Indigenous leaders who supported the Yes case at last week’s Voice referendum have written to the prime minister saying the No vote was a “shameful victory”.
I’m not Australian, just interested in this from an outside perspective. You make good points, and, to be fair, as a non Australian I hadn’t heard much about this vote at all. I may have been a bit hasty to form opinions based on what I thought the vote was about.
The indigenous people of Australia have never formally accepted the rule of the current government — legally, the Australian government was founded on a bullshit declaration that there was no human life living on the continent - only animals lived here according to the documents and formal letters and statements made when white people settled on this land. The continent is massive and had thousands of tribes who spoke 250 individual languages. It’s estimated humans have been living here for somewhere between 60,000 and 120,000 years (there’s strong archeological evidence for “at least 60k”, and work is ongoing to verify evidence that suggests 120k years).
The current government was forced on those people, and there horrific crimes committed (mass murder, arbitrary killings, children were systematically stolen from parents and raised by the church, in some regions the local government paid a cash bounty for anyone who brought an indigenous head to them, etc. It was bad). Things are not that bad now, but they are still far from perfect, and they need to be solved. There also needs to be some form of treaty between Australia and the indigenous nations who’s land was blatantly and obviously stolen (some of the land that white people aren’t using has been given back, but that’s not a treaty).
Our constitution does not acknowledge the existence of indigenous people. Our national anthem claims this is a “young” country when, at 60,000+ years the indigenous people of this country are in fact the oldest still living civilisation in the world. It’s very very clear that the founders of this country did not consider indigenous people to be part of the country, and the constitution needs to be updated to reflect the modern legal state where they are an integral part of Australia.
Just a quick response about the National Anthem. The official words were changed to “for we are one and free” to remove the reference to the age of the country.
… that’s nice, although I’m struggling to understand how we changed that line but kept the “free” bit.
And are we “one”? Seems pretty clear we are a nation divided especially when athletes representing our country refuse to even sing the national anthem.
I’m not Australian, just interested in this from an outside perspective. You make good points, and, to be fair, as a non Australian I hadn’t heard much about this vote at all. I may have been a bit hasty to form opinions based on what I thought the vote was about.
Ah I see. A little more background then…
The indigenous people of Australia have never formally accepted the rule of the current government — legally, the Australian government was founded on a bullshit declaration that there was no human life living on the continent - only animals lived here according to the documents and formal letters and statements made when white people settled on this land. The continent is massive and had thousands of tribes who spoke 250 individual languages. It’s estimated humans have been living here for somewhere between 60,000 and 120,000 years (there’s strong archeological evidence for “at least 60k”, and work is ongoing to verify evidence that suggests 120k years).
The current government was forced on those people, and there horrific crimes committed (mass murder, arbitrary killings, children were systematically stolen from parents and raised by the church, in some regions the local government paid a cash bounty for anyone who brought an indigenous head to them, etc. It was bad). Things are not that bad now, but they are still far from perfect, and they need to be solved. There also needs to be some form of treaty between Australia and the indigenous nations who’s land was blatantly and obviously stolen (some of the land that white people aren’t using has been given back, but that’s not a treaty).
Our constitution does not acknowledge the existence of indigenous people. Our national anthem claims this is a “young” country when, at 60,000+ years the indigenous people of this country are in fact the oldest still living civilisation in the world. It’s very very clear that the founders of this country did not consider indigenous people to be part of the country, and the constitution needs to be updated to reflect the modern legal state where they are an integral part of Australia.
Just a quick response about the National Anthem. The official words were changed to “for we are one and free” to remove the reference to the age of the country.
… that’s nice, although I’m struggling to understand how we changed that line but kept the “free” bit.
And are we “one”? Seems pretty clear we are a nation divided especially when athletes representing our country refuse to even sing the national anthem.