephesus, Cydippus of Mantinea also Antiphanes, Aristodemus, and Aristotle and besides these, Philostephanus, and also Strato the Peripatetic, in his books Concerning Inventions. I have added a few details from them, in order to confirm the inventive and practically useful genius of the barbarians, by whom the Greeks profited in their studies. And if any one objects to the barbarous language, Anacharsis says, "All the Greeks speak Scythian to me." [...]

So I explained to him what the Old One had told me. The process of braiding hair is like a prayer, he said. Each of the three strands in a single braid represents many things. In one instance they might represent faith, honesty and kindness. In another they might be mind, body and spirit, or love, respect and tolerance. The important thing, he explained, was that each strand be taken as representative of one essential human quality. As the men, or the women, braided their hair they concentrated or meditated on those three qualities. Once the braid was completed the process was repeated on the other side. Then as they walked through their day they had visible daily reminders of the human qualities they needed to carry through life with them. The Old One said they had at least about twenty minutes out of their day when they focused themselves entirely on spiritual principles. In this way, the people they came in contact with were the direct beneficiaries of that inward process. So braids, he said, reflected the true nature of Aboriginal people. They reflected a people who were humble enough to ask the Creator for help and guidance on a daily basis. They reflected truly human qualities within the people themselves: ideals they sought to live by. And they reflected a deep and abiding concern for the planet, for life, their people and themselves. Each time you braid your hair, he told me, you become another in a long line of spiritually based people and your prayer joins the countless others that have been offered up to the Creator since time began. You become a part of a rich and vibrant tradition. As the young boy listened I could see the same things going on in his face that must have gone on in my own. Suddenly, a braid became so much more than a hairstyle or a cultural signature. It became a connection to something internal as well as external - a signpost to identity, tradition and self-esteem. The words Indian, Native and Aboriginal took on new meaning and new impact.

The difficulty with women in film and literature is similar to the cultural minority, in that they are often a plot device rather than a character unto themselves. For example, even a strong woman may appear alongside a man in a story, but she ultimately is part of the hero's overall goal; something to be won, or an element of his proving himself is winning her affections, or being captured or killed in order to send the hero into overdrive to complete his mission. In a story where she is the main protagonist, she often has to shed her femininity in order to complete the task. The fact that they are women overtakes from their serving the story as a character, rather than an object. Cultural minorities often appear to portray a view of their culture; the Russian will be a Russian and do Russian things. The woman will be contrary, or compensate for her womanhood by being overtly tough and masculine, or sexy and seductive therefore manipulative and ultimately something for the hero to either deny or conquer. A great example of the culture stigma NOT being exploited is in Wentworth: Doreen is an aboriginal, we see that, but being an aboriginal doesn't play as a device. It's a part of her, not the overruling definition of her, and while issues pop up regarding the fact, they are not at the forefront of the character. Women, it seems, are even more ingrained in our minds as elements or objects which only appear in order to have a titillating effect on the audience, or to serve another character's journey as either a challenge or a hindrance. What we want is to see women in stories who's sex is noted, drawn strength from without compromise thereon, but not of consequence to other characters or the evolution of the story.

For centuries now, explorers have been trying to find this fabled land of barter- none with success. Adam Smith set his story in aboriginal North America (others preferred Africa or the Pacific). In Smith’s time, at least it could be said that reliable information on Native American economic systems was available in Scottish libraries. But by mid-century, Lewis Henry Morgan’s descriptions of the six nations of the Iroquois, among others, were widely published- and they made clear that the main economic institution among the Iroquois nations were longhouses where most goods were stockpiled and then allocated by women’s councils, and no one ever traded arrowheads for slabs of meat. Economists simply ignored this information. Stanley Jevons, for example, who in 1871 wrote what has come to be considered the classic book on the origins of money, took his examples straight from Smith, with Indians swapping venison for elk and beaver hides, and made no use of actual descriptions of Indian life that made it clear that Smith had simply made this up. Around that same time, missionaries, adventurers, and colonial administrators were fanning out across the world, many bringing copies of Smith’s book, expecting to find the land of Barter. None ever did. They discovered and almost endless variety of economic systems. But to this day, no one has been able to locate a part of the world where the ordinary mode of economic transition between neighbours takes the form of “I’ll give you twenty chickens for that cow.

He’d read somewhere that Australian Aborigines used stories to find their way through the bewildering landscape of the outback, each tree and mountain becoming a signpost with its own story passed down from generation to generation, telling the way home. Johnny had developed a similar method to find his way through the bewildering landscape of women.

Children, women, slaves, aboriginals, the ill, insane, and disabled: all changed, unthinkably, over the centuries, into persons by the law. So why shouldn’t trees and eagles and rivers and living mountains be able to sue humans for theft and endless damages? (p. 250)

The Europeans also did not understand the main reason behind the men’s elaborate initiation ceremonies and why they travelled and educated themselves much longer than the women. They saw it as another example of the men’s high status. The law stories, however, reveal another view: the Nhunggabarra male ancestors are portrayed as reckless and aggressive and responsible for most mistakes. Hence, men need extra schooling and experience to mature and become responsible citizens in Aboriginal society. The men had to compensate for their lack of maturity and knowledge by learning from others and by conducting more ceremonies during their time on earth.

Historian Liz Conor notes the hypocrisy of the sudden flurry to “protect” Aboriginal women from alleged abuse from Japanese pearlers given there had been “decades of unheeded reports of violence toward Aboriginal women by white pearling masters.” Whereas any accusations made against white men had long been dismissed through the rhetoric of “black velvet” that regarded Aboriginal women as incapable of virtue and chastity,

The Native Women’s Association of Canada states, “These systemic issues have directly caused poor health and mental health, economic insecurity, homelessness, lack of justice, addictions and low educational attainment for Aboriginal women and girls, placing them in precarious situations where the risk for violence is greater

Investment bankers are conservative, cultured, slow-moving men (and a few women) who advise corporate executives about which country clubs they should join; their favorite phrase is, “How extremely interesting.” Salesmen and traders are wild, cunning, aboriginal creatures who advise money managers about deceiving their bosses and finding new strip bars; their favorite phrase is, “Fuck you.” Investment bankers eat fruit. Salesmen and traders eat meat, preferably fried meat. By law, there is a barrier—called a “Chinese Wall”—between the two sides that prevents them from discussing certain business issues. In reality, the Chinese Wall is superfluous; the two sides are located on different floors and are perfectly happy to speak to each other only once a year, when they meet to argue about bonuses. Those bonus confrontations can be like the meeting of matter and antimatter.

He believes — and I believe it too,” Mr. Foster said, “that this world is created, and all men and women are created, by the entrance of certain greatprinciples into aboriginal matter. We call them by cold names; wisdom and courage and beauty and strength and so on, but actually they are very great and mighty Powers. It may be they are the angels and archangels of which the Christian Church talks — andMiss Damaris Tighe — I do not know. And when That which is behind them intends to put a new soul into matter it disposes them as it will, and by a peculiar mingling of them a child is born; and this is their concern with us, but what is their concern and business among themselves we cannot know. And by this gentle introduction of them, every time in a new and just proportion, mankind is maintained. In the animals they are less mingled, for there each is shown to us in his own becoming shape; those Powers are the archetypes of the beasts, and very much more, but we need not talk of that.

The Pitjantjatjara and Pintupi don’t wash with water—for one thing because there isn’t much water in the desert, but for another because they don’t want to bother the Rainbow Serpent, the all-powerful creator god who lives around the water holes. Instead they use ashes from their fires to wash themselves, and it doesn’t deodorize them. The thing that fascinated me most was that they have absolutely no possessions. This is connected to the fact that they don’t believe in tomorrow; there is only today. For example, it is very rare to find a kangaroo in the desert. When they find one, they have food to eat, which is a big deal for them. But after they kill and cook the kangaroo, they can never finish it: there’s always lots of meat left. But since they’re always moving from place to place, when they wake up the next morning, they don’t take the meat with them. They just leave everything—the next day is the next day. Ulay and I separated, because among the Aborigines, the men stay with men and the women with women. The two sexes only make love during nights with a full moon, then they separate again. This creates total harmony—they don’t get a chance to bother each other! My main job with the women was watching them present their dreams. Every morning we would go to a field somewhere, and in hierarchical order, starting with the oldest women and moving down to the youngest, they would show us, using a stick to make drawings in the dirt, what they’d dreamed the night before. Each woman would then assign the rest of us roles to act out the dream as they interpreted it. They all had dreams; they all had to show them—dreams playing all day long! As spring turned to summer, the heat would rise to 50 degrees Celsius or more—130-plus degrees Fahrenheit. It’s like a hot wall. If you just stand up and walk a few paces, your heart feels like it’s going to hammer through your chest. You can’t. There are very few trees; there’s very little shade of any kind. So you literally have to be motionless for long periods of time. You function before sunrise and after sunset—that’s it. To stay motionless during the day, you have to slow down everything: your breathing, even your heartbeat. I also want to mention that Aboriginals are the only people I know who don’t take drugs of any kind. Even tea is much too strong a stimulant for them. That’s why they don’t have any kind of resistance to alcohol—it completely wipes out their memory. In the beginning, there were flies everywhere. I was covered with them—in my nose, in my mouth, all over my body. It was impossible to chase them away. Then after three months, I woke up one morning without a single fly on me. It was then that I understood that the flies had been drawn to me because I was something strange and different: as I became one with my surroundings, I lost my attraction.

Violence against Aboriginal women was not prosecuted: in a scenario that may sound all too familiar to many women today, one newspaper reported that the rape, torture, and murder of an Aboriginal woman in the late 1800s was not prosecuted because the effects would be too detrimental . . . to the lives of the four white men responsible.

A non-tokenistic way to value the knowledge of a friend or Aboriginal person you work with is to view the education you wish to receive as a process that takes time and needs to take place on their terms.

I know how important it is to be proud of your identity.

You have the power these women exemplify coursing through your veins.

These New World practices (enslavement and genocide) formed another secret link with the anti-human animus of mechanical industry after the sixteenth century, when the workers were no longer protected either by feudal custom or by the self-governing guild. The degradations undergone by child laborers or women during the early nineteenth century in England's 'satanic mills' and mines only reflected those that took place during the territorial expansion of Western man. In Tasmania, for example, British colonists organized 'hunting parties' for pleasure, to slaughter the surviving natives: a people more primitive, scholars believe, than the Australian natives, who should have been preserved, so to say, under glass, for the benefit of later anthropologists. So commonplace were these practices, so plainly were the aborigines regarded as predestined victims, that even the benign and morally sensitive Emerson could say resignedly in an early poem, 1827: "Alas red men are few, red men are feeble, They are few and feeble and must pass away." As a result Western man not merely blighted in some degree every culture that he touched, whether 'primitive' or advanced, but he also robbed his own descendants of countless gifts of art and craftsmanship, as well as precious knowledge passed on only by word of mouth that disappeared with the dying languages of dying peoples. With this extirpation of earlier cultures went a vast loss of botanical and medical lore, representing many thousands of years of watchful observation and empirical experiment whose extraordinary discoveries-such as the American Indian's use of snakeroot (reserpine) as a tranquilizer in mental illness-modern medicine has now, all too belatedly, begun to appreciate. For the better part of four centuries the cultural riches of the entire world lay at the feet of Western man; and to his shame, and likewise to his gross self-deprivation and impoverishment, his main concern was to appropriate only the gold and silver and diamonds, the lumber and pelts, and such new foods (maize and potatoes) as would enable him to feed larger populations.

Grasp that, and you will not be surprised to learn that the males of these primitive people held their own sex in such veneration that quite young ones—puny in intellect, and without education—were, by act of senate, qualified to elect senators, enter upon the government of the world, and occupy the highest offices to the exclusion of the Infinite Intelligence, where possessed by women. So those poor vain creatures, with much, assumption of wisdom, though still very apelike in various ways, made laws affecting woman's liberty, property, and even her children, without consulting her, her happiness, or any higher feeling than their own self-love, comfort and aboriginal greed. In short, the women up to past the nineteenth century were really slaves in all but the name.

A vast multitude of women, with uplifted hands, gazed upon a huge stone image. Their upturned faces were eager and very earnest. The stone figure was that of a woman upon the brink of the Great Waters, facing eastward. The myriad living hands remained uplifted till the stone woman began to show signs of life. Very majestically she turned around, and, lo, she smiled upon this great galaxy of American women. She was the Statue of Liberty! It was she, who, though representing human liberty, formerly turned her back upon the Ameican aborigine. Her face was aglow with compassion. Her eyes swept across the outspread continent of America, the home of the red man. At this moment her torch flamed brighter and whiter till its radiance reached into the obscure and remote places of the land. Her light of liberty penetrated Indjan reservations. A loud shout of joy rose up from the Indians of the earth, everywhere!

Molly and Gracie sat silently on the horse, tears streaming down their cheeks as Constable Riggs turned the big bay stallion and led the way back to the depot. A high pitched wail broke out. The cries of agonised mothers and the women, and the deep sobs of grandfathers, uncles and cousins filled the air. Molly and Gracie looked back just once before they disappeared through the river gums. Behind them, those remaining in the camp found strong sharp objects and gashed themselves and inflicted wounds to their heads and bodies as an expression of their sorrow. The two frightened and miserable girls began to cry, silently at first, then uncontrollably; their grief made worse by the lamentations of their loved ones and the visions of them sitting on the ground in their camp letting their tears mix with the red blood that flowed from the cuts on their heads. This reaction to their children's abduction showed that the family were now in mourning. They were grieving for their abducted children and their relief would come only when the tears ceased to fall, and that will be a long time yet.

The problem is there’s no evidence that it ever happened, and an enormous amount of evidence suggesting that it did not. For centuries now, explorers have been trying to find this fabled land of barter—none with success. Adam Smith set his story in aboriginal North America (others preferred Africa or the Pacific). In Smith’s defense, at least it could be said that in his time, reliable information on Native American economic systems was unavailable in Scottish libraries. His successors have no excuse. By mid-century, Lewis Henry Morgan’s descriptions of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, among others, were widely published—and they made clear that the main economic institution among the Iroquois nations were longhouses where most goods were stockpiled and then allocated by women’s councils, and no one ever traded arrowheads for slabs of meat. Economists simply ignored this information.15 Stanley Jevons, for example, who in 1871 wrote what has come to be considered the classic book on the origins of money, took his examples straight from Smith, with Indians swapping venison for elk and beaver hides, and made no use of actual descriptions of Indian life that made it clear that Smith had simply made this up.