aquí, ahora:here and now

Getup’s latest campaign is to get a rewriting of Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody’s classic From Little Things, Big Things Grow to #1. It’s a good track, laying spoken word over spoken and purred lyrics, and those around samples from Rudd’s Sorry speech and Keating’s address at Redfern (a far superior oration).

Politics and music is one of my favourite combinations, and this song is ripe for reworking to tell new stories. There’s something about it that I’m just a tiny bit unsure of, though. I think it’s that although a lot of indigenous artists were involved in the singing of it, the peaks of the song are focused on Rudd and Keating. It sort of seems pollie-centric, or something.

After seeing the video clip and having a bit more of a think about it… perhaps I’m just being hypersensitive. It’s not like there are no indigenous voices present, and really, the Apology was about white Australians, and white men in power in particular, taking responsibility for what’s happened.

Rudd: As Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry.
On behalf of the Government of Australia, I am sorry.
On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry.
And I offer you this apology without qualification.

To say sorry means to give respect
It’s long overdue
Now you failed to imagine
What if it happened to you

Now they’re not only words now it’s not just a symbol
Accepting the past, well it’s not always simple
When thinking of yesterday
We live for tomorrow
We can’t face the future now
Till we face the sorrow

Now under the colours
Of red, yellow, and black
We say “Never again”
We’re saying “No turning back”

From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow

Lighting up the path
With good in our heart
See the more that you love
The better for all
So he sang as he walked
And together we stand
For us all to stand tall
We must all play our part
[Rudd: “indigenous and non indigenous”]
Tears within our grasp
Yes forward we struggle and all we’ve achieved
Would be nothing if greed was the only motivation of man
So we can love one another, and with respect for each other
Rudd: Reconcile
[Moving?] Forward, together

From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow

There are moments in the lives of nations
Where hope and history rhyme
and now’s one of those times
Let’s close the gap and if we truly mean it
we can stare down our future and find
we can see through those eyes
And let us not stand with those who deny

Keating, from the Redfern Address: It seems to me that if we can imagine the injustice
Then we can imagine its opposite
And we can have justice

From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow
From little things, big things grow

[repeat]

Indigenous man: All of us are one, because we are human
And if I cut you, you cut me, what comes out?
Red blood, not different colour blood, only red blood. Yes.

I’m sorry for the countless injustices perpetrated against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. I’m sorry for the policies and actions that stole tens of thousands of children from their families and country. I’m sorry that my opportunities and privilege result from dispossession, violence, racism and slavery. I’m sorry also that I have not done more to counter the culture of denial that has been dominant throughout the last decade, and have not devoted enough energy to supporting  Indigenous Australians.

Today I’m proud to stand on the lawns of parliament house with Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and hear our PM say what we’ve waited so long for.

A few weeks ago I took a class on the Mexican Revolution, and the idea of ejido captured my attention. I just wrote the longest paper I’ve even done in Spanish on this subject (1000 words is so little in English!), and here’s a very brief rundown.Please excuse my English, I am losing my ability to write properly. In Spanish you can write 50 word sentences, and it’s ok!

The Mexican Revolution was, to simplify a lot, a struggle over land rights. Indigenous Mexicans were working their traditional lands in pretty much the same way as our Indigenous peoples (ie in terrible conditions, for nothing more than food and accommodation) and racking up huge debts to the owners of the big haciendas (farms). The revolutionaries won the war and in the 1920s Zapata turned down the presidency and started to redistribute land to indigenous peasants (campesinos). His motto was ‘the land belongs to he who works it with his own hands’ (or some such, that’s my translation!). About half of all arable land was redistributed to around 3 million people.

Large areas were given to cooperatives, who then divided it up into ejidos — plots of land that are tended by one family. You couldn’t sell your ejido, but you could pass it on to your children, and it could be taken away from you if you weren’t using it — basically, instead of owning it outright, you have stewardship of it as long as it’s productive. Ejidos were set up more to make people self sufficient, and they are still a feature of Mexico’s land tenure system. They are different to the communal lands here, which are worked in cooperatives administered by indigenous elders and generally produce together (ie ten plots will all grow the same type of lentils, and they’ll all pool their resources to sell it together).

So here’s the problem: ejidos are really, really unproductive. I’m sure they worked well enough in the years when no-one had farm machinery and everyone had 15 kids to cultivate their plots, but nowadays it’s just not happening. Also, when the idea of ejidos was thought up, moving up in the class system, getting an education or a job outside of manual farm labour, was unthinkable for the proletariat. Now, although this place is, really, screwed up in terms of education and opportunity, you don’t HAVE to be a campesino if your dad was, but because of how Mexican people generally handle their money (all of it goes into houses and *things*, as there’s not a strong culture of investment and after multiple crises they are rightly distrustful of banks and cash money) all of an ejidatario family’s resources are tied up in their ejido. They can’t sell up and leave for better work or educational possibilities, so they’re stuck in rural areas, tending unproductive plots and eking out a very difficult existence. So they’re selling. ‘Under the water’ (not table… an interesting mental picture, I think).

In 1992 the law was apparently changed to allow ejidatarios to privatise and sell, but no-one (not even lawyers) knows exactly what the situation is. I’ve found this to be the case with respect to a lot of legal stuff here. Because people are scared to buy it without the usual legal protections and proper land titles, they only get very low prices, and guess who’s buying? Big rich landowners, who are consolidating multiple ejidos into big farms. I have no idea how this situation could be improved, but I think it’s an interesting example of how changes within a society and in the local and international economic situation complicate policies that were, at the beginning, very well thought out and fair. If world economies had not become so intertwined and Mexico had remained undeveloped, with little opportunidad for movement between social classes, I can see how the ejidal system would have greatly improved the lot of campesinos. But that’s not the case, and the challenge now is to find a balance between instability and rigid systems that don’t permit changes with the passage of time.

This week I am taking a class on Mexican history, specifically the Mexican Revolution. It’s been really interesting to look at the Mexican situation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries with reference to what I learnt at uni about global economics (in the Australian context: European and Asian economics!) during the same period.

One thing that struck me was just how similar indigenous Mexicans’ lot prior to the Revolution (ie in the 1800s) was to Australian Aboriginals’ conditions one hundred years later. The Gurindji were still working for nothing but rations fifty years after such a situation was violently overthrown here. Makes me think about what we mean by ‘developed’ countries!

Last night I listened to a Radio National podcast about Charles Dickens – who he was, why he wrote what he did, and how his writing changed Britain. For people like me, whose reading material tends toward the heavy and blood-soaked, it’s sometimes hard to see any cause for optimism – there’s just so much that is so horrible in the world. Thinking about Dickensian England and pre-Revolution Mexico a very clear and very lovely moment of hope washed over me this morning. Things are better now than one hundred years ago. Not everywhere or for everyone, but they are better, and they will continue to improve.