Australian Indigenous leader Noel Pearson has launched a blistering tirade against the Australian public, governments and media over “selective outrage” that was vented over the Don Dale abuses, but not against decisions that dispossess children, such as the attempt to shut down his educational program of direct instruction.
Speaking at the Garma Festival in the Northern Territory, Australia, before a panel on constitutional recognition, he also joined calls for a settlement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.
Pearson, founder of the Cape York Institute, said the “much maligned” Direct Instruction literacy and numeracy program being trialed in Cape York, Australia, was working.
“And yet I have gone through eight weeks of absolutely bureaucratic and political bastardry that seeks to dispossess children like this from their future. And not a word of outrage. Not a word of support,” he said.
He had earlier shown a video of a four-year-old girl reading to her teacher.
“These are the thrills of my life,” he said of receiving the video, and said that every student of the Cape York institute was on track to be reading by grade one.
“Children like her, not brought up as my own in a house full of a thousand books, not brought up with privilege and advantage, not brought up with the English language, but she will read and gain a great power,” he said.
“But our outrage is selective. And the media has torn strips off us and they’ve torn me a new one. And all to no unity in relation to the future of a new one,” he said.
After teachers were evacuated twice from a school in the Aurukun, Australia, the largest of Pearson’s “lighthouse schools,” the situation escalated and the Queensland state government considered a full takeover.
A government review and calls for the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy to be stripped of the school contract and for the scrapping of the controversial US education program followed.
Pearson yesterday said the Australian Senate committee on Indigenous affairs, which inquired and reported on Direct Instruction, should “hang its head in shame” for “rubbishing” the educational system.
Pearson drew comparisons with the reaction this week to abuses inside Northern Territory juvenile detention centers.
“Of course this misery has been going on for decades. And we have this enormous fund of sympathy in relation to the problems,” he said. “But we under this tent oppose the very policies which have the best chance of diverting the kids from alienation from their mothers’ bosoms. We’ve got to support the reconstruction of families.”
He accused media organizations including the Australian Broadcasting Corp, Fairfax and the Guardian, of being calculated to the detriment of Aboriginal people and tearing down “every good thing.”
“The white Australians that support us on the one hand oppose us in the policies we make,” he said.
Pearson said supporters who “cling to the old ideas” were a “stumbling block” and he urged them to “get out of the way.”
“We have hit the rock bottom on this debate. Absolute rock bottom, because we’re now conjuring up mysterious forces, as if hungry children don’t have irresponsible adults around them. A hungry child is not hungry because of some alien presence. She is hungry because some adult has failed in their responsibility,” he said.
Pearson made his address as he opened a key forum panel on constitutional recognition and joined calls for a settlement arrangement.
“If we think they are somehow separate agendas, this whole agenda will fail,” he said. “My synthesis is simply that constitutional recognition provides the hook that enables agreements to be made, and a makarratta, a national settlement, to be made.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was