Postcard From Australia: Where Some See Souvenirs and Slang, a Race-in-America Reporter Sees Stereotypes
White fishermen with more resources still have a deep hold on the trade, even though the High Court has ruled
that the Torres Strait seas belong to its indigenous people.
I met a range of indigenous Australians: Aboriginal youths raising horses in a remote town, young fishermen earning a sparse living on the Torres Strait
and a university lecturer in suburban Brisbane striving to hold onto a middle-class existence for her family.
"If the High Court can recognize that we have ownership and we have management over natural resources in the water for 9,000 years, isn’t
that an indication to anyone out there to say, ‘Well, these people can manage themselves.’?" That’s a message I heard from indigenous people all across Australia.
Maluwap Nona said that Now if we controlled the economics in this region, we could solve the problem [of indigenous plight],
Even when I arrived on the Torres Strait Islands, the unique place in Australia where almost everyone is black, I was taken aback to see
that many of the restaurants, shops and hotels were run by white people.
That lack of ownership creates a palpable frustration among Torres Strait Islanders
— seen most clearly in their efforts to control the fishing on their seas.
Virtually every news reporter I saw on television was white, as were all the politicians
I saw stumping during elections in the state of Western Australia.
