In any case, as Bindi's art assures us constantly, social equity is a key element of Mordy-Litijus tribe's manifesto, so people who find the idea of putting white-ish folks in blackface to be repulsive (as below), if only grounds of absurdist inanity, might wish to consult the university's protocols on "offensive material" and perhaps lodge a protest.
There is precedent for this, thanks to Jonathan Holmes, who several times has urged Media Watch viewers to set the authorities on those who dare to air doubts about anthropogenic climate change.
Mind you, Ms Cole's Indigenous credentials are impeccable. She once was observed walking past the old Champion Hotel, a sacred site, and her paternal grandmother is both the picture of duskiness and, as she has explained, the fountainhead of Bindi's aboriginality.
Those troubled by the idea of setting bureaucrats against free speech should remember that Cole and her mates started this by going after Andrew Bolt for hurting their feelings.
IT IS ALL very well and good to give Gaia a break by turning off the lights for an hour, but there can be complications. In the dark and wishing to avoid an expensive trip to court, how would you recognise Indigenous artist and Mordy-Litijus elder Bindi Cole as an Aborigine?
Bindi is the lubra dusky maiden on the left. It is not known to which skin totem her companion belongs.
UPDATE: A reader has pointed out that the Macquarie Dictionary lists "lubra" as derogatory, and this came as quite the surprise. The word was used often by Australian explorers, including Sturt, who tells an amusing story of an old blackfella who "ventured to risk the lubras necks" but would not himself investigate the white man's camp for fear of his own. Ernest Giles hails lubras "young and pretty". More recently, some who drive the Stuart Highway may have stopped for a cuppa and a gander at Lubras Lookout, shown below.
It is very hard to keep track of which words are in favour and out of it. "Queer" was an insult in the Professor's youth; now it is paraded down Oxford with the bottom out of its cowboy chaps. Similarly "slut", which once meant a slovenly housekeeper, and then a slattern, has lately been pressed into service by loud and ungroomed women demanding the right to both provocative attire and immunity from the male gaze.
We must move with the times, so a substitution has been in the interests of reconciliation and racial amity. Let it not be said that Bunyips are ever less than sensitive and considerate.
WHAT A shame the old Champion Hotel on the corner of Brunswick and Gertrude streets was turned into a rug salesroom. The Bloodhouse was its nom de guerre, and you didn’t need to add an adjective, the adjective, because in Melbourne it went without saying. The blacks’ Bloodhouse, that is what everyone knew it to be, a place where any driver who pulled up outside and waited for the lights to change received a 60-second education in despair. Not the patrons’ despair, because they were too far gone to care, shouting and facing off, lurching into the roadway, women hiking stained dresses and squatting for a squirt in the gaps between parked cars. Much More Ballroom, the hippy mecca, used to be just up the street, but love and peace didn’t cut it on that corner. The vibe, man, it was bad. Stepping over pools of spew, sometimes comatose bodies, it just wasn’t cool. For caring, gentle white folk who talked of love and peace the Champion was a bummer, a corner to be avoided lest it spoil a nice buzz.
It is gone now, long gone, and the former patrons swept from sight. Great for property values, and not one of the terrace renovators who have transformed Fitzroy from slum to chic would wish it back. But today, a few hours after Andrew Bolt was found guilty of ruffling a new, paler and vindictively sensitive species of blackfella, you can’t help thinking how much the old Champion is needed.
The victors will be out there tonight before the cameras, telling how Black Australia just isn’t going to take the Dutchman’s slanders for one more day. Their lawyers will be skiting, too, and the ABC’s talking heads will nod and put the soft questions that, at the government broadcaster, signify support and sympathy.
Indeed, even if a reporter wanted to note that artist Bindi Cole, one of the triumphant plaintiffs, would never, ever have been denied service in the front bar of a quieter, whiter pub than the Champion, he will not put the question. Too dangerous now, legally too risky. Who but Bolt has had the balls to say the emperor has no clothes, and that the exposed skin is so often no darker than a Greek’s? Certainly nobody at the ABC or The Age, where it must have been a day of unsettling internal dialogues. Yippee, the dominant voice would have cried, that Bastard Bolt got his! But what of us and the opinions we express? Might we be next? Expect tomorrow’s editorial to begin by deploring Bolt for what he is and what he wrote, with the rest an exercise in nuanced incoherence. On matters of race, once you have mastered maudlin impotence, it is by far the best policy not to care enough to have a point of view, especially one that might see you sued.
And that is why we need the Champion, as a reminder that the problem, the real problem, has nothing to do with educated self-promoters who know how to get the grants and play the system. They can look after themselves, as it seems they have all been doing, hurt feelings and all.
But the poor bastards who made the Champion their second home, what of them? They have been moved on but are still out there, high on smack in Smith Street, pissed to the gills and just as quarrelsome in the dirt of the Fink’s dry riverbed, bearing bruises and offering sex for a flagon on the outskirts of Ceduna and a thousand other outposts of shame.
Do you think those children of the Champion – grandchildren and greatgrandchildren by now -- will be celebrating tonight in the long grass, breaking out the cheese and pinot gris, doing a little networking, sizing up the opportunities for a grant to shoot an SBS documentary about the day Bolt had his ears boxed?
Not a chance. The Champion is gone and for too many whites, the old problem, and still the real problem, has been largely pushed from sight. Now, thanks to Judge Mordy, it will be perilous even to speak of it.
Justice? We have not seen that today. Not for open debate or common sense, and certainly not for those who need it most.
UPDATE: "Emerging Indigenous artist" Bindi Cole talks about herself and Aboriginality. Have the barf bag ready at about the 3 minute mark.
ANY day now Judge Mordecai Bromberg, failed candidate for Labor pre-selection, will rule if Andrew Bolt needs to be speared in the thigh or somesuch for ruffling the feelings of nine people who believe it a shocking and racist thing that others find it difficult to perceive them as they prefer to see themselves.
Bolt’s posts imply that Aboriginal identity is solely related to biological or racial categorisation. For communities and Aboriginal people themselves, Aboriginality is a much deeper and much more complex question, related to cultural backgrounds, familial and community ties, and self-identification.
Because the Museum takes very seriously the obligation to expand public knowledge– always in the fairest and most impartial way, mind you -- it has helpfully augmented its coverage of the trial with a video interview with photographer Bindi Cole, proud Aboriginal woman and one of the aggrieved nine, who explains why much of her shutterbuggery is inspired by“how I was perceiving the world perceiving me.”
There appears no way to embed the video, so readers might wish to check the link., where they will also find Cole family snapshots of Bindi’s father and proud Aboriginal granny. The family resemblance, generation by generation, is very strong.
As for poor Judge Bromberg, Crikey reports – and The Australian relays -- that he can expect an all-out assault by the villainous Murdoch press if the decision goes against the News Limited’s star columnist.
Bolt has remained steadfastly silent about his legal travails, the day-by-day details of the case and the issues of identity at the centre of it, lest he land in trouble with the law. Does that same constraint not apply to publicly funded institutions, internet newsletters and plaintiffs?
