During the Meeting of the Region of Western Macedonia, the Regional Governor Giorgos Amanatidis, in the presence of the Deputy Regional Governors of Kozani, Kastoria, Grevena and Florina and dozens of mayors and representatives of the Region as well as Macedonian officials, presented the Honorary Distinctions of the local regional government to two honored personalities of the Diaspora. Honored were the late Zisis Dardalis as a Great Benefactor of Hellenism and specifically of Greek Studies, sports and philanthropy as well as his decisive contribution to the genesis, prosperity and contribution of the National Centre for Hellenic Studies (EKEME) to La Trobe University in Melbourne, as well as Professor Dr. Anastasios M. Tamis for his “multifaceted contribution to social linguistics and the Greek language and culture and his decisive and pioneering role in recording and highlighting the history of Greek migration and settlement in the countries of Oceania, East Asia, Central and South America. The event took place on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 9 at the Prefectural Palace of the Region in Kozani and was covered by the media, press and television.
The ceremony was also attended by former MPs, local leaders, including the veteran MP, Nikolaos Papafilippou, the former Minister of Macedonia and Thrace. Mr. Nikolaos Tsiartsionis and his wife, Dimitra, and the permanent representative of the Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies, Mr. Christos Tsiaras, president of the Beekeepers of Chalkidiki. It was preceded by an official dinner of the Region for the honorees in a restaurant in Kozani, which was attended by the Regional Governor, Mr. G. Amanatidis, the Executive Secretary of the Region, Mr. G. Tzitzikas, the daughter and granddaughter and son-in-law of the late Zisis Dardalis (Rina, Vicky and Dimitrios), the charismatic and visionary former Minister of Macedonia Mr. N. Tsiartsionis and his wife Dimitra, the couple Anastasios and Kalliopi Tamis and Mr. C. Tsiaras.
The Regional Governor of Western Macedonia, Giorgos Amanatidis, stressed that it is a duty to keep alive the memory of people who honored the homeland with their work, strengthened the national identity and left an indelible imprint on global Hellenism, but also of those who contribute over time in fields related to scientific research and cultural heritage. As he underlined, the recognition of such personalities by the Region of Western Macedonia is an act of gratitude and historical vindication.
The Mayor of Voio, Christos Zefklis, speaking about Zisis Dardalis, underlined that he passed away in 2023, leaving behind a path full of struggle, creation and contribution. As he noted, Dardalis was a man who managed to emerge through adversity, without studies and with minimal supplies, but with boldness, insight and indomitable will, he became one of the most successful businessmen of the Diaspora in Australia.
In his speech, former MP Nikolaos Papafilippou praised the contribution and the man Zisis Dardalis, the difficult years of orphanhood, the years of hard labor in Greece and his expatriation to Australia, where he achieved great things to benefit the Diaspora and Greece. He also referred to the creative and written work of Professor Anastasios Tamis, whom the late Benefactor Dardalis supported in his pioneering work to establish the first and largest university research and archival centre of the Greek Diaspora and to offer his name in the Hellenic Archives of the Diaspora as a debt of gratitude at the suggestion of Dr. Tamis.
The daughter of the late Great Benefactor Zisis Dardalis, Rina Dardali-Lada stressed that her father deeply loved Greece and especially his birthplace, Siatista. With emotion, he appealed to the local leaders, businessmen, politicians and people of the region to support the place, to ensure that the youth did not leave and to create jobs for the young people of Western Macedonia. Present at the event were relatives and friends of the family, even Zisis Dardalis’ eldest granddaughter, Vicky Lada, whose photo with her proud grandfather always adorned his office on the premises of the Marathon factory in Melbourne.
Professor Dr. Anastasios Myrodis Tamis, taking the floor, warmly thanked for the honorary distinction, noting that this event primarily honours Zisis Dardalis and secondarily himself. As he mentioned, for expatriate Greeks, such recognition is at the same time a struggle, an agony, a test and an achievement. He stressed that this is a process that brings responsibilities, makes people more humble and possibly highlights the limitations and actions for improvement, so that there is a continuous and qualitative development, both personal and that of Hellenism and the society in which they live.
Dr. Tamis, among other things, in his speech to the leaders of the local government and region of Western Macedonia, stressed the following:
“Expatriate Hellenism and its institutions in the Diaspora are recipients of very serious socio-economic and political influences, dangerous mutations, provocative differentiations and pressures, which put to a constant test the cultural physiognomy and ethnolinguistic identity of millions of people, who trace their origin back to Greece and to the Greeks.
In recent years, the forms and structures of the Greek communities in the Diaspora, the way they survive and the method of networking their human resources have been profoundly affected. The methods of resistance against their ethnolinguistic assimilation are being modified, the strategies of reaction against their cultural leveling are being revised, new ways are being formed. The modern effects of globalised economics and politics, globalised television, the telecommunications revolution and the attempted globalisation of cultures, the onslaught of artificial intelligence, profoundly, negatively and positively, affect the behavior, form and structure of Greek communities in their countries of settlement.
These changes put the structure and character of the Greek Diaspora in constant transition, differentiate the old models of social formation, form diverse and expanded sources of action and generally strengthen the ties of the communities with Greece and Cyprus.
In the past, the Greek Diaspora operated on the basis of a cohesive dedication to cultural heritage and ancestral relationship and formed a triadic status between the Nation of the Greeks, the Greek Diaspora and the country of settlement. Nowadays, the role of the Greek Diaspora has expanded, highlighting the relations of the Greek communities not only in relation to the country of settlement and Greece (Greece & Cyprus) but in sequence with all the other countries involved, negatively or positively, in matters concerning Hellenism. Greeks in the Diaspora retain their desire for ethnolinguistic autonomy and their readiness to react when their cultural achievements are threatened.
In the past, the Greeks of the Diaspora sought to face the challenges they encountered, within the community, with an introversion that isolated, that drained the power of resistance and shrunk the dynamics of reaction. Nowadays, global technology offers convergence mechanisms in the Greek communities of the Diaspora, opportunities for creative reconstruction of the past, two-way dynamics of continuous and fruitful communication with Greek and global Hellenism.
Honorable rulers of Western Macedonia, the epicentre of the ongoing changes worldwide and within our common homeland, Greece, are not the Governments and their institutions, but the people. Baudelaire had aptly stated that “global decline or progress will not be expressed in political institutions but in the trivialization of our hearts”. At the same time, we are living in a complacent nihilism, which is morbidly spreading in the world, a nihilism that adapts our attitude to the achievements of society, the brutal consumerism, leaving the field of action unguarded in the plundering of reality by a globalisation that deactivates and inactivates its citizens, a society without classical education, with universities that train cadres but do not educate, with a professional training, without the fundamental knowledge of ancient Greek thought that will lead to the quality of our lives. The worst thing for Hellenism is for the Greek communities of the Diaspora to be formed into masses without will and without prospects, because in this way we will mortally injure the ideology of progress and instead of citizens we will create idle individuals, who will face the future embarrassed”.
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