The scribe is human. The scribe holds onto hope, love, and peace. These ingredients are essential for survival and creativity as the scribe dares to walk into the social furnace, to find words to articulate the genocidal horror and terror of colonisation and power.
Stan Grant, ABC journalist and First Nations representative, exposed his soul on ABC TV, his pain, and that of his family when he addressed, very publicly, the deep hate spears and articulated hurtful racism that dominate in the outpost penal colony called Australia.
His spirit and heart strength are in tatters; but hope is not lost, although the intense political/ media system of oppression, dehumanisation and hate does eat the social/ individual soul.
Daring to bear witness to this history Stan communicates our complex settler history and the resultant horrific resonances of ignorance and denial as we embrace ‘normalisation’.
The question remains: ‘Can we, as a nation, inoculate our damaged psyches as we walk to/ with the Statement from the Heart; which will give constitutional recognition to First Nations peoples brutalised for 230 years of ongoing wars of colonisation?’
Do we understand the incalculable cruelty we display when we imprison ten-year-old children? Is there anything that is not weaponised when we address First Nations rights? It seems that values no longer exist in Australia. We incarcerate tortured refugees too – defying rights upheld by international charters.
Australian punitive economic technologies cling to epistemic violence to enhance economic systems of incarceration and brutality. Yes, it gets worse as we incarcerate our children for resisting the powers that are destroying the planet. Are we that ‘normalised’? What happened? Have a rest, Stan, but come back stronger. There does exist a consciousness that sees love as an existential state, it’s just that all of the media shite has knocked this realisation out of our ‘normalised’ souls, and hearts, but not our vision!
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
