Leave Captain Cook in peace

  

Subject: Leaving Captain Cook in peace.

And now the thrust of fundamentalism has spread to Australia. Not the Islamic fundamentalism of which there is evidence but the historic fundamentalism which is aflame in Charlottesville and now rears its head in Sydney. It's the fundamentalism which states that history should be rewritten to strike out the images of the early settlers and rather remind us of the indigenous people and the displacement of these people by the settlers who landed on many wild and inhospitable shores in the quest of discovery and possible trade.
The statue which was erected over a 250 years ago to commemorate Captain Cook beloved of our history books as a daring explorer is seen by the fundamentalists as treading on the "rights" of the aboriginal of which no mention is made on the statue.
It's as if the periods when Robert E Lee (1850), Captain Cook (1750), Jan van Riebeeck (1650) were a myth. That their exploits are somehow disdainful to the modern mind filled as it is with guilt and reconciliation. That the statues are somehow inflammatory and invent a world of pagan displacement which would have been better left as it was.
Would the Aboriginal have erected a statue to one of their leaders. Would the Bushmen of the Cape Province or the African slave have erected statues of their leaders. Perhaps in the Bushman's case or the Aboriginal's mindset they would have better things to do with their time living as they did on a day to day basis, their histories imbued with the mysticism of spirits of the natural world around them. It could be argued that the slaves were as much usurpers in the land of the Apache and the Sioux but it's hard to tar them with the brush of settler since they came in irons against their will.
Settlers, explorers, empiricists, traders, administrators, developers, nation builders and finally, builders of statutes, along with transportation systems, systems of governance and all the constituent parts that make up a nation.
The right for that nation to exist is challenged by the fundamentalist. Often a relatively young, caring white person who, racked with guilt for what he or she perceives as injustice would wish us all to go back to a time before all this happened. A statue is emblematic of the power his forefathers once had and one wonders if he or she is as assiduous in chasing Rio Tinto.
History is littered with crimes against humanity perhaps we should do more to rail against the current crop of expansionist, the bankers and the oil men, the financiers and the politicians and leave Captain Cook in peace.