Marcia Langton
MEMBER OF THE FAILED ELITE ABORIGINAL LEADERSHIP GROUP
In 2016 Marcia Langton became a Professor at Melbourne University and in 2017, an Associate Provost (a senior academic administrator).
Since 2000, she has held the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne and has been a staunch supporter of Bruce Pascoe, despite his lack of academic rigor and other evidence proving he has meddled with historical documents, as mentioned earlier in this paper
Langton has been criticised by many her lack of local Victorian knowledge. They argues a Queensland Aboriginal person would have no access to local Aboriginal philosophy and culture. One consequence is the fact that Melbourne University has failed to acknowledge the Victorian traditional owners.
I personally wrote to the Melbourne University Vice-Chancellor pointing out that this omission was problematic and a grave oversight.
Marcia has had control over Aboriginal affairs since the 1990s. Queensland Aboriginal people have reported that Noel Pearson and Marcia Langton were close associates when she returned to her home State to work for Anne Warner, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. At that time, Pearson was a recent law graduate and began working as a Consultant for the Goss government, in the era of heated negotiations about the Deed in Trust communities which preceded the Native Title legislation. Their association continues.
Langton was a member of the National Committee of the Communist League (CL), a Trotskyist group that campaigned for the violent overthrow of the Australian government and the implementation of a totalitarian state.
Marcia Langton’s views are recognised to be extreme, and she has been the focus of an undercover ASIO operation. Langton has been described by the Trotskyist Newspaper Direct Action as ‘one of the best-known black communist activists in Australia’:
Marcia Langton is one of the best-known activists in the Black and anti-racist movements in Australia. She initiated the Land Rights Campaign in Queensland in 1969 and was an activist in the anti-war and civil liberties movements there in the late sixties. More recently, she has been involved in the Land Rights campaign, centred in Sydney and is a director of both the Aboriginal Medical Service and the Aboriginal Housing Service in Sydney. At present, she is working at Black Theatre and acts in the current production ‘Here Comes The Nigger’. Langton is a member of the Black Women’s Action Group and is an editor of the Aboriginal newspaper Koorie, which has a wide distribution among blacks throughout Australia.’
In 1976, Langton, McCarthy and their fellow national committee member, Peter Robb, negotiated a merger with the Communist League leaders. As a result, they were gifted with positions on national and political committees.
In October 1999, Langton was one of five Indigenous leaders granted an audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, to discuss Constitutional Recognition.
The delegation—was briefed by historian Henry Reynolds, and included the prominent Indigenous representatives Lowitja O’Donoghue, Peter Yu, Marcia Langton, Senator Pat Dodson, and Gatjil Djerrkurra.
Pat Dodson told the Koori Mail that the reason for the delegation’s visit to the Palace was because Indigenous Australians wanted “recognition of the historical relationship between the UK and Australia.”
From 2001-2020, Langton was the Rio Tinto global indigenous expert and she collaborated with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) on the project Racism and Public Policy, 2000-2001.
Langton also served with Noel Pearson on the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians established by Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. It made recommendations for the abolition of race provisions.
‘The most crucial matter to understand about the Constitution is that when it was drafted in the 19th Century, it specifically excluded the Aboriginal people on grounds of race and it is this exclusion that lies at the heart of the state authorised discrimination that continues to this day.’
Langton argues,
‘The Constitutional tradition of treating Aborigines as a race must be replaced with the idea of First Peoples.’
Langton called Pascoe’s Dark Emu ‘the most important book on Australia’. In 1984, after completing an Honours degree in Anthropology at ANU, Langton was appointed to the Central Land Council and Cape York Land Council in northern Queensland.In 1989 she worked on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Close associate Peter Rob from the Communist League helped produce I Militant. He wrote a piece about Marcia Langton in the Monthly in 2011:
‘Langton has been thinking about the Constitutional status of Indigenous Australians for even longer than she has about the life crisis in remote communities. She wants the remaining vestiges of race power wiped from the Constitution. She has been talking for 40 years about racism in Australia. Her life pivots on this word. She grew up politically in the late ’60s and has matured but never abandoned the language and style of her youthful anger.’
In 2013 Langton accused a prominent rival of racism, using an internal university mailing list to sledge a critic. According to Andrew Crook, writing for Crikey:
‘It is Langton’s third public accusation of racism in the last three months, a serious charge in the modern academy.’
In 2014, the ABC was forced to apologise to Andrew Bolt, after a Q&A session where Marcia Langton accused Bolt of heaping ‘foul abuse on indigenous woman Misty Jenkins, forcing her to withdraw from public life’. This could be construed as racist’. Langton later backtracked with a 19-page clarification of apology to Andrew Bolt.In August 2018, Langton accused Jacinta Price of legitimising racism. In September 2018 Prime Minster Scott Morrison appointed Tony Abbott as Special Envoy on Indigenous Affairs. Langton told The Australian, ‘the appointment was a punch in the guts for indigenous Australia.’In 2019 Langton abused a young gay man who had defended Israel Folau after he was sacked by Rugby Australia for quoting the Bible. Langton said, ‘he probably thinks he’s gay because he masturbates too much.’ When challenged on Twitter, Langton replied with more homophobic abuse,
‘Gay? I don’t think so, more like Milo. Twisted.’
Also in 2019, in response to an ABC Late Night Live comment that northern Australia had once had Ku Klux Klan, ‘who wanted Aboriginal people wiped off the face of the earth’, she added a few minutes later:
‘If the likes of Andrew Bolt don’t stop his vendetta against us (Aborigines), his racist vendetta against us, will he stop doing this to our children… They are spiteful, vicious peddlers of hate and there’s not an original idea between the lot of them. It’s all borrowed from the Ku Klux Klan and the far right of America.’
In July 2019 in an ABC opinion piece, Langton said, ‘Australia’s moral legitimacy depends on recognising Indigenous sovereignty. In January 2020, Langton began advising the Morrison government on race relations and said on National Indigenous Television (NITV) that Professor Pascoe’s Aboriginality was settled.Settled to Ms Langton, perhaps, but not to Aboriginal Australia.‘We all know that it is very difficult for some Aboriginal people to prove they are Aboriginal because of lack of records … members of the family lying because of shame about having Aboriginal ancestry, because of hatred,’ she said.In October 2019, Langton said of those who have climbed Ayers Rock: ‘A curse will fall on all of them’, and wrote (as images showed hundreds lining up for a final Uluru clamber),
‘They will remember how they defiled this sacred place until they die and history will record their contempt for Aboriginal culture.’
In June 2020 Langton was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to tertiary education, and as an advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. She told The Guardian she was ‘very pleased to accept [the award] because it is a way of turning the tide on the historical racism and low expectations that typified an older Australia, and one which I hope we can leave behind.’In August 2020, Langton told the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Black Lives Matter and deaths in custody in a criminal justice system that is structurally racist.’ In December 2020, the Sydney Morning Herald reported a published study led by Langton which found child protection workers made assumptions based on racist stereotypes. In February 2021, she said,
‘Eddie McGuire must go, so Collingwood Football Club can begin to repair its toxic racist past.’
In January 2021 she told The Australian, an Indigenous voice in government decision-making has ‘a right and a responsibility to advise parliament on matters impacting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.’In May 2021, she said ‘Indigenous people want a voice now’, and warned against delaying creating the advisory body because there is no political consensus on Constitutional enshrinement.In June 2021, Langton described the distrust of female Indigenous spirituality as ‘a national psychosis. A truth commission may serve to remedy conflicts like this in the future.’
