SYDNEY – A perpetual flame, ignited thousands of miles away and transported laboriously, by hand and foot, to this Olympic City burns brightly in Victoria Park, but it has nothing to do with the Games taking place all around it.

Cathy Freeman did not light this “other” Olympic flame, the one that keeps alive a spirit that Australia has been trying to extinguish, it seems, for the past 212 years.

The flame burns in the center of what is called the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a shantytown set up on the choicest parcel of real estate in the city, by the most disenfranchised people in the country.

Cathy Freeman, Australia’s golden girl of track-and-field, is an Aboriginal, of course, but she is not a member of this colony, nor, does it appear, would she be very welcome to join it.

This small community took little joy in the choice of Freeman to light the Olympic cauldron at last Friday’s opening ceremonies.

And it would not be so eager to roll out the welcome mat should Freeman choose to pay the colony a visit, which to this point, she has not.

To the Sydney Olympic organizing committee, choosing Freeman was meant to send a message to the rest of the world that Australia had its “aboriginal problem” under control.

But to the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, it was just another example of exploitation and abuse by the Australian establishment.

“The same night Cathy Freeman lit the torch, thousands of our people went to be hungry,” said Clarrie Isaacs, a lifelong Aboriginal activist who has emerged as the unofficial spokesman for the Tent Embassy. “Thousands of our people remained homeless and thousands of our people remained without jobs or education. To them, she’s one of the ‘Good Aborigines.’ But what are we?”

“It was all just a show,” said a man who gave his name only as Arthur. “Trying to make it look as if Aboriginals are being included in the Olympics. Just look around you, and you’ll see that we are not.”

Three weeks ago, six Aboriginals began to camp out in Victoria Park, having come from the first Aboriginal Tent Embassy in the Aussie capital of Canberra, 1,800 miles away.

Now, the colony numbers more than 2,000 and is adorned not only with its own flame-called the Sacred Fire-but dotted with Aboriginal sculpture and artwork scattered around a 50-foot high tripod of tree trunks festooned with tribal flags.

A sign near the burning log pile reads: “SHOW RESPECT TO EVERYONE AROUND THE FIRE. NO FIGHTING.”

Police regularly patrol the park, since just last week, a confrontation between Aboriginals and police turned bloody, but so far there have been no incidents of violence at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

“This is a peaceful occupation,” Isaacs said. “We’re not geared for confrontation.”

The Aboriginals camping out in Victoria Park are not here to protest the Olympics, for, after all, how important are games compared to more than two centuries of oppression?

They are here to let the world know that there is a sizable group of people indigenous to this island continent who are not welcome at their party, nor do they care to join it.

“This is an Olympic-free zone,” said Isaacs, whose Aboriginal name, Yaluritja, translates to Bird of Thunder. “That means, ‘This one is a troublemaker.'”

In fact, the entire Tent Embassy was intended not just to call the world’s attention to the plight of the Aboriginals – think Native Americans, then multiply the abuse 10-fold and take away the governmental atonement of casinos – but to leave an embarrassing blotch in the center of a city that prides itself on its beauty.

It took a court order for the Aboriginals to earn the right to camp out in Victoria Park, and many suspect that once the Olympic Games end, the Sydney police will sweep the park and send the Aboriginals back to where they came from.

“In two weeks, the world goes home,” Isaacs said. “Who knows where we go? Right now, we’re allowed to stay here on the condition that we’re peaceful Aborigines, that we’re passive, quiet blacks.”

Ever since the British came to Australia in 1798 and began appropriating large parcels of land, the Aboriginals have been fighting to get it back. To the Aboriginals, “sovereignty” is a good word, “assimilation” a bad one.

Fairly or not, many of them view Freeman’s acceptance of the honor of lighting the cauldron as an act of assimilation.

“Cathy Freeman is irrelevant to us,” Isaacs said, as several men and women sat nodding in agreement. “The whole thing was contrived to create the illusion of participation and equality.”

In truth, the use of Freeman by Sydney was no different than the choice of Muhammad Ali to light the cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Games, held in a state that still flies the Confederate flag over government buildings and whose governor at the time, Lester Maddox, vehemently opposed Ali’s re-licensing for a fight in Atlanta in 1970 after his exile for refusing induction into the Army.

Throwing a bone to Ali in the heartrending twilight of his life did nothing to solve the deep racial problems that exist in the United States any more than handing the torch to Cathy Freeman will begin to heal the wounds between Australia and the Aboriginals.

And how different is Cathy Freeman than our own revered athletes, many of whom would be scorned and feared by white society if they did not possess the ability to entertain us on the field or the court or in the ring?

“What is Cathy Freeman worth to them if she doesn’t win?” Isaacs asked. “What is she worth to us if she decides to become one of them?

“If she were to win her gold medal and run right out of the stadium and come here, that would be a great thing. Nobody here would stop her. But Cathy has never once come by to visit us, her own people. Instead, she talks about running for Parliament one day. Well, she can’t play both sides of the fence.”

To the Aboriginals, the issue is not about gold, silver and bronze.

It is about black and white, two colors that when mixed, tend to burn hotter than any Olympic cauldron ever could.