The Aboriginal Animal Rights/Land Rights Pact: Uncle Max Interviewed

Interview by Claudette Vaughan

Aboriginal Elder, Dulumunmun from the Yuin Nation, also known to us as Uncle Max, speaks to the Abolitionist on land rights, the kangaroo and the failure of the white man to recognise sacred community, interspecies communication and love of the land.

*** For T.J.Hicky, impaled on fencing and killed while running from police in Redfern, 2004

CV: What are your views on the kangaroo since you have spoken before on the subject, memorably at the VOICELESS launch of Maryland Wilson's book “Kangaroos: Myths and Realities”.

Max: Kangaroos are living creatures and there are so many totems of some of the tribal people from this country that happens to be called ‘Australia' dedicated to them. Kangaroos don't do any damage to the environment unlike humans do and all the other hard hoofed animals. Kangaroos are a very special type of animal running right through aboriginal laws and dreaming.

I think hunters shooting large numbers of kangaroos, as they are doing nightly in the Outback, are a farce. The Industry is trying to tell us that everybody's eaten kangaroo now but the reality is if you put kangaroo on the dinner table then everyone cocks their nose up at it and cries “Yuck”. The Kangaroo Industry would like us to think it has the right a way for promoting one more product but where the kangaroo really is going is in large amounts of pet food. I'm pretty concerned about that. They like to call it culling but really it's a slaughter that's going on out there and it's like most indigenous things in this country that's important to us such as the kangaroo. They will be on the endangered species list soon.

CV: Do you make a connection between the original people of this land, the Kooris, and what's going on with the kangaroo today, Max?

Max: Yeah there's a great connection there between the kangaroo and the first people of this country. If you get lost in the Red Dirt or Black Dirt country you can always find your way back following an easterly or westerly direction. Of course when you look at the kangaroo lying under the trees and scrubs you always find a hole facing east or west so a thing like that in the Outback is so important. Kangaroos save lives.

CV: Many white Australians view the kangaroo as a pest because they have been conditioned like that and its come straight off the back of the Kangaroo Industry who has a vested interested in maintaining that lie. Is the kangaroo a sacred symbol to Aboriginal spirituality in myth and symbol?

Max: Of course it is. Kangaroos are also an important symbol to State and Federal governments of this country. If you look at every governmental sheet of paper that's produced the coat of arms with the kangaroo and emu is on it. What I can't understand is why aren't these governments – State and Federal – doing anything to stop this slaughter, not culling, but slaughter of their national emblem. They are so proud to have this emblem giving them that prestige of Australiana. What a joke! A joke not only to this country but to this national animal as well.

CV: What is the solution to this?

Max: My solution is leave them alone in their natural habitat. If you knew what these so-called professional cullers are doing you'd shudder to think about it. Is it professional to pick up mothers and their little joeys by the legs and tail and just bash their head against a tree or a stump or a post? It's a terrifying thought that these people can sink as low as that and it continues every night out in the Outback.

They are trying to pull the wool over our eyes and tell us they are culling but we know it's outright slaughter.

CV: What are your thoughts on the male kangaroo, when the father of the family is targeted and this destroys whole families in the process.

Max: It's highly offensive to me. If you look at the male in nature who is looked upon as a leader and protector yet when the male leader of the kangaroo mob is shot, it doesn't mean a thing to these shooters. These shooters aren't even thinking; Are we tearing these families apart? It's really a symbol of what the white man has done to the aboriginal people of this country.

CV: Why do you think that there's been over 9000 aboriginal deaths in custody since the 1980's yet no one has raised hell on the issue to any significant degree as to produce authentic changes for aboriginal people?

Max: The powers that be have kept quiet on this issue because a lot of stuff will be brought out that they don't want brought out. What has come out so far never had a truthful impact to it.

CV: You said at the launch of the kangaroo book that what the aboriginal and the kangaroo suffers from equally is, “we have no credibility in the white mans eyes.”

Max: I was trained by my ancients and some of the great masters on significant and sacred sites. Every time we tried to say to people, “Don't cut that tree down or smash that rock or fill that water hole up because it's sacred and significant to us” the people would just look at us and say “Here's another Dream-Time story. Here's some old black bloke with same old hogwash,” you know. And all these other sites that we have around we would say to the white man that this is sacred to us and that's when we get ridiculed. But then to prove that we are right or to try and prove us wrong they will go and get an archeologist who is usually white so when they write their report they are believed.

Some of the things I'm finding awesome just about all around this fair city of Sydney I get called out to smoking ceremonies to get rid of the spirits out of houses so I'll go. The house in question could be built over burial grounds or there could have been a massacre there but what I am finding is most of the problems and spiritual unrest is in all places out in the back yards of these homes. The landscape people don't realise this. They will go and get the pebbles and rocks and things out of creeks and rivers so that's another big problem. I'm getting people to understand and believe in that spiritual movement again and that kind of spiritual unrest.

CV: The white man's spirit haunts us all really. What an assault to the aboriginal people to be forced to conform to the dysfunction of the white man's ways. To think the indigenous people of this land have had unspeakable horrors inflicted upon them and then more some…

Max: My views are exactly that. It is horrific. As is the horror and the slaughter of some of our sacred animals. Again we think we will continue and again they continue with land developments and all these things.

CV: Is the dingo sacred to the Koori people?

Max: The Dingo is sacred because it is part of the nomadic pack. If you look at the Dingo he likes to be in a pack. As a matter of fact I have a dingo at home and it's wonderful to see him. He's a very clever dog but you can't teach them. They have a mind of their own. They will take note of you. They can be loving if you treat them right. That credibility is zilch with what we say about all our iconic animals in this land we call Australia.

CV: How do white Australians make amends to indigenous Australians?

Max: One of the things I say when they start talking about ‘Reconciliation' is “garbage”. I tell people it's a political stunt. The Old Nation has been lead up a pathway to nowhere because how could aboriginal people and non-aboriginal people ever reconcile because we never had a partnership in the first place. What's to reconcile? This Reconciliation garbage is just another false sense of security and it's another pack of lies. It's something that the government is trying to impose on us but I say that real reconciliation is with the land. That's where we come from and that's where we have to get back to.

We have to look at our flora and fauna and really understand why our people had lasted so long. 80,000 years and upwards on this continent. So I say to my people that we should get back to the land, start connecting spiritually and get in touch back again with the spirit of the land, the waters, the wind, the animals, birds and reptiles. It's all these things that enabled us to be walking this land for such a long time.

CV: What do you think about the concept being floated again by the government calling for “self-determination” for the Aboriginal, Max? Does this mean the white man will smash you to the ground to see if you can get up by yourself again then applaud you if you do and blame you if you don't?

Max: Yeah! We'll cut your bloody legs off and you stand up and try and walk in my shoes. That's what they really mean by “self-determination”.

CV: What about a Treaty or is that playing the white man's game?

Max: It's playing the white man's game. Again that's another foreign word coming in. A Treaty what for? To tie us in with our poor brothers over in America?

CV: Aboriginal Land Rights and the Movement has gone underground for a little while. Do you think it will re-emerge in a different form once it starts up again, as it must?

Max: When the Land Rights Movement was happening everybody was somebody. Everybody stood up and marched under that aboriginal flag. I'm not a flagman myself because that flag represents people from the centre {of Australia}. Living on the eastern seaboard has blue mountains, sea and green grass as you know. Totally different colours from the standard aborigine flag. At least the Koori flag, as we now know it, gave a lot of people an identity and made them speak up and march under that banner.

CV: It gave a lot of white folk hope as well but the Land Rights Movement did get smashed back down again. Don't you think?

Max: Yes, it certainly did get smashed down again.

Thanks for your time Dulumunmun.