Ed,

Please tell me you’re not actually paying Oscar Tamsen to write a column? 

Have you completely lost touch with the readership in the Clarence Valley? 

We are extremely blessed to have three incredible First Nations meet on the Clarence River. Where our community members are not First Nations they are often descendents of the victims of British political expediency i.e. how to rid the Thames of Prison Hulks – dump the political prisoners and petty thieves out of sight and out of mind of the British electorate for the term of their natural lives. Collectively our community are the survivors of the very worst of British Colonialism.

You have allowed the epitome of British Colonialism, Oscar Tamsen, to continue to traumatise the survivors with the language and attitudes of the very nation that tried to commit genocide on the Bundjalung, Yaegl and Gumbaynggirr people and who sacrificed its own citizens lives for political expediency. 

Is this the deliberate placement of a dangerous antagonist in print to increase readership? 

I’m stunned. We are not the distant antipodeans colonised by Mr Tamsen’s forebears. We are survivors who never want to hear the utterances of the likes of Mr Tamsen’s ilk again. 

Ursula Tunks, Gumbaynggirr Nation

(South Grafton)

Editors note: Like all columns published in the Clarence Valley Independent, Oscar Tamsen’s column ‘Of Cabbages & Kings’ is contributed free of any charge to the newspaper.