Math and Science Week!

aseantoo submitted to medievalpoc:

David Unaipon

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David Unaipon (1872-1967) was an Australian Aboriginal inventor, preacher and writer.

Nicknamed the Australian Leonardo da Vinci, he provisionally patented 19  inventions, but was unable to afford to get any of them fully patented. He also came up with ideas for a helicopter design based on the boomerang, researched the polarisation of light and tried to create a perpetual motion machine.

These achievements are all the more impressive when you consider that, until 1962, not all Aboriginal Australians had the right to vote in federal elections (before that there were a number of restrictions varying from state to state, allowing some Aboriginals to vote but not others). Not until 1983 was it made compulsory for Aboriginals to vote, as it already was for all other Australian citizens. Aboriginal Australians have for so long, and are still in many ways, treated as sub-human, second-class or not even really citizens of the country they’ve inhabited for longer than anyone else living there.

In that context, imagine how hard David Unaipon had to work, compared with a white Australian with similar ambitions and talents. And he still couldn’t afford to get his inventions properly patented.

I’m a New Zealander, and our own colonial government did untold cultural, social and economic damage to the indigenous Maori people, causing generations of poverty, loss of hope, confidence and self-esteem, and general marginalisation reflected in over-representation in statistics of crime, educational failure and ill health. I, and my country, don’t have any moral high ground here. But believe me when I say that Australia seriously needs to sort its shit out re: treatment of Aboriginal Australians.

N.B. Because the term was so commonly used for so long, a lot of people still don’t know that ‘Aborigine’ is incorrect and can be taken as a slur. Just a note that I hope will be helpful, because, like me until not long ago, you may have been using the word without realising it’s not okay.

Auckland, New Zealand 1985