IQ2 Racism Debate: Stan Grant

thank you thank you so much for coming along this evening and I would also like to extend my respects to my gullible brothers and sisters from my people that were HIV people in the winter of 2015 Australia turned to face itself it looked into its soul and it had to ask this question who are we what sort of country do we want to be and this happened in a place that is most holy most sacred to Australians had happened in the sporting field it happened on the football field suddenly the front page was on the back page it was in the grandstands thousands of voices rose to hound an indigenous man a man who was told he was an Australian a man who was told he was an Australian of the year and they hounded that man into submission I can't speak for what lay in the hearts of the people who booed Adam Goodes but I can tell you what we heard when we heard those boos we heard a sound that was very familiar to us we heard a howl we heard a howl of humiliation that echoes across two centuries of dispossession injustice suffering and survival we heard the howl of the Australian dream and it said to us again you're not welcome the Australian dream we sing of it and we recited in verse Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free my people die young in this country we die ten years younger than average Australians and we are far from free we are fewer than 3% of the Australian population and yet we are 25% a quarter of those Australians locked up in our prisons and if you are a juvenile it is worse it is 50% an indigenous child is more likely to be locked up in prison than they are to finish high school I love a sunburned country a land of sweeping plains of rugged mountain ranges reminds me that my people were killed on those planes we were shot on those planes disease ravaged us on those planes I come from those planes I come from a people west of the Blue Mountains there were a jewelry people where in the 1820s the soldiers and settlers waged war of extermination against my people yes a war of extermination that was the language used at the time go to the Sidney Gazette and look it up and read about it martial law was declared and my people could be shot on sight those rugged mountain Rangers my people women and children were herded over those ranges to their deaths the Australian dream the Australian Dream is rooted in racism it is the very foundation of the dream it is there at the birth of the nation it is there in terra nullius an empty land a land for the taking 60,000 years of occupation a people who made the first seafaring journey in the history of mankind a people of law are people of law lor air people of music and art and dance and politics none of it mattered because our rights were extinguished because we were not here according to British law and when British people looked at us they saw something subhuman and if we were human at all we occupied the lowest run on civilizations ladder we were flyblown Stone Age savages and that's was the language that was used Charles Dickens the great writer of the age when referring to the noble savage of which we were counted among said it would be better that they be wiped off the face of the earth Captain Arthur Philip a man of enlightenment a man who was instructed to make peace with the so-called natives in a matter of years was sending out raiding parties with the instruction bring back the severed heads of the black troublemakers they were smoothing the dyeing pillow my people were rounded up and put on missions from where if you escape you hunted down you have roped and tied and dragged back and it happened here it happened on the mission that my grandmother and my great-grandmother of Robert Warren gazed her on the dark darling point of the Murrumbidgee River read about it it happened by 1901 when we became a nation when we federated the colonies we were nowhere we're not in the Constitution saved for race provisions which allowed for laws to be made that would take our children that would invade our privacy that would tell us who we could marry and tell us where we could live the Australian dream by 1963 the year of my birth the dispossession was continuing police came at gunpoint under cover of darkness to McCune an Aboriginal community in Queensland and they ordered people from their homes and they burn those homes to the ground and they gave the land to a bauxite mining company and today those people remember that as the night of the burning in 1963 when I was born I was counted among the flora and fauna not among the citizens of this country now you will hear things tonight you will hear people say but you've done well yes I have and I'm proud of it and why have I done well I've done well because of who has come before me my father who lost the tips of three fingers working in sawmills to put food on our table because he was denied an education my grandfather who served to fight fight wars for this country when he was not yet a citizen and came back to a segregated land where he couldn't even share a drink with his digger mates in the pub because he was black my great-grandfather who was jailed for speaking his language to his grandson my father jailed for it my grandfather on my mother's side who married a white woman who reached out to Australia lived on the fringes of town until the police came put a gun to his head bulldozed his tin humpy and ran over the graves of the three children he buried there that's the Australian dream I have succeeded in spite of the Australian dream not because of it and I've succeeded because of those people you might hear tonight but you have white blood in you and if the white blood in me was he tonight my grandmother she would tell you of how she was turned away from a hospital giving birth to her first child because she was giving birth to the child of a black person the Australian dream we're better than this I have seen the worst of the world as a reporter I've spent a decade in war zones Morocco Afghanistan and Pakistan we are an extraordinary country we are in so many respects the envy of the world if I was sitting here where my friends are tonight I would be arguing passionately for this country but I stand here with my ancestors and the view looks very different from where I stand the Australian dream we have our heroes Albert no meteora wrote that painters the soul of this nation Vincent Lee Ari put his hand out for Gough Whitlam to pour the sand of his country through his fingers and say this is my country Cathy Freeman lift the torch to the Olympic Games but every time we are lured into the light we are mugged by the darkness of this country's history of course racism is killing the Australian dream it is self-evident that it's killing the Australian dream but we are better than that the people who stood up and supported Adam Goodes and said no more they are better than that the people who marched across the bridge for reconciliation they are better than that the people who supported Kevin Rudd when he said sorry to the Stolen Generations they are better than that my children and their non-indigenous friends are better than that my wife who is non-indigenous is better than that and one day I want to stand here and be able to say as proudly and sing as loudly as anyone else in this room Australians all let us rejoice thank you

Channel: The Ethics Centre

Views: 739,735

Keywords: Debate (Quotation Subject), Stan Grant (TV Personality), IQ2, racism, debate, Australian politics, Australian Culture, The Ethics Centre, racism is destroying the australian dream

Id: uEOssW1rw0I

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2016