Loving, supportive and wise. Indigenous fathers are all those things, and more.
That's the message of the hashtag #IndigenousDads, which has been trending on Australian Twitter in the wake of an offensive cartoon published Thursday in The Australian newspaper.
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The images of Aboriginal Australian fathers are a powerful rejection of the picture created by cartoonist Bill Leak, who was immediately accused of being racist and indulging in stereotypes -- accusations that have been levelled at Leak before.
On the heels of the Don Dale revelations, where the severe mistreatment of young people in a largely Indigenous juvenile detention centre in Darwin were revealed to a horrified public, the cartoon implies parental neglect is to blame for their incarceration.
Leak declined to mention more than two centuries of systemic racism.
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The cartoon, painful as it was, turned into an affirmative moment on social media. Indigenous dads shared their own feelings about parenthood on Twitter, as others paid tribute to their fathers and grandfathers.
The Australian, for its part, is standing by the cartoon. "The Australian is proud of its long-standing and detailed contribution to our national debate over the crucial issues in Indigenous affairs," editor in chief Paul Whittaker said in a statement. "Too often, too many people skirt around the root causes and tough issues."
Perhaps Leak would like to spend some time getting to know these Indigenous dads.
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