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Australian Muslims are fighting to be classified as indigenous – and an Aboriginal senator agrees with them
5-30-2018
Australian Muslims want to be recognised as indigenous and an Aboriginal Labor senator agrees with them.
Malay Muslims arrived and settled on the lush, tropical Cocos (Keeling) Islands during the 1820s when the British brought them over as coconut plantation slaves.
The residents of the small Indian Ocean islands, 2,500km from the Australian mainland, are fighting for the Australian government to recognise them as indigenous people so they can hunt and eat booby seabirds.
The issue is controversial, considering their historic connection with the islands is less than 200 years old, compared with 60,000 years for Aboriginal people in Australia.
However Northern Territory Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy, an Aboriginal woman with Yanyuwa heritage, said she agreed with their call to be recognised as indigenous.
Are they indigenous to the Cocos? And I think probably, you know, an obvious answer would be, "Well, yes",' the former ABC newsreader told the SBS documentary Australia's Forgotten Islands.
'It really does come down to perhaps the definition of indigenous and that's a question I think that will be debated for some time.'
Former Cocos shire president Balmut Pirus said the island locals were frustrated at how bureaucrats in Canberra had banned them from hunting booby birds so they could cook traditional meals.
'The locals think they should have access to some of the seabirds but that's not happening at the moment,' he said.
The Cocos islanders are receiving help, in their push to be recognised as indigenous, from John Clunies-Ross, whose ancestors ruled the previously uninhabited islands as a fiefdom from 1827 to 1978.
'I'm still here. I'm still fully integrated with the community,' he said.
'I love them, they love me.'
The 27 coral islands of the Cocos became part of Australia in 1955 after being part of the British empire.
British sea captain William Keeling discovered the Cocos Islands in 1609 however they were not settled until the early 19th century.
Scottish merchant John Clunies-Ross was an early settler who brought Malay workers to work on the coconut plantations, with his family ruling over the locals for 150 years.
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