Legendary Indigenous rights activist Gary Foley has revived his famous poster mocking paternalistic attitudes toward Aboriginal people for NAIDOC week.
The poster, which Professor Foley made in the 1970s, ridicules white people’s tokenistic attitudes to the Aboriginal people’s week of events and cultural acknowledgement.
The Victoria University historian put the poster up on Facebook amid debate about the Voice referendum, which the veteran campaigner is arguing against, warning it will do nothing for Indigenous Australians and that it could seriously damage black rights if it fails.
Foley’s satirical poster makes a statement against a single week, which this year ends on Sunday, being held to promote Indigenous people, saying it is more about making white people feel less guilty.
Put up on Facebook for NAIDOC week, Professor Foley’s old 1970s poster mocks paternalistic attitudes to Indigenous Australians which allow white Australians to feel good about Aboriginal people for a week, then forget about them
Veteran Indigenous rights activist Gary Foley believes the Voice is irrelevant, dangerous and a diversion to Aboriginal Australians’ real goal, self determination
Using a racist and outmoded word for indigenous people, Foley wrote on the poster ‘Yes Folks, it’s “Buy a B**ng a Beer Week”. You too can relieve your conscience!
‘Hurry! Book a Black Now! Bring your most patronising smile, your most condescending attitude and your best head-patting glove.
‘You’ll be in the best of company – premiers, prime ministers, governors, knights etc. And of course when it’s over we can forget them for another year!’
Professor Foley, an academic, writer, actor, historian and founder of Australia’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972 and the Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern in the 1970s, put up the image of the poster in the middle of this year’s NAIDOC week.
Standing for for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, it became a week-long event in 1975.
Foley’s Facebook post with the poster has drawn hundreds of reactions, laughter emojis, and dozens of comments.
People commented that they loved the humour, called it ‘a bloody classic’, while others like Indigenous editor and writer Gayle Kennedy said ‘Nothing has changed’.
Historian, writer, actor and Indigenous rights activist who founded the tent embassy and the Redfern Aboriginal Legal Service, Gary Foley says the Voice is a negative for Aboriginal Australians
One person said ‘Holy crap. You’ve never held back have you’, while Melbourne arts executive Jason Tamiru remarked: ‘Stay tuned up and deadly Professor Foley’ .
Another suggested Foley ‘bring this poster back into a limited production run! The future generations can look back and see how screwed up the decision makers were!’
Activist Jak Webb said : ‘Nothing has changed! Now you can get a free, hand- picked Voice to speak on your behalf.
‘Just plug it in and off it goes, churning out lots and lots of words to be caught and stored in parliament’.
Gary Foley has actively campaigned against the referendum for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, saying that it would ‘make no difference’ to the lives of Aboriginal Australians, and describing it as ‘window dressing’.
‘The only thing that this referendum will do, if in the unlikely case, it succeeds, is make white people feel good,’ he told Umbrella News.
‘It’s completely f***ing irrelevant. We shouldn’t be f***ing around with a referendum.
Professor Foley (above at a 2021 Invasion Day rally) said the Federal Government was pursuing the Voice because ‘it’s one of the best sorts of diversions you can have from the real facts and issues. And the real issues are white racism in Australia’
‘A referendum No vote would set us back another 50 years, just like the last one. We’re 50 years down the track from the ’67 referendum and we’re walking through the same mistakes again.’
Speaking out in January and again at a public event in Melbourne in May, Foley opposed the Voice as just more tokenism that wouldn’t solve real problems, and said that just like past bodies such as ATSIC, it would be just another advisory body to be ignored.
He sees it as ‘a diversion’ to a treaty for Indigenous Australians and to what is the real objective – self-determination.
‘The government’s pursuing it because it’s one of the best sorts of diversions you can have from the real facts and issues,’ Foley told Umbrella’s Cade Lucas.
‘And the real issues are white racism in Australia … deeply embedded, deeply entrenched racism that pervades the criminal justice system from the High Court to the local copper.
‘Nobody’s interested in addressing that, and that’s one of the reasons why Australians remain so resistant to facing up to the truth of its own history.’
Professor Foley said that supposed advances for First Nations Australians were ‘complete nonsense’, including the 1967 referendum remembered as giving black Australians the vote.
The University of Victoria historian said the 1967 vote ‘had nothing to do with (the right to vote),instead it allowed the Federal government to ‘take responsibility for Indigenous people away from the states, resulting in an exodus of Aboriginal people from their traditional lands and into inner cities’.
Further, he said the the Native Title Act passed by the Paul Keating government following the 1992 Mabo decision as ‘inferior’, ‘pointless’ and a roadblock which prevented Aboriginal sovereignty.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Professor Foley for further comment.
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