Hi, my name is Rebecca Copas nungarrayi

Nungarrayi is an Aboriginal “skin” name, meaning what sort of story is my own in the flesh, but of body type not Spirit Dreaming. Nungarrayi translates out of Warlbiri language into Hebrew as Rivaq, that is, Rebecca like on my birth certificate, but my own birth place has a different sort of a snake girl story, more like to Kunti from Mahabarata, and Tam’ar in the Old Testament. My clan in Emu, and that means I am of the tribe of Judah.

I am an ordinary white Australian, but became enabled by traditional people, for whom first contact with the invaders of our country is still within living memory, to own and accept my indigenous ancestry as the dominant force behind my belief and Spiritual existance.

I just happened to be reading back through a few comments I have left at other wordpress weblogs, and found a question from Yosemite Indian, about whether the ban on alcohol being imposed to indigenous Australian communities is real. The answer is yes, but perhaps already by now most Native Americans will have learned something more in the media, but I do not know; however certainly the European media has been detailing the situation. Remote Aboriginal communities in which full cultural traditions are still sustained today, are experiencing a new set of laws to be as bad as the whole invasion all over again. The Australian government has had to label the new laws as not being within the Racial Discrimination Act, and the are definitely outside of international law, if that answers your question.

The ban is on alcohol and pornography and was put in place because of disclosures of child abuse in a few situations, but the reality of the statistics being proven now after nearly one year, is that almost every other Australian community has a higher rate of child abuse, but is less open to scrutiny by the nature of cultural obligations as well as shame. I heard about one old man, perhaps representing many, who had to ask what the English word “pornography” means, and of course for those old men, even learning that such things exist, is a total assault upon their sensibilities.

There has also been imposed income quarantining, so that the majority of many Aboriginal communities have had to move from their homelands and into major towns, only so as to access the government pensions and other allowances. Money is being taken away and rent taken out of it, even when there are now, in the towns, as many as fifty people to each house, (before no more than twenty), and each person is being charged the rent for a whole house, when all they really might have access to is a tap in the back yard, where they are camping. These are people whom seldom sleep in houses, and only use houses to prove that they are able to care for children. (or if there is a thunder storm, in which case houses are very useful places to hide) The income quarantine also is extracting another portion of the income of welfare recipients, and placing it into store cards for supermarkets like Woolworths. One old lady had $1000 in credit on a store card because she did not have any means within Aboriginal traditional culture, to learn how to go shopping. Also the food in the supermarkets is a terrible quality by comparison to what these people are accustomed to accessing as hunters and gatherers. They have had to move into towns with large enough populations for a supermarket to be there, other wise they would be spending all their money on petrol, just to buy the bread for the sandwiches for a school lunch for their children, to prove to the authorities that they are feeding their children. All because they have identified actual instances of real child abuse rather than staying complicit with society covering up that story.

Thankyou for asking, and my apology for not picking up on the question sooner.

21st June 2008 is a National Day of Action, after which, the traditional owners of Uluru, (that important-story-big-rock-major-tourist-destination which is a part of the Earth’s entire crust pointing skyward, and which to touch, instills immediate terror in any person, and has a story connected to the constellation Pelaidies), are planning a campaign of civil disobedience to prevent all tourists from climbing up the rock.

Your prayers towards acheiving that goal will be much appreciated.