You asked for my opinion, but the toxicity was clear that I wasn’t going to give it. But since you’ve just said that well, here it is…
I spent years in Australia, much of it in rural areas you’d probably label as “Aboriginal communities”, as such the major city folk did, though in reality they were made up of all sorts of people. No one I knew framed life around skin colour or the actions of British colonists long before any of us were born.
While I was there, Australia Day was of contention, and it’s unusual to see it still is. An elder I worked with once put it plainly: colonial dates—Gregorian, Julian, whatever—hold little meaning because they aren’t connected to their culture and lived reality. They did not care and it was hard for them to. More broadly, I was taught that the country is shared, taught, and enjoyed with respect for all living things. That outlook helped me feel at home in a place that was intimidating at first, until I was welcomed in. And if you’ve travelled, you’d know this isn’t unique to Australia, it’s common across indigenous cultures impacted by European colonisation, especially outside Eurasia. A disassociation with the things of different cultures, yet are still having to have them shoved at the forefront and be told how to be about them.
What also struck was how openly critical they were of some Aboriginal activists. They saw them as loud, clueless, and often doing more harm than good. Creating social division to offload what someone once called "the First Fleet guilt” which passes through the generations. It was clear they didn’t want to be spoken for, particularly when those actions clashed with their culture and other’s cultures.
Based on your behaviour—both earlier and now—you appear to ve that type of person. British culture was never a part of them and never will be, yet you treat it as central because it’s central to you. You’ve even gone on to attack a list of people in ways that draw harder lines between groups, when both Aboriginal culture and broader Australian culture aim for the opposite.
The downvote was for you.
Knowing what I know, it’s a real shame to see the energy you put out in this post, knowing it could’ve been spent on so much more things helpful to those communities. But drill down a few layers and I suspect to find it was always about you and not them.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 1 day ago
Okay so you spent some time in some communities experience a small part of a culture, and latched onto the first thing someone told you?
It is in contention and continues to be in contention because it still leaves a mark on the lives of Aboriginal peoples in Australia today. The majority of which might I add live in cities, not remote outback communities. And these things do hold meaning for them, and they are exactly their lived reality. Why don’t you go listen to their voices when they say they want the date changed, when they say they want a treaty, when they say they their words? Why do you subject them all to the opinion of a person living out woop woop? Do you think they are less ‘authentic’ or less worthy of listening to?
Aboriginal people live the same lives the rest of us do, they own houses, raise families, go to school, go to work, follow the Gregorian calendar, and so on and so forth. And they have said time and time again that they want the date changed. But you know what’s best for them?
And no, you downvoted this image long before I started commenting and calling out the racists who have since come out in response to this.
saltesc@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You are speaking to me as if this is my direct opinion, my words, and that I have a stake in anything. I’ve just passed on the sentiment of those I lived alongside around most of Australia at the time. I can share the opinion, but I don’t have the right to form it and hold it as though it is mine.
So, you will have to travel to change these people—just as the Australian government once tried—or accept them for it. In doing so, maybe realise that 300+ first nations should never be placed under a single umbrella term and thought of as such. This was, after all, a contributor to why your amendment to the constitution had pushback from Aunties and Uncles around the country. Again, you’d have to take that one up with them, not me.
If I am to share a personal opinion with you, though, it is simply that the world has made it clear to me; bad people always conduct themselves with the same nature and behaviour. Strangely, there are those that think it’s okay because they hide behind the mask of good intent. But at the end of the day, they’re the same people and their cause, whether good or bad, means little at that point.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 1 day ago
I don’t need to travel to everywhere and speak to everyone to know that the consensus among most Aboriginal peoples is for the date to be changed.
You however maybe need to listen to more voices than one elder.