Dead Americans by Ben Peek Page A

said in one lecture, ‘but no one in the streets of [the] Cross is an Australian. Instead, you are nothing more than the pawns of a decaying Empire.’ It was a harsh statement, and as Vella explains, untrue, especially in the light of the fact that the Cross has not changed one iota since Twain made that proclamation.
    But there is no denying the influence Twain’s words had. It can be linked directly to the rise of the Democratic Party and Arthur Butler, and, from them, the Republic that we live in now. Through Twain’s words, Butler took control of the voting power of the blue collar working man and organized rallies, demonstrations, and, in the historical protest of 1901, a strike that shut down Sydney entirely.
    Of course, Twain couldn’t have known that Butler would make the same mistakes America did in search of the national identity to go along with the new Republic. (At any rate, Twain was busy with other political concerns. Having returned to America, he was accused of lacking patriotism as he publicly questioned the American policy regarding the Philippines.) In his search, Butler and the Republic of Australia were responsible for evil acts, many of which ignored what Twain spoke out on. It is therefore nothing short of a tragedy that we witnessed the Australian Government steal an entire generation of Aboriginal children from their parents and give them to white ‘Australian’ families to raise; we witnessed the Asian immigration made illegal, and a mob mentality encouraged that saw established Asian families beaten and driven out of Sydney; and, perhaps most pedantically xenophobic, we saw schools begin teaching the ‘Australian’ language.
    The result led to decades of confused culture, where men and women who did not fit into Butler’s description of an Australian (‘standing by your mates, working a hard day, enjoying a cold beer, and a swim in the ocean’) were culturally shunned and often targeted by hard line ‘patriots’. All of this began to change around the sixties, with the influx of American drug culture that was brought into prominence by American movies and cinema, but it left its scars deeply within the nation, and especially, Sydney.
    To walk down Sydney today is to walk in the shadows of the political past (it is in the buildings, the street signs, and the statues that link our cultural understanding together) and to watch a Government, whose history is responsible for the near genocide of the Aboriginal race and culture, refuse to make amends. It cannot but force one to question what Mark Twain brought to Sydney. A few have labeled him the man who broke Sydney, but I think that is an ignorant suggestion. Twain is not responsible for the actions of our politicians, just as the transported English before him were not. Rather, he was responsible for bringing to our attention the idea that we were in control of what we made of our city, and indeed our country.
    ‘Sydney is the heart of Australia, and it is from here that everything flows,’ Mark Twain said in his final performance, and he was correct. It is a heart we control, that we, with our presence, force the beat of, and which, like a mirror, reveals the best and worse that we, as Australians, bring.
    Darrell Barton
    Kings Cross,
    Sydney.
1803.
    Beyond the green door was a cool, dark room. As Twain’s eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he was able to make out the shapes of shelves, filled with books, and a large oak desk, with a high-backed chair behind it. In the middle of the table, in a large glass jar, was the head of an Aborigine, his mouth and eyes stitched shut, his head floating gently in light brown alcohol.
    “The poor devil,” Twain said quietly, approaching the desk. “What’d he do to deserve this?”
    “This is my first revolutionary,” Cadi whispered from the darkness around him. “The Eora warrior you saw earlier.”
    “Where are you?” Twain said, scanning the room.
    “I am here.” Cadi stood behind