Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The N Word by Stephen Hagan Books, books & more books. Sign up to our emails and be the first to know about new releases, special offers and more. Readings. Australian Book Retailer of the Year 2021. The N Word. Stephen Hagan. Format. The N Word. Stephen Hagan. An uncompromising insight into Indigenous politics. Academic and political advocate, Stephen Hagan, went all the way to the United Nations with his battle to remove the word Nigger from a sign at a Queensland sports ground. Pushing through harsh opposition, including KKK death threats against his family, Hagan successfully petitioned the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Stephen fought his own people in order to campaign for transparency and accountability in publicly-funded organisations and was involved in the Queensland State Tripartite Forum and the controversial 1996 Mundingburra bi-election. The N Word touches on family history, especially that of his father, Jim Hagan, who was a leading spokesman on Aboriginal Affairs and was the first Aboriginal to address the UN General Assembly in Geneva. Discover the man behind the public face and see how a childhood growing up in a fringe camp fired Stephen Hagans determination to fight for human rights. This item is not currently in-stock. It can be ordered online and is expected to ship in 3-7 days. Why didn’t we leave the cheese alone – and tackle violence and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities instead? I’ve managed to go through my whole not so short life without ever associating the name of Coon Cheese with anything but cheese. Until now. Thanks to Darwin race activist Stephen Hagan, I now understand that Coon Cheese is racist because the word “coon” has sometimes been used as a derogatory name for Aborigines. “First Nations people and people of colour shouldn’t have to tolerate the visual ugliness of Coon cheese products positioned prominently in the dairy aisles in supermarkets,” he told the Australian today. Mr Hagan appears to have been successful with his demands that the famous cheese name be “consigned to the past of outdated racist brands’’. Some people look at Coon and see cheese while others, like Mr Hagan, read Coon and see a racist statement. Who’s thinking needs adjusting? If Mr Hagan is adamant that Coon Cheese is a racist brand because of its name, then I imagine the next item on his list of things to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians will be lobbying local governments to change town names Coonawarra, Coonabarabran and Coonalypn. No doubt issues like high levels of domestic violence and sexual abuse of children in Indigenous communities will also be tackled now the important issue of cheese is dealt with, but it’s odd they weren’t first priorities. The difficulty is that Coonawarra is an Aboriginal word meaning “honeysuckle”. Coonabarabran is an Aboriginal word meaning “inquisitive person” and Coonalypn is an Aboriginal word meaning “barren woman”. Will Mr Hagan damn these Aboriginal words as offensive because of their name? Coon Cheese was named, not as a personal affront to Mr Hagan, but in honour of Edward William Coon, of Philadelphia, who patented a method for fast maturation of cheese. But Mr Hagan is not so sure. He wants an investigation as to whether Edward Coon was actually a cheesemaker in the 1920s or a factory hand used “as a cover” for a racist brand. This is a bit lazy. It would take Mr Hagan less than a minute to download a copy of the patent application made by Edward William Coon. And it beggars belief (that’s a turn of phrase, not a slight against people short of cash) that a manufacturer looking for profit would allow a patent to be made and secured by a factory hand. It’s a silly argument. But the whole thing is silly isn’t it? After today’s victory, is every Australian with the surname Coon (there are dozens) now to change their name or be cancelled? Should the AFL be taken to task for awarding the 2008 Brownlow Medal to Adam Cooney? Should Julia Gillard be apologising for employing a speechwriter with the same name? Should caterpillars be evicted from their cocoons? Must coloured pencils now be called “pencils of colour”? Of course, I’m mocking the whole thing now. And that’s the point. When you label as racist something you know full well not to be racist, you trivialize racism and turn the whole thing into farce. I would love Mr Hagan to explain to me, the parent of black children, how turning racism into a joke helps to protect them from racism. Too many race activists are making too much noise for the wrong reasons and soon, like the boy who cried wolf, they will find no-one is listening anymore. Some of us have already stopped. And when proposals for Constitutional Recognition and for an Indigenous voice to Parliament are rejected by the Australian people, it will not be because of racism but because of weariness with rubbish like this. Oh, and one more thing. My teenagers didn’t even know “coon” was a racist term until activists like Mr Hagan started going on about it. So well done Mr Hagan on giving racist terms to a new generation. Talk about an own goal. Indigenous Law Bulletin. Willheim, Ernst --- "Book Review - The N Word: One Man's Stand" [2005] IndigLawB 66; (2005) 6(15) Indigenous Law Bulletin 21. Book Review. The N Word: One Man’s Stand. By Stephen Hagan. Magabala Books, 2005. review by Ernst Willheim. This is an important book. One of only a small number of Aboriginal autobiographies, it tells the story of an Aboriginal activist, including his determined fight to have the word ‘Nigger’ removed from a sign at the Toowoomba Sports Ground.[1] This fight alone makes the book worth reading. Where else but Queensland would such a sign be countenanced? Where else but in Australia, under John Howard, would a government reject the decision of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that the sign be removed? The book is much more than a tale of Stephen Hagan’s epic struggle against the ‘Nigger’ sign. Hagan recounts his father’s life in a fringe camp humpy on the banks of the Warrego River, opposite the Cunnamulla cemetery. He writes poignantly how ‘the dead in Cunnamulla were cared for better than the Aborigines’. When the cemetery caretaker was not on guard, the camp Aborigines, without a tap among them, would walk to the cemetery taps to fill their kerosene tin containers. He recounts also the forcible removal by cattle truck of a large group of Aboriginal women, children and old people while the able-bodied men were away at work. Oral history may be the only records of some of these shameful aspects of Australia’s past and it is important that the present generation record what has been passed down to them. Hagan’s anecdotes will be a future resource for historians. Hagan’s own childhood stories tell much of life for a young Aboriginal boy at the Yumba, the Cunnamulla Aboriginal camp; going to school without shoes; the teacher who chastised him for not completing a drawing of his (non-existent) bathroom; exclusion from dances; discrimination in clubs, pubs and shops; the humiliation of separate roped-off Aboriginal areas at the local cinema; and ‘nigger’ taunts at school. Hagan’s adult career has been rich and varied, including flirtations with various interest groups. Early contact with Moral Rearmament led to a visit to India. Employment with the Aboriginal Development Commission in Canberra led to an offer to join the Department of Foreign Affairs. He became the first Aboriginal to achieve a diplomatic posting overseas, to Sri Lanka. After his return to Canberra, Charlie Perkins invited him to join the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, working first in Canberra and subsequently in North Queensland. Later he was seconded to be Manager of Aboriginal Programs in the Department of Employment, Education and Training. After some moderately successful business ventures, he became CEO of an Aboriginal corporation, directing the Community Development Employment Program (‘CDEP’), but was dismissed in controversial circumstances. A stint with a Queensland Indigenous advisory group led to an unfortunate political flirtation with the Queensland National Party. Hagan was one of a small group who organised Indigenous support for the Nationals in the all-important Mundingburra by-election, in return for commitments to Indigenous health programs. The Nationals won the by-election and came to power but failed to honour their commitments to Indigenous health. More significantly for Hagan, he was investigated and prosecuted for travel irregularities. The amount involved was modest. All had been repaid. He had an unblemished record. Yet a magistrate sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment. Bail was refused pending the appeal. Hagan implies the prosecution and sentence were politically motivated, a view also volunteered by a prison official. The account of his traumatic prison experience is a moving one. This book has so many interesting facets, it is not possible to mention all. Followers of Aboriginal politics will be interested in his depiction of division and conflict within Aboriginal communities and organisations, including Hagan’s own conflicts with Aboriginal powerbrokers, initially over his resistance to nepotism and lack of accountability and later in relation to the ‘Nigger’ sign. He gives his account of an irregularly called ‘community meeting’; the assistance he provided to Aboriginal people and groups not assisted by the publicly-funded Aboriginal bodies; election to the Goolburri Regional Council; and his clash with Commissioner on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (‘ATSIC’), ‘Sugar’ Ray Robinson.