84-23 – This is how government, miners and frackers undermine our Law – Jack Green

Artist: Jack Green
This is how government, miners and frackers undermine our Law – 2023
Acrylic on Canvas – 60 x 40
At the top of the painting you can see us Aboriginal people. Two men standing on yellow and one man on the ochre, in the middle standing on the blue is a white man. The white man, he goes and talks with Aboriginal people. He represents the government. He says, ‘I come here to tell you what government says’. On the yellow you got Aboriginal people rounded up sitting at a table. It looks like a meeting but they been told by government and miners what’s going to happen. They got no say in the decision. The meeting is made to look like they have a say, but we know that this isn’t what happens. They don’t want to listen to our Law. The government and miners like it when they can pick a few of our people off, give them a bit of paper to wave around, make them look like they are a part of the decision making. Governments likes to make everyone think that it’s Aboriginal people who invited all the planes and busses with the workers into our country. In the painting, below the Aboriginal people waving their bits of papers about, are us Law people, we all got our spears ready and we are not happy with what’s happening. The government man, standing on the blue, like all the government men we see round Borroloola, carries a bit of paper with black lines on it. He tells us ‘this is the government’s law and you gotta follow it’. But we all know that government uses their law to destroy our Aboriginal Law and our land. On the right of the painting standing on the ochre you got the same thing happening, this time it’s the frackers coming in. They got a few people to wave around their papers saying ‘this is what government says. Everything is good to go’. What we see is more and more tricks, dozers and drilling rigs coming into our land pushing us aside, pushing our animals away and drilling into our land to suck out the gas and truck minerals away leaving us poor and our country and sacred sites damaged.