deliriouslove1970. The life & times of Gary and Denise Flanders. (Free and worth every penny. If you would like to compliment the editor, send to garytheflan@deliriouslove1970.com. If you would like to complain, call your mother.)

The flag of the Aboriginal People of Australia. Aborigines are the indigenous people of mainland Australia and a few islands, but not The people of Torres Strait Islands – they are a culturally and ethnically distinct people.

Aborigines have been on the mainland of Australia for 65,000 years. Before the white Europeans arrived there were 250 different languages. Now the majority of the Aboriginal people speak English with Aboriginal phrases and words mixed in. There have been 400 distinctly different groups of Aborigines identified.

The flag was ‘authorized’ as an official Australian flag in 1971. (Torres Strait Island has its own official flag.). The Aborigine flag is equal horizontal bands with black on top and red on the bottom. In the middle is a yellow disc. Black represents the Aboriginal people. Red represents the land (the red ochre earth appears in many rituals.) The yellow disc is the sun. I find it fascinating that the government recognized the need for an official flag to represent a group of people.

I knew so little about the history of the relationship between the original people of Australia and the white European dominators. I knew it was harsh and tragic. It sounds trite but we have started to be educated by watching some top notch TV from Australia. One of our favorites on Acorn is a program called “The Circuit”.

We heard a song by The Warumpi Band that expresses some of the frustrations between the races in Australia: