Entropy of a nation.
By Jacob Mills
The succession plan hangs heavily over me. In a few years I’ll take on the pastoral lease at Myola from my father. It’s not a very profitable wool-growing business, but it’s beyond the bullshit of money. I’m in love with that country. When I leave it’s like I’m away from a lover, but a love like I’ve never known. I’m in love with a patch of dirt. It raised me, it fed me, it imprinted me with its everlasting ‘Sunday morning-still’. But I’m only the 4th generation Mills at Myola, 7th since we got off the Royal Admiral in Glenelg from Kent in 1838. And that’s where it starts to hurt, when I think about the 40, 50, 60, maybe even 120,000 years, the generational magnitude of indigenous Australians on that land, in this country. Denied existence. Stolen land, beneath my feet. Compared to what they’ve lost, my love that holds me in place must only be a little scratch, maybe on the knuckle that just stings a little when I bend it. If I’m that connected after such a short stay, how is it for them?
The rent is late, it’s always been late.
1934. They were poor, they came from Italy for opportunity, who can blame them? It’s the same story as my English ancestors ninety-six years earlier – government promoted opportunity in that fresh ‘government-opaque’. But that opportunity, whether my immigrant ancestors knew it or not, was born of indigenous loss. Life is hard at first for immigrants in colonial Australia. Call us wog, call us dago, call us wookie. But that racism wasn’t systemic. It was personal and it hurt – my nonna would stay out of the sun in summer so her olive skin wouldn’t tan too dark, the fair kids were cruel – but it wasn’t government funded. It wasn’t disproportionate police harassment, brutality, and deaths in custody. It wasn’t housing, job, and medical discrimination. Removed children and the missions. Settlers of all eras are benefitting off the loss of indigenous Australians. We who hold privilege can’t say that we’re recent arrivals and so it ‘wasn’t us’ – it’s still happening. Economic success and social mobility were achievable for non-British settlers and immigrants, and colonial Australia relatively quickly accepted them. I often tell a story of my nonno growing up poor, losing his mum young, only to go on and lose a mansion, Tranmere House, to a coin toss. He was wild and reckless, but he still succeeded; it didn’t cost him his life like it would others, that was his privilege. As Meyne Wyatt evoked recently to the nation, ‘I have to be exceptional. I mess up, I’m done’.
Colonial Australia is ignorant to the entropy of this nation. Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, dictates that in a closed system order turns to chaos, in that order. Chaos is the balance, or equilibrium, found in a low energy state. It’s the arrow of time. Ice melts. Coffee cools. To reverse these things energy must go in and that energy must come from somewhere. The system wants to find equilibrium; more randomness, chaos. Parents know entropy. The messy bedroom tidied under duress seems like order from chaos; but pay closer attention: the now hungry teenager is demanding food, and now, for the effort, something has to die. The equilibrium is just spread wider. Energy went in, yet the room will descend into chaos again. On it goes, equilibrium of energy. Order to chaos.
Colonial Australia thinks that we’re creating order from chaos – from Terra Nullius to ‘civilisation’ – but that’s not possible. You can’t get order from chaos at no cost; you can only displace the chaos by spending energy for an illusion of order. The fridge spews heat to ice our Australia day beers, the dingo dismembers the joey to feed her growing pup, and the first nations are crushed under our foundation so we can build on top – they can’t breathe and we’re spending so much energy keeping them down, or pretending to care. Enough. White privilege, whitewash, white Australia ‘defies the laws of physics’ – well, we certainly think we do, but that’s our ego and ignorance, and sadly, our culture.
I didn’t steal the land, I didn’t take the children away, I didn’t massacre, I didn’t poison the water – either did you. But I’m here, after seven generations of familial white privilege and over 200 years of nationally systemic racism. Life can suck, but there are many things that we’ll never have to worry about. The Australian story is black and white, white people are part of the story too, often the bad part as far as I read it. In stories, at least those with happy endings, the villains are usually defeated or converted. It has to stop here, with us, this generation. There is no shame in conversion, only in continuation. Systemic racism for economic progress-progress-progress-jobs-n-growth. But now we’re at the cliff top. How do we progress from here?
We don’t have to step backwards; we can turn and walk in a new direction – still forwards.
I’ve spent many long nights alone by a campfire – billie on the boil, milky way spinning by overhead – agonising back and forth. What to do about my undying love for this land and my undeniable colonial history? Too uncomfortable. I love this land more than my life, a privilege I have because their love of country, Barngarla country, was denied, stolen away. And now I see it – it came to me eventually, it always does if I give it long enough, and I know it is truth, I feel it. Learn about the culture and struggle on the other side of my privilege and find out what I can do to bridge that gap. And let the chips fall where they may, let the chaos in. It’s time to undo our white-dictator culture, to tell the truth of the white part of the story, get the white saviours and oppressors out of the way for the creation of a place of healing. Black and white together, in equilibrium.
What we can do.
1. Look inside ourselves, observe where we have privilege, acknowledge it – work to destroy it. Understand what ‘Whiteness’ and white identity is, so that it is deconstructed as the ‘normal’ by which other cultures are judged.
2. Find out whose country you’re on, or whose country you’re visiting – I split my time between Barngarla and Kaurna Country.
3. Donate to local indigenous causes – here’s a list of ten organisations but find your local ones too.
4. Educate ourselves on the true history of this country – check out @blackfulla_bookclub on Instagram for a range of titles by indigenous storytellers.
5. Support indigenous business and BEWARE the non-indigenous schemers! Make sure your money is going where it should – check out @tradingblak and @blakbusiness on Instagram for a start, but find your locals too.
6. Get involved.
Some more actions to take after some community feedback on the Facebook page.
7. Listen to Aboriginal voices on Aboriginal issues. Humbly listen to Aboriginal solutions for Aboriginal people and offer assistance but only help if you are invited. Being a white saviour is a racist and patronising way of action.
8. While we listen to Aboriginal voices, we must speak to each other about race and challenge each other on white issues that are divisive to our communities and oppressive to minority groups. We can help each other grow and be better, it’s not up to Aboriginal people to nurture us, we’re a burden enough already.
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