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	Racism was at the foundation of the Australian dream by Stan Grant Indigenous affairs editor for Guardian Australia Australia   25 January 2016   “Cuz, can you call me?” It was my cousin Robbie Simpson leaving me a message, when I called back he wanted to talk about a speech I had given months earlier. The speech had suddenly gained a new life after being posted on the Ethics Centre website to mark Australia Day.   I had been out of the country and when I arrived back my wife told me how the video had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. It had all taken me by surprise. I had long forgotten the speech, delivered as part of a debate for the BBC posing the question: is racism destroying the Australian dream?   The debate challenged us to ask hard questions of a country that is among the more tolerant, free, prosperous and safe in the world, yet has a stain on its soul.   I believe we are a strong nation and we can bear greater scrutiny. Opening the debate I reflected on how if I were sitting on the opposite side I would argue passionately for this country but I sit with my ancestors and the view looks so very different from our side.   I wanted to speak directly and honestly about some of my family’s experience and how we live with the weight of history. I wanted to speak of how we have reached out to Australia, fought in its wars, loved its people, worked and raised children.   But,each time we are lured into the light we are mugged by the darkness of this country’s past.   Australia’s myths, poetry and anthem tell of a land that can appear unrecognisable to us. We don’t share in the “boundless plains”, we have not enjoyed the “wealth for toil”, the sweeping plains and rugged mountains ranges of a sunburnt country were too often places of death for us on the Australian frontier.   Indigenous people die still a decade younger than our fellow Australians, we are 3% of the population yet a quarter of those in prisons. By every measure Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders remain the poorest, most disadvantaged people in Australia and this is no accident. The seeds of our suffering were sown in dispossession at a time when the very humanity of my people was denied.   We are better than this, I said. I mean it. I have seen the worst of the world and this, in so many ways, is a remarkable nation. Those who have marched for reconciliation, who have supported the apology to the stolen generations, who voted to acknowledge our citizenship, who have extended the hand of friendship, they are better then this. A nation whose highest court can overturn the fiction of terra nullius and lay bare the lie of dispossession and settlement, is better than this.   The overwhelming response to my speech tells me we are better than this. Other Indigenous people have delivered speeches similar to mine, frankly more courageous and enlightening. They have inspired me beyond words. This Australia Day we should recognise them and the Australians of all backgrounds who have stood with us for justice and freedom.   We all view Australia day through our own lens. For so many of my people it can be a day of pain and I fully understand that. For me, I mourn invasion and the suffering that followed, I commemorate our survivals and pride as Indigenous people, I honour my family and I acknowledge what is extraordinary about this country – our grit, our open heartedness, our generosity, our democracy, and I ask, how can we be better?   We have a new generation blazing trails in business and medicine and law and engineering and architecture and we are helping change the face – literally – of the performing arts. In sport we are often transcendent.   For all of that remember always that there are our brothers and sisters – far too many in number – for whom the Australian dream remains a long dark nightmare.   I haven’t been in the trenches of our struggle, I am the beneficiary of those who fought those battles. There are hard fights ahead, tough conversations of recognition and treaty and sovereignty led by others better equipped than me.   I am a journalist and a proud man of Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi heritage who also has the blood of white Australia in my veins. I want the best possible country for my children – don’t we all?   In his address to the BBC debate, Stan Grant, argued that racism was at “the foundation of the Australian dream”.   “The Australian dream,” Grant said. “We sing of it and we recite it in verse; ‘Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free’.   “My people die young in this country. We die 10 years younger than the average Australian, and we are far from free. We are fewer than 3% of the Australian population and yet we are 25% – one quarter – of those Australians locked up in our prisons. And if you’re 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.”   Stan spoke of his Indigenous ancestors, including his grandmother and great-grandmother, who were among those institutionalised in missions, where Indigenous people were forced into unpaid labour and abused.   “I love a sunburned country, a land of sweeping plains, of rugged mountain ranges,” Grant said, referencing the famous poem, My Country, by the Australian writer Dorothea Mackellar. “It reminds me that my people were killed on those plains. We were shot on those plains, diseases ravaged us on those plains.   “Our rights were extinguished because we were not here according to British law, and when British people looked at us, they saw something subhuman. We were fly-blown, Stone-Age savages, and that was the language that was used. Captain Arthur Phillip, a man of enlightenment ... was sending out raiding parties with the instruction; ‘bring back the severed heads of the black trouble-makers’.   “By 1901 when we became a nation, we were nowhere, we were not in the constitution. Save for race provisions which allowed for laws to be made which would take our children that would invade out privacy, that would tell us who we could marry and where we could live. The Australian dream.”   "My grandfather, who married a white woman... 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," Grant said.   "And if the white blood in me was here tonight, my grandmother, she would tell you of how she was turned away from a hospital.. because she was giving birth to the child of a black person."   * Stan Grant is the Indigenous affairs editor for ABC News and Guardian Australia. He was previously the international editor at Sky News and held posts in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Beijing for CNN International. Watch his BBC speech on racism via the link below, see also: http://www.abc.net.au/news/indigenous/ http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/indigenous-australians http://nationalcongress.com.au/ http://www.naccho.org.au/ http://healingfoundation.org.au/ http://www.reconciliation.org.au/the-state-of-reconciliation-in-australia-report/ Visit the related web page
	Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity by Vartan Gregorian Armenia   Today, the Aurora Prize Selection Committee announced the four Aurora Prize finalists as Marguerite Barankitse, from Maison Shalom and REMA Hospital in Burundi; Dr. Tom Catena, from Mother of Mercy Hospital in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan; Syeda Ghulam Fatima, the General Secretary of the Bonded Labor Liberation Front in Pakistan; and Father Bernard Kinvi, a Catholic priest in Bossemptele in the Central African Republic.   The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity is a new global award that will be given annually to individuals who put themselves at risk to enable others to survive. Recipients will be recognized for the exceptional impact their actions have made on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes, having overcome significant challenges along the way.   One of the four finalists, the ultimate Aurora Prize Laureate, will receive a grant of US$100,000 and the chance to continue the cycle of giving by nominating organizations that inspired his or her work for a US$1 million award. This year''s Laureate is Marguerite Barankitse.   The Aurora Prize is a pioneering global initiative seeking to express gratitude to those who put themselves at risk to save others. The annual Aurora Prize aims to raise public consciousness about atrocities occurring around the world and reward those working to address those issues in a real and substantial manner.   “All four finalists are being recognized because they have found the courage to fight against injustice and violence inflicted upon those most vulnerable in their societies,” said Aurora Prize Selection Committee Member Vartan Gregorian. “We created the Aurora Prize not just to honor, but to support the unsung heroes who reclaim humanity and stand up to such oppression and injustice.   THE FINALISTS   Marguerite Barankitse, from Maison Shalom and REMA Hospital in Burundi, saved thousands of lives and cared for orphans and refugees during the years of civil war in Burundi. When war broke out, Barankitse, a Tutsi, tried to hide 72 of her closest Hutu neighbors to keep them safe from persecution. They were discovered and executed, whilst Barankitse was forced to watch. Following this gruesome incident, she started her work saving and caring for children and refugees. She has saved roughly 30,000 children and in 2008, she opened a hospital which has treated more than 80,000 patients to date.   Dr. Tom Catena is the sole doctor at Mother of Mercy Hospital in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan. An American physician, Dr. Catena is the only doctor permanently based near the country’s border with South Sudan, and is therefore responsible for serving over 500,000 people in the region. Despite several bombings by the Sudanese government, Dr. Catena resides on the hospital grounds so that he may be on call at all times. His selfless acts have been brought to light by a number of media and aid organizations, and he was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2015.   Syeda Ghulam Fatima has worked tirelessly to eradicate bonded labor, one of the last remaining forms of modern slavery. Fatima is the general secretary of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front Pakistan (BLLF), which has liberated thousands of Pakistani workers, including approximately 21,000 children, who were forced to work for brick kiln owners in order to repay debts. The interest rates are too high for workers to pay off, trapping the workers in forced labor and poor—often brutal—conditions. Fatima has survived attempts on her life and repeated beatings during the course of her activism.   Father Bernard Kinvi became a priest at age 19, after losing his father and four sisters to prolonged violence and illness. Father Kinvi left his home country of Lome, Togo to Bossemptele, a small town just inside the border of the Central African Republic, to head a Catholic mission which consisted of a school, church and the Pope John Paul II Hospital. In 2012, civil war broke out in the Central African Republic between Muslim Seleka rebels and the anti-balaka (anti-machete) Christian militia. Amidst the violence, Father Kinvi’s mission provided refuge and health services to those on both sides of the conflict, saving hundreds of people from persecution and death.   * Read more about the finalists via the link below. Visit the related web page
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