BIGOTRY IN BLACK AND WHITE

Bigot, noun – a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion. 

Australian journalists have long embraced the tools of the bigot in their emotionally manipulative war on responsible, ethical hunters.

The bigot’s agenda can be promulgated overtly or covertly, both by what is said and by what is left unsaid. 

A glaring example of this can be found in the media’s absolute refusal to distinguish between those few who may engage in illegal activities and the vast majority who hunt legally and responsibly.

Poacher, noun – a person who illegally hunts game, fish, etc, out of season or on someone else's property. 

The term ‘poacher’, adopted by countries worldwide, is both accurate and specific to the vast majority of illegal activity referred to religiously by the Australian media as the work of “illegal hunters”.

Thus, given the media rarely reports a positive hunting story, the only time hunting enters the public consciousness is when associated with illegality of some kind.

The media has a variety of methods of inserting controversy into an otherwise pedestrian story. After all, one measure of journalistic excellence is the number of subsequent stories the original can generate. 

Typically this will involve the use of emotive, often bizarrely tangential headlines and imagery.

For instance, a story about a hunter’s pride in harvesting free-range organic venison for his family while also assisting efforts to control the feral scourge, may appear beneath the headline, “Proud to be a killer”.

Leading into said article on deer hunting, one is likely to find the image of a politician, a dentist or perhaps an ex-cricketer, gun in hand, smiling over his trophy elephant.

Unless the Australian media truly believes deer spin cocoons from which they eventually emerge equipped with enormous ears and tusks, the reason for the elephant's  introduction into a deer hunting story can serve only one purpose - to elicit an emotional response from the reader. 

Any claim by the hunter that his deer hunting activities are responsible, will be repudiated by the representative of an organisation with well established policies in opposition to hunting, whose views the journalist has sought for the purpose of pandering to ignorance and fostering the perfect climate for an emotive public backlash. This they call 'balance'.

Whether necessary or not, words such as ‘killing’, ‘cruel’ and ‘dangerous’ will appear repeatedly throughout the article and because bemoaning all things American is also a favourite pastime of the Australian media, fears for a developing “American-style (insert irrational phobia here) culture” will be expressed courtesy of a quote from the Greens.

Should a hunter suggest he hunts to preserve an age-old cultural pursuit and associated skills passed down to him through the generations, the claim will be lampooned and his culture subjected to the scrutiny and judgement of the court of public opinion, also know as the online comments section, which invariably appears beneath such articles.

Here we will find ignorance, hatred and bigotry given a public platform, which the media, having skilfully whipped-up the frenzy in the first instance, can claim is simply a reflection of genuine public concern.

Respondents (at least those published) generally restrict their ‘analysis’ of hunting to puerile accusations, the top four of these being:

• “Face it, you kill because you like killing!”

• “You have no empathy!”

• “Civilisation has evolved beyond killing”, and of course the perennial

• “I hope your (insert weapon of choice) jams and the (insert animal of choice) tears your throat out so you die in agony you lowlife scumbag”.

All this ignorance and hatred is a fait accompli whenever the Australian media publishes a story about subsistence or conservation hunting. But there is one notable exception, the circumstances of which expose, in black and white, the culture of bigotry and racism manifest in the Australian public and the media alike.

On October 14th, 2015 the Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Science Network journalist Geoff Vivian, entitled Desert cat hunters cut wildlife protection costs.

Nolia Ward with a feral cat that she has just hunted.
Credit: Kate Crossing, Central Desert Native Title Services

In his article Vivian goes to great pains to credit desert aborigines with helping to protect native species by hunting feral cats which, he informs his readers, the Pintupi people of the Gibson Desert have included in their diet for upwards of 100 years.

The article points out that this hunting takes place on protected land, similar in nature to a national park and the economic benefits of this free conservation hunting activity are enthusiastically extolled.

As a result, the conservation hunting activities of the Pintupi people are credited as a significant factor in the thriving populations of native species ostensibly suffering elsewhere for the lack of conservation hunting activity.

The article even includes a picture (above) of a Pintupi woman smiling for the camera with a dead cat draped across her shoulders, captioned “Nolia Ward with a feral cat that she has just hunted”.

But of most interest perhaps, is what the article does not include.

The words ‘dead’ and ‘killed’ have been omitted throughout in favour of the words ‘hunt’ and ‘hunted’.

There is no speculation as to the cultural validity of hunting cats for both food and conservation purposes, nor any suggestion that doing so might be inefficient, unjustifiably cruel, sadistic or otherwise unethical.

No emotive quotes questioning the effectiveness of conservation hunting have been included from the anti-hunting lobby for ‘balance’, despite the fact that unlike other Australian hunters, Aboriginal people are at liberty to hunt native species.

In what can only be termed a fundamental break with reporting tradition, this conservation hunting article is not headed by the obligatory picture of a high-profile trophy hunter and his elephant, and the caption accompanying the image of the successful cat hunter infers nothing about the joys of "killing for sport".

In fact there is nothing to indicate the quarry is dead, save for the fact that if Ms Ward was posing with a live feral cat draped casually across her shoulders its vigour would be immediately evident by the rivulets of blood coursing down the hunter’s clothing, all of it hers!

Finally, no comments section has been provided below the article, in which the usual hateful and disparaging remarks about Ms Ward's sadistic cruelty, lack of empathy and general suitability as a mother might be voiced as ‘feedback’.

In fact the media might be criticised for its uncharacteristic and quite callous disregard for the need of Ricky Gervais, Brigitte Bardot, Morressey and their collective minions to vent their communal spleen at Ms Ward.

Overall the article makes a clear statement. Hunting can be  a legitimate, beneficial and even praiseworthy pursuit, provided the hunters’ race and culture are such that we deem them valid.

This principle applies only to Aboriginal Australians for whom it appears our expectations are generally quite low in 'evolutionary' terms. Thus we are willing to indulge the hunters’ activities much as a patient parent might endure the behaviour of an incorrigible child in the hope it's just a phase he'll someday grow out of.

For everyone else the message is clear, “We expect you to have evolved beyond such primitive activities, which we simply will not tolerate in white folks!” 

Who are the final arbiters of cultural validity in Australia? Is it really the media as it would so often appear, or is it those representatives of the public given to statements of intolerance and hatred in response to the various self-serving contrivances of journalistic bias? 

In closing it behooves me to state, for the record, that I do not accuse Geoff Vivian of bigotry, bias or racist paternalism. For all I know he may simply be a journalist of exemplary calibre. But his is not the only article we've read over the years celebrating the culture and extolling the virtues of Aboriginal hunting activities.

As a person of Aboriginal heritage I guess I could simply embrace the indemnity offered me by the Australian community and quietly go about my business. But to adopt the "I'm alright Jack" philosophy would mean turning a blind eye to the very obvious attacks on European culture I witness almost daily and I will not be forced to abandon one culture for the relative safety of another. 

That was, after all, the premise upon which the assimilation practices of the last century were based.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

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