First Peoples will never give up, nor will their allies

Written by: Louisa L. on 25 January 2025

 

2025 marks 25 years since a secretly developed Business Council of Australia (BCA) agenda was put into action. Noel Pearson – who rightly saw corporations as key drivers of Australia, but wrongly saw them as allies for First Peoples – was its spokesperson. 

Beyond capitalism’s state apparatus for suppression (its jails, police, military, courts) and deception (its parliaments, media, cultural and education systems) the BCA embodied ruling class organisation. 

Why was it jolted into action? 

On January 26, 1988 the magnificent unity, organisation and power of First Peoples, built in 200 years of struggle across this continent and its islands, told those who had systematically attempted genocide three simple words, “We have survived.” You have not destroyed us. Whatever you do, we will rise again.

Promises and lies

The unstated BCA agenda aimed to do three things to enable capitalism’s continued exploitation of First Peoples’ precious lands – divide and conquer them; crush their powerful resistance; and create Aboriginal collaborators.

Constitutional recognition was one weapon. Yolngu leader and NT parliamentarian Yingiya Mark Guyula rightly dismissed Australia’s constitution as “just a piece of paper”. Constitutional change had been raised by First Peoples long before, but was swept aside by the Treaty movement, with its potential for deeper and more fundamental change.  The BCA promised its allies immediate change with other gains flowing on.  

Corporations demanding tougher tactics on every front were represented by PM John Howard. After his destruction of ATSIC, his term ended with the old brutality and land grabs of the NT Intervention, disguised as “saving the children”. Key BCA Aboriginal supporters helped divide opposition at its inception. Its child victims are still criminalised.

Jump forward to 2023. No matter how hard-working, sincere and honest most supporters were, the battle over constitutional change, was initiated and overwhelmingly organised and actioned by BCA corporations and operatives. By giving decision-making power to descendants of settlers, instead of First Peoples themselves, and by a Yes/No mechanism, the referendum itself was divisive. Whether it passed or failed, it did the job. Both before and after the vote, corporate profits boomed. 

Meanwhile, other landgrabs escalated, until today. In NSW BCA member Westpac trained Local Aboriginal Lands Councils to claim land to sell or develop often excluding Traditional Custodians. 
 

Truth telling

Fascism is rising worldwide. Australia will not be spared. First Peoples already feel its genocidal fire. 10-year-olds in jail? Of course, because the young are the most dangerous rebels. Their spirits must be crushed. 

Resistance is inevitable. Witness Lidia Thorpe’s thunderous truth telling, “You are not my king!” Australia is still managed through a system of colonial relics, including in the divided former colonies renamed as states.

Parliamentary Labor ‘leaders’ are increasingly discredited puppets of US imperialism, while Dutton still leads the highly organised, resurgent far right. 

Real rule is underpinned by US imperialist control of the commanding heights of our economy, by AUKUS, multiplying US military bases, deceit and more. 

Imperialism, and all those who deliberately implement its policies, are the enemy. 

Everyone else is a potential ally to be won over.

Relying on legalities or what’s ‘reasonable’ in the face of brutality and unquenchable, systemic theft, violence and suppression, is like snow in a furnace. We can’t succeed unless we unite the vast majority of the inhabitants of these lands. Unless we fight!

The working class is overwhelmingly the biggest class and most important ally. Without it nothing is made, transported or sold. Our schools, hospitals and other services cease. Workers have been systematically dis-organised, and demoralised. We must reverse that. 

But we rise

Ours is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party. We stand openly for the overthrow of imperialism, for the right of First Peoples to secede if they choose, for reparations, for culture, for land.

Reflect a moment on ruling class lies about First Peoples and Palestinians. Imagine then, the enormity of the venomous propaganda, once masses of everyday people defeated capitalism and imperialism and created socialism. 

Another simple three-word slogan, ‘Peace, bread, land’ forged unity to create the first socialist state. 

Tens of millions of their peoples died fighting imperialism, before and after victory, for over 30 years in the Soviet Union, and before the over 20 years of socialism in China. Each became lone beacons to the world. But surrounded by older, richer, better-armed capitalism, with its poisonous ideas regenerating and settling in a few “leaders” who utterly betrayed their people. Familiar?

Primitive, literally ‘the first’, communism – communism of first peoples everywhere – is rich in lessons about living collectively. How much more dignity and good health ‘savages’ (literally, people “of the forest”) had than the criminalised oppressed of Britain or their guards dumped here 237 years ago. No wonder, in what’s now called Australia, First Peoples fought an armed struggle so bravely and so effectively it held back settlement for 140 years. ‘How They Fought’ by Ray Kerkhove deserves to be read by all of us.

Right now, here, most First Peoples’ lives are also rich in lessons about how to survive on almost nothing. Many others face that same situation. Allies too.

Worldwide, armed anti-imperialist struggle is rising among oppressed peoples. France is evicted from Africa after 400 years! We are not alone.  Others are winning. Others have done it before. So can we. 

 

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