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Aboriginal cry for freedom echoes cries for Freeman

26 September 2000 - David Hopps watches the race in a makeshift inner-city 'tented embassy'.

At the Abortiginal tented embassy in Sydney's Victoria Park, safeguards were being taken to ensure Cathy Freemans victory. With dusk beginning to fall, Aboriginal elders lit a Fire for Peace and Justice and, as they cast leaves upon it, they chanted and sung for the athelete whose brilliance has advertised to the world their demands for reconciliation.

"The spirits will lead her home" promised Isobell Coe, as a small crowd silently drifted towards the rudimentary settlement that has become the focus of Aboriginal discontent in the build up to the Olympics. Not so many generations ago, Aborigines striving to run as fast as Cathy freeman were fleeing for their lives from the white settlers. "It was so called abo-hunting" said Coe, their silver-haired ambassador, "incidents were recorded as late as the 60s. This remains our land. We have never ceded soverienity in any shape or form. We are here to force Australia to end its genocidal war against the Aboriginal community, to encourage them to embrace and celebrate our soveriegnity and to discuss the peace process that our people demand."

About 50 tents were dotted in one corner of the park, which lies alongside Sydney university and some 3 blocks from Redfern, a poverty stricken suburb which is home to a considerable Aboriginal population. "The war zone" pronounced Coe, dresssed in brown woollen slacks and zip up black jacket, and granting audience as she sank deep into a torn old pink sofa.

The central tent consists of a blue tarpaulin attached by ropes to a few poles and a fig tree. Aborigines might be close to the land but these are city folk for all that. "Trees were never my thing" said a man breaking off from blowing into a didgereedo. "I think its a girl volunteered another, lolling peacefully near a notice carrying the instruction "Alchohol and drug free zone". Coe was barely audible against the noise of the wind battering the taupaulin and a man chopping wood. Then she could hardly be seen as sweet smoke from a fire billowed accross her. "Our people were rounded up and put in concentration camps in a war that was never declared" she said "these games are taking place on a graveyard. We don't want to put a ship in the harbour and send everybody home. We don't want to invade peoples gardens. But we want the right to live according to our customs."

"Five minutes" someone shouted. A television resting on a rickety wooden table was switched on, Cathy brought gasps of astonishment as she stood in her space age top to toe suit; restive, anxious to resolve the dissatisfaction of silver at Atlanta. She had described the last few days as "like waiting to have a child" This was about to be a labour watched intently by an entire nation.

Before the gun there was time for one last adulatory commercial. The face of Freeman filled the screen, talking of her sporting journey. "Now here I am" she said, "I am an Olympian. I am the best in the world". Coe, her family around her, settled back contentedly. Behind her the crowd clapped and cheered. Someone banged a big plastic drum. From the moment Australia made its grand and calculated reconciliatory gesture by inviting her to light the Olympic flame, it had become impossible to contemplate her defeat.

Just before the off a large pole was raised in the middle of the tent. What was the special symbolism of that? "None" said Coe. "Its just highering the taupaulin so everyone can see"> Then the gun. "Come on Cathy." "Give it to em sister." "Think emu girl." Off the last band her acceleration was phonomenal. "Smoke in those feet sister." Cheers at the line. "The hundreth gold for Australia," and the "first for us," came a cry.

They waited expectantly for the gesture of the flag, and Cathy delivered it, entwining the Australiian and the Aborigine flag together. Reconciliation means different things to different people, but the symbolism struck home. She cast aside her shoes and did her lap of honour barefoot, "Hey barefoot warrior!" came the cry.

There was more applause and Coe clasped her hands as if in prayer. "She has won gold for herself and gold for the Aboriginal people of Australia," she said. "She has run the race of her life. She has put us in the spotlight. I hope it will help to heal. We have to end this war."

Nothing has ever been more expected from an Australian sportsperson. Never. Never has an athelete managed to win while carrying so much political baggage. To all Australians, of white stock or Aborigine,Liberal or Labor, she is not just Cathy but 'Our Cathy'.
In August last year, John Howard, the Liberal Prime Minister, admitted, "Without any doubt, the greatest blemish and stain on the Australian national story is our treatment of the indigenous people. Labor apposed the resolution because it did not constitute an apology on behalf of the Australian people.

With every stride, Cathy Freeman was a force for reconciliation. "We all love Cathy" said the television commentator . "Love us all," came the shout from the Victoria park.

And the crowd began to disperse, to the sound of a lone guitarist, wailing a song about freeedom.

Source: The Guardian

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