Spirit - YouTube:
'via Blog this'
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Being defined as a Dutch-born Australian and how will planned celebrations affect me?
ozcloggie:
'via Blog this'
Dutch-Australian cultural heritage ~ surely 'owned' by everyone, with 'expert' advice welcomed?!?!?
(Is my personal perspective.)
Quote from:
http://www.canberra.edu.au/centres/donald-horne/cultural-heritage/what-is :
"What is Cultural Heritage?
The popular answer is that cultural heritage is the things, places and practices that define who we are as individuals, as communities, as nations or civilisations and as a species. It is that which we want to keep, share and pass on.
As a field of scholarship, Cultural Heritge has emerged over the past forty or fifty years when universities (especially in the United Kingdon, Europe and North America) diversified beyond the orthodox and traditional disciplines and into new fields of enquiry that were cross-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary."
My point:
If who I am as an individual is being defined, in terms of being a Dutch-born Australian, I'd like to have a say in this and the opportunity to comment on how being "Dutch-(born)-Australian" is affected by celebrations of the landing by Dirk Hartog, in 1616, as it will surely reflect on all of us who came here from the Netherlands, since then!?!?
'via Blog this'
Dutch-Australian cultural heritage ~ surely 'owned' by everyone, with 'expert' advice welcomed?!?!?
(Is my personal perspective.)
Quote from:
http://www.canberra.edu.au/centres/donald-horne/cultural-heritage/what-is :
"What is Cultural Heritage?
The popular answer is that cultural heritage is the things, places and practices that define who we are as individuals, as communities, as nations or civilisations and as a species. It is that which we want to keep, share and pass on.
As a field of scholarship, Cultural Heritge has emerged over the past forty or fifty years when universities (especially in the United Kingdon, Europe and North America) diversified beyond the orthodox and traditional disciplines and into new fields of enquiry that were cross-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary."
My point:
If who I am as an individual is being defined, in terms of being a Dutch-born Australian, I'd like to have a say in this and the opportunity to comment on how being "Dutch-(born)-Australian" is affected by celebrations of the landing by Dirk Hartog, in 1616, as it will surely reflect on all of us who came here from the Netherlands, since then!?!?
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
I'm standing on the shore* and being critical of......
......"footprints and stepping stones".
.
The people who are involved are (no doubt! I don't know them all but ....quite a few) very pleasant, well-intentioned and very nice to know.
But I am so bothered by what DRIVES celebrations, like the planned 'FOOTPRINTS AS STEPPING STONES' celebrations in 2016. .
In May 1956, as a 12-year-old immigrant, from Gouda, in the Netherlands, climbing down from the train, after midnight, on to a paddock, in the vicinity of Albury, to be guided by a teenager with a torch, while helping my parents to carry our luggage, to the assembly point in the Bonegilla "Migrant Reception Centre" (ex-army camp - Think of MASH), makes the expression "factory fodder" inevitably float to the top, in my brain. .
Makes me think of our footprints in those paddocks, SOMEWHERE in the pitch-dark and our heads as 'stepping stones' for those who needed more "factory fodder" to support the post WWII surge in economic development here in Australia.
With hindsight, it seemed unlikely that Australians were going to perish if we did not take the 5-weeks boat-trip to help populate the country.
In those years these boats were encouraged to come.
The Centre for International Heritage Activities website reports that:
"The Canberra Symposium 'Footprints as Stepping Stones' was a big success. Over 65 participants during the day and over 100 participants in the evening attended the Symposium and Public Event. The event was organised by the Netherlands Embassy in Canberra in partnership with the CIE. The event was held at the National Library of Australia. With the event the Dutch Australian Cultural Heritage Celebrations 2016 have officially been kicked-off!"
Emphasising / celebrating the connection(s) between the Netherlands and Australia, I am all fore! I'm proud of my country of birth and love visiting it.
I'm in danger of "protesting too much" that I would not want to live anywhere else but here.
(Having a 'duplex' built next door a few years ago and now another going up on the other side, perhaps I don't mean THIS in this very house but certainly not too far away from here.)
I see that among the attendees are people whom I like very much and whose efforts to make life for Dutch-born Australians a little better I appreciate very much but I cannot help thinking about these ~ perhaps to you obscure ~ examples:
Quite a few years ago, I lined up with thousands of others, in the centre of Sydney to participate in the annual "City to Surf" 'race. (I walked!) We were asked to WAVE at the cameras in the helicopter above ( to promote Sydney, of course and bring in the tourist dollar).
A few years later, standing in the huge crowd beside the (then) Gouda Town Hall, for Carols by Candlelight, we were asked to wave at the camera(s)high above us, on a crane (to promote Gouda, of course, and bring in the tourist dollar).
I realise we have to keep the economy going in order to eat and live but I wish the emphasis was more on the 'culture' or, at least, that there was a little less 'spin'. (Just as I'm trying to support 'Farmers Direct' and buy less from Woolworths, "The fresh fruit people" (as my father WAS attracted to the poker machines a little too much.)
I think I'll have another coffee.
(* When my mother's sister came to visit us, from Gouda, here in Sydney, in the 70s, she brought with her, for me, a wall tile with the saying: "De beste stuurlui staan aan wal." = 'Everyone's a critic'. Literally: the best navigators are on the shore (They think they know better than the person 'steering the venture'.)
The people who are involved are (no doubt! I don't know them all but ....quite a few) very pleasant, well-intentioned and very nice to know.
But I am so bothered by what DRIVES celebrations, like the planned 'FOOTPRINTS AS STEPPING STONES' celebrations in 2016. .
My mother and I in our first accommodation, in Australia.
In May 1956, as a 12-year-old immigrant, from Gouda, in the Netherlands, climbing down from the train, after midnight, on to a paddock, in the vicinity of Albury, to be guided by a teenager with a torch, while helping my parents to carry our luggage, to the assembly point in the Bonegilla "Migrant Reception Centre" (ex-army camp - Think of MASH), makes the expression "factory fodder" inevitably float to the top, in my brain. .
Makes me think of our footprints in those paddocks, SOMEWHERE in the pitch-dark and our heads as 'stepping stones' for those who needed more "factory fodder" to support the post WWII surge in economic development here in Australia.
With hindsight, it seemed unlikely that Australians were going to perish if we did not take the 5-weeks boat-trip to help populate the country.
In those years these boats were encouraged to come.
The Centre for International Heritage Activities website reports that:
"The Canberra Symposium 'Footprints as Stepping Stones' was a big success. Over 65 participants during the day and over 100 participants in the evening attended the Symposium and Public Event. The event was organised by the Netherlands Embassy in Canberra in partnership with the CIE. The event was held at the National Library of Australia. With the event the Dutch Australian Cultural Heritage Celebrations 2016 have officially been kicked-off!"
Emphasising / celebrating the connection(s) between the Netherlands and Australia, I am all fore! I'm proud of my country of birth and love visiting it.
I'm in danger of "protesting too much" that I would not want to live anywhere else but here.
(Having a 'duplex' built next door a few years ago and now another going up on the other side, perhaps I don't mean THIS in this very house but certainly not too far away from here.)
I see that among the attendees are people whom I like very much and whose efforts to make life for Dutch-born Australians a little better I appreciate very much but I cannot help thinking about these ~ perhaps to you obscure ~ examples:
Quite a few years ago, I lined up with thousands of others, in the centre of Sydney to participate in the annual "City to Surf" 'race. (I walked!) We were asked to WAVE at the cameras in the helicopter above ( to promote Sydney, of course and bring in the tourist dollar).
A few years later, standing in the huge crowd beside the (then) Gouda Town Hall, for Carols by Candlelight, we were asked to wave at the camera(s)high above us, on a crane (to promote Gouda, of course, and bring in the tourist dollar).
I realise we have to keep the economy going in order to eat and live but I wish the emphasis was more on the 'culture' or, at least, that there was a little less 'spin'. (Just as I'm trying to support 'Farmers Direct' and buy less from Woolworths, "The fresh fruit people" (as my father WAS attracted to the poker machines a little too much.)
I think I'll have another coffee.
(* When my mother's sister came to visit us, from Gouda, here in Sydney, in the 70s, she brought with her, for me, a wall tile with the saying: "De beste stuurlui staan aan wal." = 'Everyone's a critic'. Literally: the best navigators are on the shore (They think they know better than the person 'steering the venture'.)
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