Jab Your Ethics

I am a fully vaccinated pragmatic anarchist agroecologist and I want to explain how I got here to help those who, like me, have a healthy skepticism for authority and a strong ethic of care and responsibility for others, as you make important decisions around vaccination against COVID-19.

I had my first baby in 1999, and like many new mothers, I struggled with the often conflicting array of information around everything from co-sleeping and breastfeeding to whether and when to vaccinate. The internet was still pretty new, but there was already a lot of information available in a horizontal peer-to-peer manner unheard of until the World Wide Web democratized information sharing. For a curious well-educated Earth mama type, the internet seemed like a gold mine of alternative information that suited my anti-establishment ways, but also fed my confirmation bias when I let my guard down.

In my pre-natal research, I learned the importance of vaccination for public health – that we protect everyone, but especially our most vulnerable, by creating herd immunity with vaccines. I also started reading about adverse vaccine reactions, and as I grew Oscar inside my very own body I struggled with what seemed like an unacceptable trade off to protect public health – other people, that is – by knowingly injecting something into my healthy baby that carries a small but frightening risk of injuring or even killing him. I read scientific papers and natural parenting websites, hung out in online chat rooms, and talked with all the mothers I knew about what felt like the most overwhelming and important first decision as a parent.

The vaccination schedule called for the first shot to be given for Hepatitis B before we would even leave the birthing centre, a disease primarily transmitted through unprotected sex or sharing needles. At two months, another raft of vaccines were on the schedule for DTP (diptheria, tetanus, and pertussis/whooping cough), polio, and Hib. At four months, three more jabs. At six, three more. At 12 months, the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and a Hib booster. At 18 months, two more shots. By the time Oscar was 18 months old, he would have had 14 separate injections to vaccinate him against eight diseases. To a new mother, that can sound pretty alarming.

The situation was made worse because in 1998 a report was released by Wakefield, et al claiming that the MMR vaccine could cause autism. I went well down the rabbit hole reading everything I could to find out how serious this risk would be for my baby. A disproportionate amount of self-selected material from the natural parenting genre told me vaccines are dangerous. The scientific literature mostly said they carry very low risk of adverse reactions, but the risk exists. Scientific reports also demonstrate repeatedly that vaccines save thousands of lives every year, and that when vaccination rates go down due to the spread of scary misinformation, illness and death rates go up.

The Wakefield report was found to be fraudulent in 2010 (stripping Wakefield himself of his license to practice). In spite of its fraudulent influence on my and thousands of others’ thinking, I managed to read enough diverse and credible sources on vaccination to come to the decision to vaccinate our children, albeit at a slightly delayed and more spread out schedule. This was informed by the privileged fact that I stayed at home with our children in their first years, and they were not put into child care or any other crowded environment where illness spreads readily. The vaccination schedule is written to ensure all children have access to vaccines to account for a diversity of living situations, including child care attendance or a low-income parent’s capacity to readily access maternal and child health services in the early years.

It is also designed to ensure the most vulnerable in our communities – First Nations Peoples, immuno-compromised, pregnant women and babies, the elderly, and low-income communities who disproportionately suffer from underlying health conditions – are protected by broad herd immunity achieved by vaccinating those of us able to be vaccinated.

My decision to vaccinate our children was both well and poorly informed by the research I did. My research was really just a survey of the literature – the scientists had conducted the medical research and reported their findings. Anti or pro-vaccination literature written by people without scientific training is rhetorical at best, fraudulent at worst. Even this piece I’m writing for you now is not trying to make a scientific argument, I’m sharing my story to offer the moral, emotional, and pragmatic steps I took to decide to vaccinate that led me to my second Pfizer jab today to protect myself and others in and beyond our community against COVID-19.

Back in 1999, as I weighed up the risks to my first baby against the risks to many more people in an unvaccinated population, I came down on the side of the public good. I rejected the individualist concern that would put my or my baby’s interests ahead of the collective. I did that for everyone, but especially for the vulnerable, because I also knew that although my children were privileged to have a healthy stay-at-home mother obsessed with organic produce and cooking three times a day, that is not many other peoples’ reality.

Kombu-merri woman and philosopher Mary Graham talks about the difference between the survivalist ethic of settler society and the relational ethic of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. While I think the survivalist ethic is fairly self-explanatory, the relational ethic embraces complex kinships with other humans and also the non-human world, beginning with the Land from which we all come. A custodial ethic is born of this complex understanding of relationality – how we are all related to everything – and it leaves no room to look after oneself at the expense of others. The collective of human and non-human actors and Land is more important than individual concerns.

The burden of colonial disease started with smallpox and currently manifests as COVID and a plethora of non-communicable diseases preventable by ensuring access to secure and safe housing, nutritious and culturally-appropriate food, right livelihoods, and no history of inter-generational trauma. Colonisers brought the smallpox and in some cases intentionally spread it to eradicate Indigenous Peoples here in Australia and other colonized countries – genocide via disease transmission amongst other violent means.

Voluntary refusal to vaccinate is to my mind a continuation of the colonial legacy of lack of care for the First Peoples of this Land. It signals a level of privilege that you have a choice whether to protect yourself from the dangers of COVID by staying safe at home or otherwise in low-risk environments, unlike the essential workers in health care, meat processing facilities, and supermarkets.

Here at Jonai Farms, we are in a very safe and secure environment with limited exposure to areas likely to host infection, and we are all double vaccinated. Our values and decision making that prioritise justice, equity, and health for all made the choice to vaccinate inevitable. We talked about our early nervousness about a new vaccine for a novel coronavirus and accepted that it was a normal emotional response to a global pandemic, and that we should all be vaccinated.

For some people, mistrust of authority is a driving motivation against vaccination. I have spent a lifetime fighting against government overreach, and engaging in ‘anarchist calisthenics‘ I cross the road against the light when there is no traffic in long sight, and I may choose to ignore rules when there is no material impact potentially inflicted on others. I have devoted my life to lobbying governments at all levels from local to global to bring about reforms so that everyone can live in an ecologically-sound and socially-just world.

At the same time, I conform with laws that protect the public good such as speed limits and preventing foodborne illnesses by following a stringent food safety regime in our on-farm butcher’s shop. We do things the government tells us to all the time, but the government should not even have to tell us to protect our fellow travellers on this earth with the tried and true practice of getting vaccinated against deadly diseases if you can.

And while I’m not here to dump data on this discussion, the rates of illness and death amongst the unvaccinated as compared with the vaccinated speak for themselves. The risk of adverse reactions to the vaccines are far lower than the risk of contracting COVID or suffering serious complications, and to suggest otherwise is wilfully misleading in the face of the overwhelming global evidence since March 2020. If the risk to you personally is low, think about your grandparents, and think about Aboriginal People in remote communities. Think about the man having a heart attack or the child who was in a car accident on their way to a hospital overwhelmed with unvaccinated COVID patients. Nobody is expendable.

I am a fully vaccinated pragmatic anarchist agroecologist, and I hope this helps more people to get over fears or mistrust of authority, and to put others in and beyond your community first.

Published by

Tammi Jonas

The infrequent and imperfect yet impassioned musings of a farmer, meatsmith, mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend and cultural commentator with a penchant for food and community.

11 thoughts on “Jab Your Ethics”

  1. Thanks for sharing that thoughtful account of your decision making. I had my first child around the same time as you, but in the Northern Rivers, many of my friends had decided not to vaccinate. There was a limit to how much we could discuss it and I remember parents pulling their children out of the pool one day when Luca arrived with a small bandaid on his arm. An aspect of my own privilege was a long term relationship with a doctor, something I think many people don’t have. Certainly Luca now can’t just go and talk to *his* GP – like a lot of young people he doesn’t have ‘one’. Like you, he made the decision to vaccinate for community reasons, but I wonder about the assumptions sometimes about trusted relationships with doctors and the impact of our distrust of big pharma that’s fed into rejecting vaccination. Whatever the underlying causes though, putting others in and beyond your community first is a primary concern.

  2. Thanks for your thoughtful and insightful essay from a fellow fully vaccinated but wanna-be pragmatic anarchist.

  3. Hi Tammi,
    I haven’t been to your site since I first read your Jab Your Ethics piece last year. I was so relieved to read your wise words that matched my own intuition so deeply. I came back here today to see whether you had written an update, now that we all can see clearly how we have been lied to. I would love to hear your thoughts now that the truth is out there.

    My awakenings include: not being able to see my mother for the weeks before she died – or even on the day the doctors told us she was going to die – why couldn’t I see her on the day we knew she would die?? My wife and I are vaxxed and boosted and have had covid twice. My last bout saw me in ICU twice. Now I understand the term ‘negative efficacy’ in terms of vaccines. My two oldest sons got myocarditis from their first shots and were told they had to get the second as strictly no exemptions were possible. They are both in their mid twenties and injured for life. Their cardiologist suggested they need to take medication for their depression (as their lives are ruined), and would they like a booster shot now they are at the clinic?? My daughter lost her baby at 26 weeks and was told by the hospital staff that they have never seen so many stillborns and miscarriages in all their careers combined since the vax mandates started but they are unable to speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Everyone I know who has been injected has had covid at least once. The unvaxxed are not taking up hospital beds. They were right not to trust big pharma. I am ashamed of how I have excluded my unvaxxed friends and family. I am working on healing these relationships. I will be following their lead and not be getting another shot. And now I see the relationship between bodily sovereignty and food sovereignty more clearly than ever.
    Yours respectfully,
    Declan Oliver

  4. Hello Tammy,

    I introduce myself as Charles Davison, a proud Gadigal man. I’m an almost sixty seven year old father, grandfather, partner, brother, and uncle. I acknowledge that I have lived on many Aboriginal lands and today communicate from the lands of the Darkinjung. I honour my ancestors, the relational entities of today and those of tomorrow.

    I share my cultural location and connection so that “belongings” can be made and relationships commenced.

    To my knowledge we have not met, but from your written introduction I’m informed that you write from the lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung, you acknowledge that you farm on unceded land, and that you listen and learn from those lands, the Djaara, and other First Peoples to enact custodial ethic in all that you do on those unceded lands.

    I make assumption that your observance of protocol is inclusive of a public declaration of your non-Aboriginality and indication of understanding that the basis for connection is respect for Aboriginal Sovereignty on all unceded lands.

    I am informed that you are the current President of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) that advocates “we aim to put First Peoples knowledge first in best practice of healing Country and sustaining life” Further; I note that the AFSA has devised a “First Peoples Strategy” that acknowledges that Aboriginal People (that is myself and family) occupy a unique position as the First Peoples of the land”, agents of the land, caretakers and custodians of Country for millennium.

    I note the AFSA’s stance on “Custodial Ethic”. I acknowledge in agreement the significance of the reciprocal relationship with nature, an ethic of looking after, caring for – the obligation to look after land, and that people were and continue to be nurtured and sustained by the land.

    Further; “Articulated Colonialism” and its impact upon Country dictates the need to heal. Healing is a reciprocity concept. In consideration of the defined priority of the AFSA to “listen to First Peoples at every opportunity for guidance on our way” I thought it pertinent to offer to you for deep listening, not implied response my story of “Jab The Ethics”.

    I am Gadigal. I am from the Land, Mother has given me agency to enact my culture. I sit with the brutality of dispossession through settler colonialism; a structure, not an actual event or set there of. The impact of invasion and colonisation on me and my people forms the continuum, as these lands remain unceded.

    I was born on the lands of my people, my mother segregated from others experiencing the same beauty and joy of birth. I was deemed “unworthy” of the modern medical advancement of the mid 1950’s, for which I give thanks and gratitude; allowing my cultural traditions to remain out of the shadows of the colonistic lense and imposed dictatorship ways of being.

    I remain “fully unvaccinated” by the “colonial vaccination scheduling” which was not written to accommodate any cultural implication of my diverse living conditions as a child. I note that my childhood was spent living under the stars of the Land, in shacks, tents, decommissioned interment camps and public housing.

    Contrary to sterotyping I never thought of myself as “vunerable”, even though I was orphaned before my twelfth birthday. I was a “lucky fulla” of the Land. I was not alone. I had been bequithed my culture and its traditions.

    Each day bought resilience, that which had sustained my ancestors for millennium. Survival came easily. I had all that was required; as I had my relational “Connection to Country” and extended kin. Adherence to the traditions and cultural practices gave protection, I lived in reciprocity, the Land and I were interdependent.

    Land as the source of my lores allowed extension of my relationships. The intrinsic relational nature of my human existence, obligations, and systemic connection and care beyond myself ensured no sovereign authority over any other.

    As a twelve year old I lived day to day. I sold early morning papers to people of greater privilege than myself as they commuted along the streets of Botany, Redfern, Darlington, and Waterloo. I put myself into school, although initially turned away as I required “a guardian” for enrolment purposes. I had no “home” of four walls, roof, or running water.

    Learning the craft of boxing at the local PCYC enabled the “homeless” boy that I was a daily shower before setting off to Harold Park Paceway to run bets for the punters and a free feed of leftovers from the observant yet unquestioning food truck women. Sleep, not a bed was taken after eleven and I was up again before the sunrise to do it all again.

    Many an experience and job was held after early school leaving, until I found a “permanent vocation as a public servant”. For the next forty four years it is the view of most that I was heavily sought for my connection to my culture, people, and ways. I was renowned for my ability to facilitate people, to bring those of diverse background into space where the advancement of Aboriginal People was desperately necessary to amend many an unjust outcome of educational, health, housing, justice, and other disparity.

    Sixteen years ago I was appointed State Manager, for the Ministry of Health, NSW Health, Aboriginal Health Workforce. I note I was appointed in great part for my knowledge, wisdom and practice of culture and tradition. I was by recognition an Elder. Eldership, wisdom and a practised cultured man of my traditions I remained “un-vaccinated by colonial definition”.

    I held repute for learning by doing, my ethical expectations were at the forefront, looking after our people in the health sector, patients and workforce was in relationship with healing the Land and its people. Principled habit, practice, and accountability was under custodianship and gaining momentum, significance, and recognition.

    Outside of “work” my partner and I had extended our beautiful family, all of our children being born into the welcoming arms of Country; at home surrounded by those that would journey with them into our traditions and cultural practices.

    In our way we had availed ourselves and our children of Country’s strength to protect, nurture, and grow its own. Our traditions and adherence to practised ways of being and doing were given right of passage to grow self and in relationship with others. We all grew into caring for Country and all that she gives, reciprocity of care and life giving.

    Similar to many stories; a moment of complete unexpectedness prevailed. After more than sixty five years of living in relationship with my lores and traditions I was “mandated” by a very present, colonialism power.

    The spear of this colonialism power came from behind without warning, void of any narrative or discourse that acknowledged and respected the continuum of my traditions, culture or lore. In a moment, not a long one, but a small flint of time I was “ordered” to have administered by due date a foreign substance into my veins, where only thousands of years of ancestral blood had ran, to ensure I could “continue to work for the colonialist agency”.

    To compound this imposed cultural violation I was ordered to “enhance ways” – by coercion, to ensure that others of culture, traditions, and ways of being actually performed the role of the oppressor, becoming the administrative agent of the mandated foreign substance into the veins of their own on the pretence of “protecting the mob”.

    Many cultured, traditionally practising people were left like beached whales, grasping for air, that air denied from a source that had proclaimed just the day before “that the law of the Land, the relationship with land and Aboriginal People we recognise as relational”.

    You write that “Voluntary refusal to vaccinate is to my mind a continuation of the colonial legacy of lack of care for the First Peoples of this Land”. Although I am grasping for air, the Land gives me strength and resilience to speak to this. I respond to this by motioning; give listening the opportunity to be heard, seek to listen deeply and put those voices of wisdom, culture and tradition at the forefront of Healing Country. We are the First Peoples of this Land, its agents, caretakers and custodians of Country. We are not the problem, but the solution as we seek to discontinue colonial legacies and respectfully ask that all listen deeply to follow pathways to decolonisation.

    A year after the imposed order I remain untouched by the foreign substance that I refuse. I am unheard and my cultured lore and traditions continue to be dismissed. I’ve recently separated from the colonial agent that devalued me for my cultured lore and tradition, being deemed “unable to continue to work” because I place such cultured lore and traditions at the forefront of my relational place with Country.

    One might say that I am unwilling to be colonised. I remain a Gadigal man. I have my integrity to Country, my lore, culture and traditions. I have my health and well-being but mourn the exponential growth of “sudden and unexpected death” in our communities. My people are again “vanishing in silence” at the hands that continue to practice devastation and dispossession.

    The continuation to operate within colonialist paradigms and thus the perpetuation of colonial powers gives rise to the denial of Aboriginal or First Peoples rights and severs the simplicity of what has been in place since the beginning; looking after the Land ensures that the Land looks after all, that is the way.

    Respectfully,
    Charles, Jen, and Family

  5. Except that the covid injection was never studied for its effacacy to prevent transmission. Pfizers own representatives have disclosed this before congressional hearings and the likes; that it was not, and does not, prevent transmission, thus the argument to ‘protect others’ is ill informed at best, deadly at worst. It should also be widely known that Pfizer wanted their trial data hidden for 75 years, and that the rates of adverse events following ‘immunisation’ (AEFI’s) for this shot have been far higher than for any inoculation based injection in decades (the three early polio inoculations were incredibly deadly and pulled from the market early). There is now copious amounts of research, data, and highly experienced clinical experts speaking out; many of whom were initially recommending the injections. In particular are the markers for cardiac issues (myo-pericarditis and similar), strokes, and foetal demise. The ‘excess death’ rate is also quite high, and covid has been ruled out as the cause for this.

    Of course, as Brian Deer & Murdoch publications did to Wakefield, the media and Pharma cabal will begin smearing these names to convince the public not to listen to them- just like Ignaz Semmelweis with hand washing, they will be mocked, all the while being right for sounding alarm bells, resulting in mass deaths for the years to follow. How serial corporate criminals like Pfizer continue to get away with deadly products and fraud, should have everyone using a little more brain power, wondering how and why they are allowed to continually do so, and not be held to ever increasing scrutiny over all their existing and new products.

    I’ve have many people in my life who were ‘fine’ after the covid injections, but I also know a number who suffered DVT’s, strokes, and myo & pericarditis after them, prior to getting covid. Several have life long medical problems now, with one whose attempted cardiac surgery 3 weeks ago could not go ahead due to the severe damage the shot caused her. She has been gas lit by the medical establishment and unable to get any compensation despite a new severe, chronic cardiac condition from the jab, with a shortened life expectancy and an inability to work, or even undertake household tasks. I did not get the injection, and had covid while on chemotherapy (before I quit that toxic ‘treatment’ ‘early’), and easily handled it at home- sure, it was horrible, being sick is, but it was not as severe as influenza (or man-covid!) despite being in the ‘severely immune-compromised’ group… In saying that, the natural adjunct therapies likely kept me healthier than most as both my oncologist and pharmacist were baffled as to why my bloods were so perfect with zero indication that I was even on chemotherapy- asking for a list of my remedies to ‘ensure I wasn’t detoxing too quickly’!!. Unfortunately, Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), cytokine storm and cytokine release syndrome have landed many of the vaccinated cohort in ICU at greater rates than their non-cov-19 vaccinated counterparts.

    Additionally, the paper by Wakefield et al. concluded that “Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine”, so anyone stating that he claimed vaccines did cause autism, has not read the paper. It should also be noted that while he couldn’t practice in the UK, much of this was a procedural, and financial issue, and personal choice to pursue it, of the twelve peers that co-authored the paper and bothered to fight it, several regained their licence to practice medicine, and were exonerated. For those who wish to verify this conclusion themselves, they can view the paper by Wakefield et al. here: https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(97)11096-0.pdf

    No one has the obligation to set themselves on fire, or sacrifice their children ‘for the greater good’ by lining them up for injections. Children in 2022 get more vaccinations that the ones you’ve listed, and it’s ever increasing. As you stated, you chose to spread them out, if so, you obviously felt the schedule was not right, at least for you or your own children. If you choose to do so, that is your prerogative, but urging others to do so, is ‘prescribing’. As someone who has completed a degree in this area, I can confirm that the amount of ‘education’ a nurse, midwife or doctor gets on vaccines is a few hours of ‘Vaccine good, disease bad, safe, effective, does not cause autism, give like this, give on time’, in an entire degree- no info on how to detect AEFI’s, to keep adrenaline on hand for anaphylactic reactions, how to lodge AEFI’s on the TGA DAEN website, what is in them, poly-pharmacy, or anything else. It’s gross negligence. In addition, the government regulatory bodies threaten health care professionals to not speak against the vaccine schedule, EVEN when the evidence does not support it. So when the government, or anyone says ‘talk to your doctor’, know full well that they have a gun held to their career if they dare to share evidence-based information that does not support the ‘immunisation schedule’ or handbook.

    Finally, we must remember the health care charter and our right to INFORMED consent AND REFUSAL. Are we sovereign, or not? We do not owe the collective, our personal sacrifice, of our personal health, especially for a prophylactic intervention, much less a newly developed one, or one developed by a corporate criminal, with or without their refusal to present their trial data for 3/4 of a century!

    Lest we forget.

  6. Hello Tammi,

    In a recent study published by the Journal of Medical Ethics (in the BMJ) on December 5 2022, the authors conclude the vaccines are not safe or effective for people under 30 years of age. To summarise this study titled, ‘COVID-19 vaccine boosters for young adults: a risk benefit assessment and ethical analysis of mandate policies at universities’, they write:

    “University booster mandates are unethical because they: (1) are not based on an updated (Omicron era) stratified risk-benefit assessment for this age group; (2) may result in a net harm to healthy young adults; (3) are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission; (4) violate the reciprocity principle because serious vaccine-related harms are not reliably compensated due to gaps in vaccine injury schemes; and (5) may result in wider social harms. We consider counterarguments including efforts to increase safety on campus but find these are fraught with limitations and little scientific support. Finally, we discuss the policy relevance of our analysis for primary series COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”

    Given what you wrote so confidently in this post in November 2021, and given Declan’s and Charles’ recent comments, I’m curious to hear where you’re at now regarding ‘Jab your ethics’.

    Are you still 100% vaccine confident? Do you witness corruption in the state/Pharma nexus? Do you feel lied to? Are you becoming aware of other forms of pharmacolonisation, especially targeting young people? Are you surprised such studies like this (published throughout 2021 and 2022), which demonstrate the Covid vaccines are neither safe nor effective, are absent in mainstream media? Is food sovereignty not an extension of body sovereignty? Is Monsanto not Pfizer? Is vaccinology, as an extension of 19th century germ theory, primitive in comparison to microbiome complexity? Should the next Pandemic coming (that vaccine entrepreneur, GMO crop pusher, and funder of The Guardian’s Global Development site, Bill Gates, is once again predicting) be approached via microbiome biology that is nuanced and complex? Or, should we all line up for a one shot fits all Pharma miracle again, while shaming and cancelling the heterodoxy, resisters and dissenters?

    Respectfully,
    Patrick

  7. Hi Charles, Jen & family – thank you for your thoughtful contribution here. I am listening. I just wanted to let you know that I am listening and thinking and learning, though I do not currently have time for a longer response.

    Thank you.

  8. Hi Tammi , I wondered if you had time for a response to Uncle Charles’s words and energy on this page yet – Uncle Charles We haven’t met- I hear the need for choice in your letter and hope that all respect that – it is a complex issue and it seems the vastness of First Nations Peoples can’t be lumped into one box regarding vaccination – I wish you well and am so sorry for how difficult it has been for so many who don’t want the vax to navigate this fraught time – let alone the past era since invasion- big respect for the amazing life journey you have shared here – trace

  9. Hello to those who have commented recently on this post from October 2021. Your comments came through while my schedule was very full with international food sovereignty commitments, including attending the biodiversity COP15 in Montreal in December.

    My slow reply relates to this full workload in two ways. First, I have been very engaged in reading, listening, writing and speaking about the importance of agroecology and food sovereignty while combating the worst of industrial interests in global governance spaces, with little time for any other work until recently. Second, food sovereignty is the work I choose to devote my energy to over most other topics of concern, except for the grounded practices of healing Djaara Country – djandak – farming and butchering, and caring for our family and our human and more-than-human communities on and surrounding the farm. I remain committed to keeping this focus.

    Uncle Charles, thank you for sharing your story, which I have read several times now. I really appreciate the richness of your relational thinking and being and the time you took to share this here. I respect your rejection of being labelled ‘vulnerable’, and acknowledge that there are others who can be defined as vulnerable due to health issues caused by the ongoing structures of colonialism and capitalism. I also deeply respect First Peoples’ right to self-determination, which includes the right to reject colonial vaccines against colonial diseases.

    I have not stated my view on mandatory vaccines, but rather tried to present a rationale for voluntary vaccination by those who can do so to protect those who can’t. I believe there should be special protection against state intervention in First Peoples’ bodies, and I’m also broadly speaking opposed to mandated state intervention in any peoples’ bodies. And I accept that a global pandemic is a time of great uncertainty, including for governments, and don’t envy the decisions they have had to make over the past three years.

    Debates amongst us non-medical-trained people on who has the ‘right’ research on vaccines holds little interest due to my stated prioritisation of my time above, and I’m not interested in responding in any detail to a litany of questions suggesting people who don’t agree with the so-called ‘heterodoxy’ are ignorant and just need to come to our senses. The use of ‘heterodox’ is especially patronising when it is posited as though in contrast to communities who are anything but orthodox in our approaches. And one would hope that any of us who might generally be considered heterodox would embrace and value diversity of opinions, or aren’t we just as dogmatic as the orthodoxy?

    I am not confused about abuses of power, manipulation of media, corporate control of pharmaceuticals that parallels (and in some cases shares ownership of) control of food and agriculture systems. (No need to contrast Monsanto with Pfizer given it was bought by Bayer in 2018, narrowing control of a full range of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals alongside pesticides.) And I have never been ‘100% vaccine confident’, but as detailed above, I take an evidence-based approach to vaccine decisions just as I do in other aspects of life (and I check the sources of the evidence I use to guide me).

    I don’t imagine I’ll respond to further comments here, as my priorities are elsewhere, though I’m always up for a chat over a cup of tea with those who live nearby. I hope that those who disagree with my position will respect it as I do yours and your right to hold it. Unlike the questions posed to me that suggest I just haven’t thought enough or read the right things about covid and vaccinations, I believe that those commenting have read heaps and drawn different conclusions.

  10. Tammi, did you not disallow entry to your farm and workplace to those who didn’t get vaccinated? Did you not coerce workers at Jonai Farm to be jabbed? In other words, did you not mandate vaccines at your farm?

    From what we witnessed you acted as someone giving private medical advice as a non-medical person. You didn’t just speak about vaccination as what you’re doing for you and your family, but you deliberately set out to shame those who didn’t see things your way. This is not an inclusive or diverse approach. You don’t seem to own that, even now.

    You liken unvaccinated people as akin to colonisers who deliberately spread smallpox to First People, and you attribute us as carrying out that same level of harm and violence by refusing to be colonised by Pharma. What a remarkable twisting of reality.

    As an influencer you offered your strong opinion for getting vaccinated to your audience, to be vaccinated by an experimental inoculant produced by corporate criminals with long track records of medical fraud and harm to people and ecologies.

    One of the responders here, Declan, recounted to you his family‘s vaccine injuries, which you have completely ignored and showed no level of empathy or compassion for. And yet you were one voice, at least, that influenced his decision making process, as he indicated in his response. Do you take any responsibility for the vaccine injured?

    We respect your attempts to advocate for small farming practices, however for us they are cancelled out by your produce only being afforded by the rich, as well as the global jet-setting that you’ve committed high levels of carbon to over the same years as things have only worsened. We see no real world merit in what you do in the air or on Djaara Mother Country.

    We won’t be having that cuppa you invite. Knowing how you shame people like us in this blog post, and how you continue to gaslight us in your response here, there is no point in meeting. There is no humility, there is no deep searching into the shadows that have led you to both virtue signal, advise, or smear the other.

    Throughout 2021 and 2022 we interviewed people across the vaccine, mandates, and Covid response divide. That is we practiced diversity. We heard from people who chose to get vaccinated and why, those who didn’t and why, those who got injured, those who changed their minds, and everyone between. We excluded only the highly privileged – the ironed-on corporatists and their fans green-lighting the state-Pharma nexus. We considered they were already getting enough air time, and of course they were.

    Your twisted response about inclusivity and diversity doesn’t stack up. You were intolerant and you used your power of influence to shame. It will not be forgotten. Trust has been broken, and you are doubling down, not opening to engagement. That is with the exception of Uncle Charles here, which you unwittingly had prior lumped (with every other Aboriginal person who choose not to be vaccinated) as akin to colonisers bringing harm to Country. You have not retracted that harmful comment with grace or humility, rather you continue to gaslight people like us, despite what we all now know about the Covid moment.

    Patrick

  11. Thank you to all who have commented here.

    These are difficult discussions that we will all need to engage with ~ we have all been harmed by the vested interests, globally, that terrorised us, divided us, emotionally, psychologically, physiologically and sociologically experimented on us all. I live in hope and take action that all will come to light in due course.

    My family is divided by both the vaccine and the mandate issue, gratefully I don’t have anyone close who has been vaccine injured so far, what will eventuate long term is anyone’s guess as I am not welcome to even the raise the issue – the price of keeping the peace is far far too high, getting higher with each passing day and the concern about every booster. Yet, I must pay it in respect of my children’s right ‘not to know’. Only one perspective is allowed; the dogma runs deep.

    I cannot judge, it was only 2 dozen years ago that I merely began to see the deep conflicts of interest woven through all sectors and industries. What a horrific situation to be in.

    I take actions in wider social arena’s instead, hoping that grassroots conversations will filter through despite the media blackout.

    Respect to all and all that you do to live in your integrity and stand against the tide. Deep strength and much love to us all ~ we need it more than ever.

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