The Wild Reed

Saturday, July 05, 2025

The Rational National’s Take on Zohran Mamdani

The Rational National is a podcast created and hosted by David Doel that offers independent political commentary and corporate media criticism “with an occasional comedic tinge.” It’s one of the few podcasts I follow, primarily because it advocates in a calm and informed way for human rights, workers’ rights, and equality.

Recently, Doel shared his thoughts on the recent victory of Zohran Mamdani (right) in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist and, as Doel notes, this fact, along with Mamdani's authentically progressive agenda and popularity, has the political right in the U.S. – from the MAGA cult to “centrist” Democrats – experiencing an epic meltdown.

Related Off-site Links:
Corporate Media Lies About Socialism – Sabrina Salvati (Sabby Sabs, July 5, 2025).
These Progressive Democratic Candidates Could Pull Off MajorR Upsets Like Zohran Mamdani – Mike Figueredo (The Humanist Report, July 3, 2025).
“We Will Not Accept This Intimidation”: NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Rejects Trump’s Threats – Democracy Now! (July 2, 2025).
Will Zohran Mamdani Empower or Betray the Working Class? – An Interview with Kshama Sawant – The Chris Hedges Report (July 2, 2025).
Bernie Sanders Puts Democratic Leaders on Blast for Snubbing Zohran Mamdani: “Get Behind Him” – Mike Figueredo (The Humanist Report, July 1, 2025).
Democrats Are Panicking Over Mamdani’s Win – An Interview with David Sirota – Briahna Joy Gray (Bad Faith, June 30, 2025).
Do Democrats Mean What They Say? Mamdani’s Primary Win Offers a Test – Masood Haque (Common Dreams, June 29, 2025).
A Roadmap to Beat Trump? How the Rise of Zohran Mamdani Is Dividing Democrats
– Lauren Gambino and Alaina Demopoulos (The Guardian, June 29, 2025).
What Every Democrat, Everywhere, Should Take from Zohran Mamdani’s Upset – Dan Pfeiffer (Message Box News, June 29, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani Win: Is It the Beginning of the Democrat Party Taking Over the Campaign? – Kit Cabello (Hard Lens Media, June 28, 2025).
Muslim Lawmakers Decry “Vile” Bipartisan Islamophobic Attacks on Zohran Mamdani – Brett Wilkins (Common Dreams, June 27, 2025).
Watch Epic Takedown of MSNBC’s Zohran Mamdani “Socialist” Propaganda – Jordan Chariton (Status Coup News, June 27, 2025).
Instead of Fearing Zohran Mamdani, Mainstream Democrats Should Follow His Lead – Robert Reich (Common Dreams, June 27, 2025).
“The Economy Is Rigged”: Robert Reich on Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party, Inequality, and Trump – Democracy Now! (June 26, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani Is Every Republican’s Worst Nightmare – The Majority Report (June 26, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani’s Primary Win Has Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump Reacting – Hard Lens Media (June 26, 2025).
Wall Street Loses It Over Zohran Victory – Breaking Points (June 26, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani’s Win Triggers Colossal Meltdowns from Right-Wingers and Centrists – Mike Figueredo (The Humanist Report, June 25, 2025).
“We Fight for Working People with No Apology”: Zohran Mamdani Beats Cuomo in New York City Mayoral Primary – Democracy Now! (June 25, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani Delivers Stunning Blow to “Billionaire-Backed Status Quo” in New York City – Jake Johnson (Common Dreams, June 25, 2025).

UPDATES: The Real Reason Democrats Won’t Endorse Zohran Mandani – IHIP News (July 7, 2025).
Zohran Mamdani and Why Democratic Voters Are Increasingly Skeptical of Israel: An Interview With Peter Beinart – Democracy Now! (July 8, 2025).
New Data Shows Why Zohran Mamdani Is So Popular – David Doel (The Rational National, July 8. 2025).
The Sad (Very Familiar) New York Times and Its Mamdani Hit Piece – Dan Froomkin (Common Dreams, July 8, 2025).
“Don't Sabotage Mamdani”: 30,000+ Petitioners Urge Gilibrand to Get Behind Progressive NYC Mayoral Candidate – Brad Reed (Common Dreams, July 9, 2025).
Centrist Clones of Zohran Mamdani Desperately Trying to Make Neoliberalism Look Cool – Mike Figueredo (The Humanist Report, July 9, 2025).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “No Kings”? Absolutely. But Also “No Oligarchy”
• Norman Solomon: Quote of the Day – June 16, 2025
• Peter Bloom: Quote of the Day – June 10, 2025
• Ted Rall on What It Means to Be a Leftist in 2025
• Butch Ware on His Run for California Governor and the Wider Goal of Disrupting the Duopoly
• Eric Fernández: Quote of the Day – May 14, 2025
• Progressive Perspectives on Bernie Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” Tour
• Why the Democratic Party Is Not Going to Save Us From Fascism
• An Opportunity for Organizing Against Duopoly
• Building Solidarity on the Left
• “It Is Our Responsibility to Make a Third Party Viable”
• “The Moment Is Ripe”: Butch Ware on Building a “True Oppositional Alternative” to the Duopoly
• Fighting the Rich and Their Two Parties
• Democrat Talk on the Eve of Trump’s Return
• Breaking the Mold: Why Progressives Should Push for Marianne Williamson to Lead the DNC
• Inauguration Day Thoughts
• The Green Party’s Jill Stein and Butch Ware Give Their First Post-Election Interview
• Progressive Perspectives on Where Democrats Went Wrong in the 2024 Election
• “A New Chapter of the Democratic Party Needs to Begin”
• The Lamentable Legacy of the Biden Administration
• Jill Stein: “We Give Reasons for People to Come Out and Vote”
• We’re Witnessing a Liberal Meltdown Over Jill Stein
• Peter Bloom on the Unmasking of the “Democratic Charade”
• When Democrats Undermine Democracy
• Elise Labott on How Third Parties Can Revitalize Democracy
• Something to Think About – August 15, 2024
• Centrist/Corporatist Democrats Have Just Launched “Left Punching” Season
• “Americans Deserve Choices”: Jill Stein on Breaking Points – 4/30/24
• AOC Falls in Line
• The Cassandra of U.S. Politics on the “True State of the Union”
• Mark Harris: Quote of the Day – August 10, 2023
• Will Democrats Never Learn?
• Heather Cox Richardson on the Origin of the American Obsession with “Socialism”
• Bernie Sanders: Quote of the Day – June 12, 2019
• “The Next Step Is a Green Step”: Cornel West Endorses Jill Stein (2016)
• Terry Eagleton: Quote of the Day – March 28, 2011
• Playwright Tony Kushner on Being a Socialist
• A Socialist Response to the Financial Crisis (2008)
• Capitalism on Trial
• R.I.P. Neoclassical Economics
• Hope Over Fear: Voting Green

Friday, July 04, 2025

The Declaration of Resistance

Closer to the Edge is a reader-supported publication on the Substack platform. It recently posted the following “Declaraction of Resistance” for the July 4th holiday of 2025.

__________________

SECTION I: THE PREAMBLE

When in the course of human events, a government abandons its duty and weaponizes its power against the people it was meant to serve, it becomes the right, and the obligation, of the people to resist.

We are not extremists. We are not ungrateful.

We are citizens who have watched our leaders celebrate the suffering of others, legislate away human dignity, and laugh as they strip healthcare from the sick and food from the hungry. We have waited. We have hoped. We have pleaded for decency.

But the government of the United States, as it now stands under President Donald J. Trump, no longer serves the public good.

It does not preserve life – it endangers it.

It does not secure liberty – it undermines it.

It does not promote happiness – it enshrines cruelty.

This is not the product of incompetence. It is intentional.He governs with malice. He legislates with vengeance. He drapes himself in flags and lies and calls it patriotism, while millions bleed beneath the weight of his policies.

We do not rise today to tear this country down.

We rise to tear it back from those who have hijacked it.

We rise not in rebellion against America, but in defense of its soul.

SECTION II: STATEMENT OF BELIEFS

We hold these truths to be undeniable:

That all people possess inherent worth, regardless of income, origin, race, gender, health, ability, or immigration status.

That the purpose of government is not to glorify power, but to protect life, preserve liberty, and ensure justice for all.

That when any government abandons these principles — when it rewards the wealthy while abandoning the sick, when it elevates the powerful while crushing the vulnerable – it becomes a danger to the people it claims to serve.

That a free society cannot survive on cruelty and lies.

That silence in the face of injustice is complicity.

That the measure of a nation is not found in its markets or its missiles, but in how it treats those with the least.

That no office, no oath, no title – not even that of President – places a man above accountability.

And that the American people are not subjects. We are not property. We are not obstacles to be managed or enemies to be punished.

We are the People. And we are done asking to be heard.

SECTION III: GRIEVANCES

To prove this tyranny, let facts be submitted to a candid world:

1. Trump has turned the office of the presidency into a machine of retribution, targeting judges, journalists, immigrants, women, disabled people, LGBTQ+ Americans, and political opponents with open threats and weaponized policy.

2. He has declared his intent to act as a dictator “only on day one”, then proceeded to centralize unchecked power through executive purges, loyalty oaths, and the dismantling of independent agencies.

3. He has used the power of the state to pardon insurrectionists, granting clemency not for mercy, but to embolden future violence.

4. He has instructed federal agencies to violate basic human rights, including family separations, mass detentions, and inhumane camps, all under the banner of border enforcement.

5. He has stripped healthcare from millions through cruel legislation, while enriching corporations and billionaires under the lie of “freedom.”

6. He has celebrated economic cruelty through the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, a sweeping act of violence designed to give tax breaks to the rich while slashing Medicaid, food assistance, and social safety nets.

7. He has cheered these atrocities with performative glee, giving thumbs-up for cameras and blasting celebratory music while millions lost coverage and dignity.

8. He has undermined elections through lies, suppression, and conspiracy, encouraging gerrymandering, limiting ballot access, and promoting false claims of fraud to delegitimize the vote.

9. He has encouraged political violence, referring to opponents as “enemies,” invoking military power against civilians, and promoting the cult of strength over the rule of law.

10. He has weaponized religion to justify cruelty, cloaking injustice in the language of faith while persecuting those who believe differently.

11. He has silenced whistleblowers, fired inspectors general, and punished truth-tellers, ensuring no dissent survives within his administration.

12. He has treated public office as private property, using power not to serve the nation, but to enrich himself, shield his allies, and protect his image.

13. He has treated truth as an enemy, flooding the nation with lies, silencing scientists, distorting history, and turning disinformation into state doctrine.

14. He has emboldened white supremacists and armed militias, praising them as “very fine people,” inviting them into political spaces, and threatening consequences for those who stand against hate.

15. He has attacked the rights of women, revoking reproductive autonomy, defunding healthcare, and empowering state-level theocracy.

16. He has abandoned climate responsibility, gutting environmental protections, reversing clean energy policies, and treating the Earth as disposable.

17. He has looted the public treasury through corruption and cronyism, funneling contracts to allies, donors, and family members while punishing independent institutions.

18. He has stacked the courts with ideologues, not to uphold justice, but to protect power and erode civil liberties for generations.

19. He has attempted to criminalize protest and dissent, surveilling organizers, banning books, threatening educators, and branding activists as terrorists.

20. He has refused to condemn foreign dictators, choosing instead to align with autocrats while undermining democratic allies and alliances.

21. He has inflamed division at every opportunity, governing not as a president of the people, but as a cult leader of grievance and fear.

22. He has ignored suffering in favor of spectacle, prioritizing headlines over humanity, reelection over relief, and cruelty over competence.

23. He has governed without shame and legislated without mercy, transforming a democracy into a machine of sanctioned cruelty.

24. He has used public institutions to shield himself from justice, obstructing investigations, intimidating prosecutors, and bending law enforcement to his will.

25. He has sought to erase history, attacking education, censoring curricula, and punishing those who teach the truth about race, oppression, and resistance.

26. He has degraded the dignity of the presidency, reducing it to a platform for personal vengeance, corruption, and humiliation of the weak.

27. He has responded to every petition for redress with scorn and escalation, answering protest with force, critique with threats, and compassion with cruelty.

SECTION IV: ATTEMPTS AT REDRESS

We have tried. Again and again, we have tried.

We marched. We wrote. We voted. We called. We pleaded. We organized. We exhausted every democratic tool this nation offers to those who dissent. We begged for decency. We asked for restraint. We pointed to the suffering, the data, the warnings. We sounded every alarm. And when we did, he laughed.

He called us liars.

He called us traitors.

He called us enemies of the state.

When families begged for healthcare, he cut their lifeline.

When students rallied against guns, he gave the gun lobby more power.

When the planet burned, he poured gasoline.

We sought dialogue; he gave us propaganda.

We demanded oversight; he gave us vengeance.

We exposed his cruelty; he branded it strength.

In every branch of government, at every level of power, he ignored our calls for justice.

And when we cried out for help, he celebrated his ability to do nothing.

He left us only this: resistance.

SECTION V: THE FORMAL DECLARATION

Therefore, we, the People – abandoned by our president, betrayed by our institutions, and resolved in our duty – do solemnly publish and declare:

That this government, as it stands under Donald J. Trump, no longer commands the moral authority of its people;

That the man who leads it has violated every principle of democratic leadership and human decency;

That we will no longer obey the silence he demands, nor the fear he enforces;

That we will resist him at every ballot box, every courthouse, every statehouse, and every place where people gather in the name of justice;

That we will expose his crimes, challenge his lies, and confront his agenda – openly, relentlessly, without apology;

That we do not seek to destroy the United States, but to redeem it – from the man who desecrates its promise while wrapping himself in its flag.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on each other and on the power of a people awakened, we pledge to fight with truth, with love, and with fury.

We do not consent.

We will not forget.

And we are coming.

Signed,

All who refuse to kneel

Thursday, July 03, 2025

Earlier today President Donald Trump secured a sweeping shift in U.S. domestic policy as the House passed a $3.4 trillion fiscal package (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) that cuts taxes, curtails spending on safety-net programs, and reverses much of Joe Biden’s efforts to move the country toward a clean-energy economy.

Following (with added links) is Robert Reich’s take on the passage of this bill, one that he labels the “Big Ugly Bill.”

______________

Trump’s 940-page Big Ugly Bill was passed today by the House and is now on the way to the White House for Trump’s signature.

It is a disgrace. It takes more than $1 trillion out of Medicaid – leaving about 12 million Americans without insurance by 2034 – and slashes food stamps, all to give a giant tax cut to wealthy Americans.

It establishes an anti-immigrant police state in America, replete with a standing army of ICE agents and a gulag of detention facilities that will transform ICE into the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the government.

It will increase the already-bloated deficit by $3.4 trillion.

It’s also disgraceful because of how it came to be.

Trump was elected with only a plurality of American voters, not a majority. He eked out his win by a margin of only 1.5 percent.

His Big Ugly Bill squeaked by in the Senate by one vote, supplied by JD Vance, and by just two votes in the House. No Democrat in either chamber voted for it.

Polls show most Americans oppose it.

It was passed nevertheless – within an artificial deadline set by Trump – because of Trump’s total grip on the Republican Party.

Republican lawmakers feared that Trump would go after defectors with public attacks or endorsements of primary challengers.

They also feared withering blowback from conservative media, “Maga” diehards, and Trump himself on social media.

After North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis announced his opposition to the bill, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! He’s even worse than Rand ‘Fauci’ Paul!”

Then Trump pledged to back a primary challenger to Tillis, and Tillis announced he would not seek reelection. Trump called that “good news” and threatened primary challenges against other Republican fiscal conservatives standing in the way of the bill’s passage.

Other presidents in my lifetime have been able to summon majorities of lawmakers for unpopular causes – I think of Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – but none with the retributive threats, social media fury, and potentially violent base of supporters that Trump is now wielding.

Needless to say, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts made America more inclusive. Trump’s Big Ugly Bill makes America crueler.

The best analogy isn’t to Lyndon Johnson. It’s to the “strongmen” of the 1930s — Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Franco.

That such a regressive, dangerous, gargantuan, and unpopular piece of legislation could get through Congress shows how far Trump has dragged America into modern fascism.

– Robert Reich
“This Is Fascism”
RobertReich.substack.com
July 3, 2025

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

“A Mysteriously Charged and Magnificently Alive Archetypal Presence”

One of the books I’m reading while in Australia is David J. Tacey’s 1995 book Edge of the Sacred: Transformation in Australia. Following is an excerpt accompanied by some of my recent photography of the landscape of Guruk (aka Port Macquarie).

In Australia, landscape carries our experience of the sacred other. . . . The landscape in Australia is a mysteriously charged and magnificently alive archetypal presence. As Judith Wright has put it: “In Australian writing the landscape seems to have its own life. Sometimes it takes up an immense amount of room; sometimes it is so firmly pushed away that its very absence haunts us as uncomfortably as its presence could.” Although experienced by some as dull, flat, and uneventful, the Australian landscape is in fact a most exciting archetypal field. The land is, or seems to be, the sacred which bursts in upon our lives, which demands to be recognised and valued. As George Johnston wrote: “nothing human has yet happened in Australia which stands out above the continent itself.”

. . . The Australian landscape is our greatest asset, our assurance that any society here cannot afford to become complacent, that the other around us cannot be ignored or deprived of its shocking revelatory and transformative power. The only way to develop a spiritually powerful culture in Australia is to enter more into the psychic field of nature; to “shamanise” ourselves in the image of nature. We need to become less human and more like nature: in that way we may become more fully human, and experience anew the sacred fount from which all life, including human life, arises.

. . . [As a youth growing up in Alice Springs, the land] seemed to me to constantly point to, or hint at, other realities. The crumbling rocky ridges and tall ranges, the piles of rounded boulders and hills of granite, the fragmented sandstone and embankments of clay and ochre: all this seemed near-magical to me, to point to ancient civilisations or to worlds of other beings. I remember knocking on a pole with my shoe, hoping to discover the secret coded rhythm that would bring the invisible beings to light. I was delighted to find some time later that novelist Martin Boyd had felt the same about Australian landscape: “There is no country where it is easier to imagine some lost pattern of life, a mythology of vanished gods, than this most ancient of lands.”

The early British arrivals had called this country terra nullius, the empty land, but I found it teeming with mythic images, with sacred resonances, and with openings into other worlds. I scampered over rocks and explore gullies with the same enthusiasm that people nowadays reserve for their pilgrimages to the ruined temples and ancient cultural sites of Greece or Rome. . . . I felt I was somewhere special, in a cosmos of rock that was drawing me out of my habitual ego.

– David J. Tacey
Excerpted from Edge of the Sacred:
Transformation in Australia
HarperCollins (1995)
pp. 6-7, 20

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Recognising and Honoring Australia’s First Naturalists
• On Sacred Ground (2019)
• In the Land of the Kamilaroi (2019)
• Guruk Seascapes, From Dawn to Dusk (2017)
• Earth Day 2015
• Prayer of the Week – November 14, 2012
• Rock of Ages: Theological Reflections on Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Afternoon
• Boorganna (Part I)
• Boorganna (Part II)
• My “Bone Country” (2009)
• The Landscape Is a Mirror
• “Something Sacred Dwells There”

Australian Sojourn – June-July 2025
• Solstice Dawn
• Home to Be With Mum
• This Moment
• June Vignettes

Tuesday, July 01, 2025

Truth-telling in the Face of Systemic Power That Is Silent on Genocide

Why is calling for the end of a genocidal army – army, you will note, not Jews, not Israelis, not people at all, but an institution – more scandalous than the genocide itself?

– Damien Willey
Excerpted from “What Bob Vylan Said
at Glastonbury Took Guts
– And He’s Not Wrong”
Kernow Damo
June 29, 2025

Monday, June 30, 2025

June Vignettes

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Australian Indigenous Culture and the Reality of LGBTI Lives

The Wild Reed’s 2025 Queer Appreciation series concludes with an excerpt from an insightful and moving article by Steven Lindsay Ross (right) on his experiences growing-up gay and Indigenous in Australia. It’s a fitting piece to share given that I’m currently back in my homeland to support my mum.

Ross’s article was first published in 2014 by Archer Magazine, “the world’s most inclusive magazine about sexuality, gender and identity.”

__________________

Many Indigenous LGBTI people experience homophobia and transphobia in their own lives. Unfortunately, the perpetrators are often their own people or family.

I was about five years old, I reckon. My father, a Wiradjuri man, and I were getting out of our old family Valiant. We lived in what was called “the new mission,” in Macauley Street in Deniliquin, New South Wales. All the blacks had been moved to Deniliquin from Moonacullah Mission some 20 years earlier.

The charming houses built for the Moonacullah Aborigines were fibro and erected on the fringes of town, not far from the sewerage plant. A stiff northerly breeze carried the smell of raw faeces into our street, and if there was an operational issue with the works, the town’s sludge would come bubbling up into our bathrooms. Not exactly a welcoming experience of assimilation.

Deniliquin was, and still is, a pretty town on the Edward River (Koletch, in our Wamba Wamba language). Ever since I can remember, the sign coming into town announced that there were 8000 people living there.

On this particular summer day, after my father had been looking after me (I sit in the corner of the local TAB while he bets on the horses), we arrived back in Macauley Street to discover he’d left the house keys inside. He ordered me to climb through the window to open the door, but I refused. His response was to verbally abuse me and, for the first time in my life, I was called a “poofter.” I didn’t know what this word meant, but, considering the tone of its delivery, I knew it couldn’t be a good thing.

Over the following years I heard this word a lot more, and figured out its meaning. Given my pre-pubescent romance with another boy, I soon knew I was this thing.

This was the prism through which I saw my early sexuality. In the community I lived in, I did get a sense that homosexuality was not a good thing within our mobs. And, of course, like all homophobia and all bigotry, these attitudes were designed to de-humanise me, to marginalise me and to keep me down.

In 1978 my mother wisely left my father and moved to Sydney with my sister and me. Mum moved in some pretty funky and arty circles and we were often at bohemian parties in Balmain. My sister and I would hide under my mother’s skirt while mysterious white people drank and danced and ate exotic food.

The host of these parties was known as Aunty Sharon, a redhead with striking features and a beak-like nose, who spoke beautifully and loved hugging us kids. She was my mother’s boss and she lived in Waterview Street, Balmain, with her girlfriend.

My mother never had to explain any of this to me and I lapped up the experience, as any curious child would. I loved our visits to Aunty Sharon, and the look and smell of her house. My favourite thing was to fall asleep cuddling her life-sized Wonder Woman cushion.

In hindsight, these were formative years that helped to empower my sexual identity and sense of self-worth. My mother never sheltered us from these influences. She knew I was gay all my life, I suspect, and when I finally came out to her in 1991, she said “surprise, surprise”.

My mother is a proud Wamba Wamba and Muthi Muthi woman and she knows her culture, her ancestors and the way forward for her people. She spent her life working for the mob and instilling her knowledge into future generations through environmental work, weaving and storytelling.

My father, on the other hand, is highly colonised and, in my opinion, a tragic figure of a man who was never there for any of his children. When I came out to my father, he told me he used to bash people like me. Whenever we fought, homophobic insults were not off limits.

I have seen this prejudice in other families in Deniliquin, too – we must have been a queer little community, given how many gay and lesbian relatives I have. One experience that springs to mind is that of my cousin Henry, who is transgender. Henry blossomed into Violet during her teen years. Not knowing how to deal with this change, her brothers were brutal and violent.

Violet moved to Newcastle and rarely returned home. Despite all this, there remained a staunch set of sisters, nieces, nephews and cousins who adored her, kept in regular contact and resisted, berated and belittled those small-minded brothers.

This group also provided powerful protection for the rest of us LGBTI kids growing up. Hopefully, the prejudice of the old uncles dies with them.

We were also lucky enough to have Elder LGBTI people guide us through our childhood and coming-out phases. Small country towns are not the most hospitable places for young black kids, let alone young black LGBTI kids.

That said, homophobia still finds fertile ground in our communities. In late 2013, a boxer by the name of Anthony Mundine unleashed a homophobic rant on Facebook following an episode of Redfern Now. Mundine’s comments released a flood of memories for black LGBTI people like me, and gave room for more Indigenous people to express their homophobic beliefs.

If anything good came from Mundine’s incendiary comments, it was the chance for collective self-reflection for Aboriginal LGBTI people, along with their families and supporters. For every person who supported Mundine there were dozens who spoke out against his narrow-mindedness, promoting the loving acceptance of gays and lesbians in our community. And it has also encouraged support and advocacy for black LGBTI peoples in local and broader representations.

The contrast between my mother’s open-hearted embrace of my sexuality and my father’s hateful reaction made me contemplate the idea raised by Mundine about the place of homosexuality in so-called “traditional” Aboriginal culture. There are indications from some cultures around the world that diverse sexuality is an integral part of “traditional” indigenous life – for example, the Sistergirls of the Tiwi Islands, or the Two-Spirit movement found among some Native American cultures.

There is also a logical and reasonable approach to this argument: Aboriginal people have been in Australia for more than 60,000 years in what many anthropologists describe as a triumph of survival and mathematics. Given the overwhelming evidence that homosexuality is biological, it is logical to assume that homosexuality would have been a part of such a social equation. It is estimated that there have been four billion Aboriginal people In Australia since the dawn of time. Four billion, and not one gay person? That just defies belief.

Some argue that our culture would have oppressed such behaviour. This raises some interesting questions, as well as some colonial mythologies. Which traditional Aboriginal culture is being referred to here? When white people colonised Australia, there were hundreds of Aboriginal cultures. To know the mores and values of every single Aboriginal culture would be a major feat of anthropological prowess – one of which I doubt Mundine and his ilk are capable.

This argument also ignores the major diversity between groups, and indeed within them. This is why a homogenous approach to government policy doesn’t work, and why a consensus on constitutional reform will probably never work. We are as diverse as any other ethnicity and this must be acknowledged to really move forward.

This idea of “traditions” is also dangerous because it glues us to the past, rendering us immovable and static. It also sets up a system of haves and have-nots – those who have maintained their “traditional” culture, and those who have lost it.

All cultures change, and Aboriginal people would not have survived for so long had they not been adaptive and dynamic.

As for gay people being accepted in Aboriginal communities, I know a dozen or more black LGBTI people who are strong and powerful leaders in their communities. Some have led their mobs to successful native title consent determinations – a role that is built on trust. A native title case would include holding secret knowledge of sacred sites, family histories and land management practices, not to mention being entrusted to negotiate on behalf of thousands of claimants.

This responsibility would not be given lightly. It is a position that involves trusting a person’s character. The fact that LGBTI people have been entrusted in these processes speaks volumes for the support we have within our communities.

Of course, there will be narrow-minded people in our communities, too. We may dislike the Fred Niles, George Pells or Tony Abbotts of mainstream culture, but we are not surprised that those voices exist in a liberal democracy. There are narrow-minded indigenous people. There are also indigenous fundamentalists, climate-change deniers, racists and misogynists.

When I think of these people, or when I hear their bullshit in the media, I think of my accepting, unsurprised mother. I think of my sisters fighting for my rights, and defending my cousin Violet, and I remember the embrace of that Wonder Woman cushion.

– Steven Lindsay Ross
From “Homosexuality and Aboriginal Culture:
A Lore Unto Themselves”
Archer Magazine
October 20, 2014

The Wild Reed

Saturday, July 05, 2025

The Rational National’s Take on Zohran Mamdani

Friday, July 04, 2025

The Declaration of Resistance

Thursday, July 03, 2025

“This Is Fascism”

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

“A Mysteriously Charged and Magnificently Alive Archetypal Presence”

Tuesday, July 01, 2025

Truth-telling in the Face of Systemic Power That Is Silent on Genocide

Monday, June 30, 2025

June Vignettes

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Australian Indigenous Culture and the Reality of LGBTI Lives

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