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Culture is defined by Wiki as “an umbrella term which encompasses the social behaviour and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.” So you could apply that definition to just about everything in any society and claim it to be cultural. However, I reckon that it is the literature and the poetry and the arts in any society which could be viewed as the vanguard of their culture. In particular, I want to focus on our recent cultural/political obsession with ‘diversity’ and ‘identity’ in literature and the arts, and to ask the question: Is ‘Indigenous’ literature and ‘Indigenous’ art – racist?
Of course it is. Is it overwhelmingly hate speech directed against white fellas ? Absolutely it is. Could we say it is all about entitlement and privilege? Well yes, it is because overwhelmingly the authors and poets and artists have achieved publication and obtained grants because of their race and not because of the quality of their work. Do ‘Indigenous’ Australians view themselves as first-class Australians and the rest of us as second-class Australians? You would be hard pressed not to agree; many consider themselves the ‘First Australians’ and view the rest of us as ‘invaders’. So why are Australian taxpayers’ dollars being spent supporting what could well be described as this black supramecist reactionary ideology? Why do our governments, politicians and academics all support this clearly racist diatribe? If it is payback for years of oppression, does such a primitive form of reactionary politics do anyone any good? I would argue it is not only bad for the whitefellas and their children, it is also disastrous for the Aboriginal people. It is certainly disastrous for ‘art’ and the quality of work we expect of our cultural experts. Are we creating a new class system here in Australia, where the woke ‘Indigenous’ are suffocating the true Aboriginal people with their virtuous entitlement and privileged access, to create the fake narratives which define their people. Are we sponsoring a clearly racist ideology in the name of compassion?
I recently found myself in an online battle with a performance poetry group in Adelaide about the poetry of Ali Cobby Eckermann. I found myself arguing that she was using her platform in poetry to further black-arm-band political issues which are still highly contested. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that all ‘Indigenous’ poetry suffers from the same thing — that it was all (and I mean absolutely all) about Black Armband politics – the victimhood of the Aboriginal people, massacres, Stolen Generation, genocide and, of course, systemic Australian racism.
Kate Grenville’s Secret River has spawned a legion of novels about massacres, including the highly contested Bruce Pascoe book Convincing Ground. There have been films about nasty white fellas from Rabbit Proof Fence to Samson and Delilah, but there was nothing about joy or hope or gratitude. The winner of the 2020 Archibald prize was a naive portrait of the footballer Adam Goodes. There was no work in novel or poem or film or painting about the wonderful freedoms of a fully functioning democracy operating well, nothing about self discovery, of finding oneself in voice and spirit, nothing about the individual journey toward enlightenment. There is no Indigenous novel about the overcoming of adversity, the discovering of oneself in a position to make a good living in a free society. No book approaching Bert Facey’s A Fortunate Life, nothing like A Room with a View or Voss or Cloud Street or ‘Boy Swallows Universe’, no poems dealing with a subject like Les Murray’s An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow — nothing bereft of black armband politics and Indigenous virtue signalling.
Poetry and literature and art are disciplines or vehicles to explore anything, anything at all. True, some writers focus on, say, crime or science fiction, or politics, or history, but they have rarely, traditionally, just focused on one race and one particular politic over and over again. Post Modern ‘woke’ literature and art seems to want to call each identity group an actual genre of the art or literature or poetry it espouses. For example, we have Indigenous literature, gay art, women’s poetry and feminist poetry, Indigenous literature, etc. It’s as if each one is a whole new genre of the discipline, unique and separate from the traditional form of the art.
These categories demand that no person who is not a member of that group be permitted to enter it. For a whitefella to make a comment or have an opinion about Indigenous issues is considered ‘cultural imperialism’ and therefore inappropriate, even ‘racist’. For a man to talk about women’s issues is also verboten, just as it is for a straight person to speak about gay matters. Our literature has become categorised and closed-off into identity groups which claim to provide ‘diversity’ yet ban ninety percent of the population’s access to the form while reducing the quality of the work exponentially.
Excellence is diminished and the possibility of genius, of breakthrough works of great art, effectively extinguished. ‘Indigenous’ literature and art are thus only available to ‘Indigenous’ people. They are entirely based on ‘race’ and, as far as I know, this is the very definition of the word ‘racism’: to exclude people from anything based only on the colour of their skin while completely ignoring the quality of their character, merit or excellence.
The ‘Indigenous’ have slowly but surely (over the last fifty years or so) become an entirely different ‘race’ from the Aboriginal race, whilst at the same time feeding off the traditional people’s culture and tragedies and concerns — like a parasite feeds from its host. The ‘Indigenous’ are people, like Bruce Pascoe, who have intimate academic knowledge of Aboriginal culture but minimal or no actual genealogical connection. They are almost exclusively based in big cities and are almost invariably university educated.
The Indigenous are also exclusively adherents of a BLM, revolutionary, sovereignty-based, leftist politic — people who fight for token issues such as Invasion Day and Recognition and Makarata – mouthing slogans such as “Always was, always will be’ and “Pay the Rent”. These are the people who also make up Indigenous literature almost exclusively. I do not know of even one Indigenous author or poet or artist whose work is not entirely focused on and within the Black Armband political orthodoxy.
If I go through Vogue’s list of ‘Essential Indigenous Australian Reading’, I start with Archie Roach’s autobiography Tell Me Why. “This memoir, which took home the award for 2020 Indie Book of the Year in the category of non-fiction, tells the story of celebrated Indigenous Australian musician, Archie Roach, who became a member of the Stolen Generations when he was forcibly removed from his family at just two years of age. Powerful and poignant, this read is a must.” Next we have the Anita Heiss’ diatribe Growing Up Aboriginal Australia, which advertises itself as “the colourful and confronting stories of family, country and belonging from the perspective of a number of First Nations individuals, including footballers and authors.”
Then we have Black Politics by Sarah Maddison. “Author Sarah Maddison interviewed a number or prominent activists, politicians and Aboriginal leaders including Mick Dodson, Tom Calma, Alison Anderson and Jackie Huggins, in an effort to put together a text that explores the dynamics of Aboriginal politics.” Then Jack Charles autobiography Born-again Blakfella, which “chronicles the life of the musician and Senior Victorian Australian of the Year, who was stolen from his mother when he was merely a few months old.” And then Truganini by Cassandra Pybus which “sets out to tell the story of Truganini, one of the last full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian women who remains an important figure in Australian history. Filled with original eyewitness accounts, this read is one that will challenge your knowledge of the history of Tasmania.”
Indigenous literature begins to look so similar that Jack Charles’ story could be Archie Roach’s, Anita Heis could be Sally Morgan. All of Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poems seem to be the same poem … and it seems that there has only ever been one poem written by the new ‘Indigenous’ poets, which is also the same poem Alice Walker wrote fifty years ago. It seems that the ‘Indigenous’ is not just a new race of people, but also a race which cannot yet emerge from their grief and resentment and payback. Indigenous literature (like much New Age white literature, if we must now speak in these racist terms) seems to me to be more like therapy than actual literature. Now my reflection this morning, in the company of the Holy Spirit, asked me to check on my ‘white privilege’ before continuing with my thinking around this subject. So I have spent my morning meditation contemplating the reasons why I’m writing this eminently dangerous and unpopular essay. The following few paragraphs try to explain why this is important.
Six Northern Territory Aboriginal children, each known by authorities to be at risk of severe harm, died in tragic circumstances from causes including suicide and petrol sniffing and without receiving “genuine assistance or support”, a coroner has found. — The Australian, Dec 17, 2020
This is not happening because of “structural racism”. It is happening because these children have not been educated properly and their abusers will get away with it because they will claim ‘traditional factors’ and ‘cultural disadvantage’. The magistrates will let them off with light sentences because of these arrogantly virtuous reasons. If they do go to jail or a youth centre they will claim further racist crimes are committed by their jailers, that they are over represented in these institutions, and that they should be given special consideration because of their race.
This is why John Howard sent in the army and was forced to try an ‘intervention’. Yet even after all of that, here it is again. Young innocent lives being hung by the neck until they are dead in lonely rooms in isolated Aboriginal communities after being sexually abused (for years), drinking themselves into alcoholism, petrol-sniffing and into very bad drugs. And the ministers and the public servants responsible pass it off, hardly blinking, as a result of “white racism”. Have a listen to what they say. Just listen to this infuriating response:
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar said the inquest highlighted how policies designed for Indigenous people were failing them.
“It is clear that significant work needs to be done to overcome the structural racism and disadvantage that disproportionately affects our First Nations peoples around the country,” she said.
Really? ‘STRUCTURAL RACISM’. Well how about that!
And meanwhile the leaders of the Aboriginal community issue press releases about the Uluru Statement and ‘the Makarata” … and Anita Heiss gets another grant to make herself comfortable and middle class in Australia, publishing books like Am I Black Enough For You, and Ellen Van Neervan gets grants to publish contested Indigenous war cry poetry about the trauma of ‘invasion’, and Bruce Pascoe publishes books which claim Aboriginal people to be the inventors of bread, democracy and astronomy. They all dine in the best restaurants and drink the finest wines, congratulating themselves on their brilliant minds and successful careers. It’s obscene as, over the weeks ahead, we can expect another six or seven or eight teenage suicides in isolated Aboriginal communities. Meanwhile, Pascoe and his mates promote the new travel guide to Aboriginal Australia. I hope their recommendations include a visit to these isolated communities, perhaps even into the lonely rooms in which these girls hanged themselves … alone, bereft and crying with despair. Genocide by suicide, as it were. If the Aboriginal birth rate were as low as the white birth rate — and there were not quite so many Australians now ‘identifying’ as Indigenous’ — the Aboriginal population would be going backwards a slow ‘genocide’.
Just as well-meaning missionaries attempting to assimilate Aboriginal children into white society through instruction in Christianity were vilified for ‘stealing’ children and attempted genocide, so will future historians come to vilify the ‘welfare period’ as yet another attempt to kill Aboriginal people with meaninglessness.
The inner-city progressive Left has used Aboriginal people as a fetish for the narrative of ‘primitivism’, proposed through Rousseau and others as the Garden of Eden. They mourn the primativism they have lost as if it were ‘innocence’. They claim that all narratives, all cultures, are equal. Under this thinking, the Aboriginal people are encouraged to immerse themselves in ‘culture’ — and by doing so, they are dying younger and at almost four times the rate of whitefellas. Reconciliation and Recognition are being used to wipe out the Aboriginal race. Land Rights have supplied land for Aboriginal funerals, and much of the business of many isolated communities revolves around constant funerals. Eventually, there will be only ‘The Indigenous’ left. And that is exactly what they want.
This resentment is fuelled on a daily basis in Aboriginal communities via endless SBS and ABC documentaries and mea culpas, NITV war cries from the university-educated urban ‘Indigenous’, who are more socialist than they are Aboriginal. Communities drink in the resentment and anger they should feel for the terrible crimes that the whitefellas admit to and beg forgiveness for on a daily basis.
There is a now a new race of people which has been created in Australia over the past twenty-or-so years named ‘The Indigenous’ – which is feeding off full blood Aboriginal people like a parasite feeds off its host. I say ‘full blood” with complete consciousness that I will be called ‘a racist’ for using that term – yet I deliberately use it, because I know that the true full blood Aboriginal people have no objection to it and have, in fact, grown to like it because they too object to the genetically-minute ‘Indigeneous’ takeover of their affairs.
They view “The Indigenous” as invaders of their culture and the perpetrators of atrocity by virtue signal and this now kills their children. Indigenous literature and poetry and art now also dominate Australian culture with dot- and swirl-painted Qantas airliners flying all over the world. Fake ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremonies erase our National Anthem at all major events. BLM one-kneed virtue signallers going down in front of MCG crowds, barefoot cricketers begging for forgiveness before the world. Australia is now known for its Indigenous people in places like France and Europe and the US. If you didn’t know better (like many in the US) you would think that Australia was an Indigenous State without whitefellas. Yet all we can hear from the ideological mainstream media is further calls for ‘Recognition’.
Phew! A pretty accurate description of what’s happening in Australia. The main issue as I see it is where is it going to end? What is the end goal of all this activism? No matter what concession is made there is always another demand, another reason why the present generation of non-Aboriginal Australians should be feeling guilty and indulge in self-loathing. People are saying “What else do you want us to do so this issue will go away and we can all get on with our lives where we all have allegiance to a nation state, Australia, and one system?” Noel Pearson wrote an interesting article in the Australian on Monday where he said – “But in the larger scheme concerning the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Nations in the nation …. this anthem business is a useless diversion”. Great words but what is this desired place in the nation we are diverting from? No-one is telling us. He continues – “The problem is that any individual with a Twitter account can come up with the next symbolic change agenda item, and start prosecuting it as if it’s the most important priority in Indigenous and national affairs.” I totally agree, but what is the priority in Indigenous affairs that has precedence over yet another warm and fuzzy symbolic change? The reader is none the wiser. First of all the activists of all stripes tell us that the anthem is lousy because it says Australia is “young” and when it’s changed they then say it’s not enough. But what is enough? That’s what we want to know. He is against identity politics and most people would agree with that. He then goes on to say “Ours is a cause for the recognition that Australia has a long history preceding the Europeans, and this history still lives in the present. Our cause is of justice.” Noble and stirring words and most people would know and accept that historical fact but so what? How is that historical fact related to justice? Everyone would like to know, so it can be fixed. In other writings he has referred to the 3 strands of Australian society – the Aboriginal, the British and the migrant. What about us natives whose ancestors may have come from Europe in the middle 1800s have no connection with Europe and have developed a native culture that includes the acceptance, use and respect of Aboriginal place names because that’s what we grew up with? Don’t we exist and deserve a strand or are we forever migrants in the land of our birth, with which we have a love and a special connection? I am also in total agreement with his statement in the article “Unity is foundational..” but what does the rest of the sentence mean in real terms “…and will only be real if grounded in careful recognition”??
The urban activists, referenced in Patrick McCauley’s article also don’t represent the bulk of urban people who have some Aboriginal background and just want to get on with their lives as mainstream Australian citizens. But there are some whose claim to aboriginality beggars belief. I saw a TV new item recently about an organisation supporting young Aboriginals to study medicine and go and work in Aboriginal communities because they would understand the culture better. The premise is correct, as I have met British doctors who have worked in Africa and Asia where the traditional view of illness and medicines still exists to a degree and differs from contemporary Western views and that needs to be taken into consideration when working in those areas. But the “students” on display were urbanised and with blond or red hair and skin tones whiter than white. The mind boggled as how these blond young people from a contemporary urban background and education the same as other Australian kids are going to be any better in practising medicine in remote outback Aboriginal populations where an appreciation of the cultural medical beliefs would be useful (but hardly relevant in an urban setting).
But I think we all know what the end game is – a separate racist apartheid type Aboriginal nation within the nation, but we are not told the pathway or what the end result would look like. The latest development, according to the ABC, is a suggestion that Aboriginals have a separate football competition. In another article in The Australian on the weekend of 12-13 December there was an article outlining a new policing approach in WA by not applying existing legislated laws covering all Australians to young Aboriginal offenders and instead “in the Aboriginal cultural context they are held to account in front of their community elders and their family, and it brings shame on them.” Possibly worth a try in remote communities , but urbanised kids? Aboriginals are not the only people with a culture. Something like that was tried in Sweden with young drug offenders. The police would ask the parents to come in and they would sit down with the parents and the young offender and discuss the issues and offer the offender two options – one was to be charged and go to court and possibly jail and the other was to stay at home with parents undertake a rehab course at a special facility. If that did not work and they re-offended they would be subject to the normal course of the law. What was of concern in the article and points to this separate development goal of the activists was the proposal re more serious crimes. e.g. “Some remote communities in the state are already exercising local authority with the knowledge and support of Mr Dawson and the WA Police. In May, the authorities in the outback town of Newman acted with his knowledge when they supervised community punishment for the grandfather of an Indigenous boy charged with the murder of a young Indigenous woman. Relatives of the dead girl travelled from the remote Pilbara community of Jigalong to hit the grandfather with sticks. Tensions in the town then eased.” Sounds good if the offender is also subject to WA law, but why hit the grandfather and not the offender?. In the culture of other Australians we used to spank our children on the bottom or around the legs if they stepped out of line or we got the strap or cane at school if we played up. Does this WA initiative mean we can go back to our cultural practices in relation to child discipline? Of course not. As well as the racists in the Aboriginal community seeking separation (vide the issuing of Aboriginal “Passports”) we have our own specimens in the white “woke” patronising brigade pushing identity politics who say it’s uncivilised for white people to spank children but it is OK for Aboriginals to beat people with sticks.
Many Aboriginal people would claim that they love their children even more than white fellas do … and would never hurt their children deliberately and allow them a much greater freedom than whitfellas would and in my observations there is a certain amount of truth to this. However I think there are Aboriginal parents who don’t know how to bring their children up within the two cultures. Our education system enables and gives license to a revolutionary black arm band massacre and genocide oriented Aboriginal history to all students from Grade 1 through to university – so how do Aboriginal parents prevent isolated Aboriginal children from growing up with a full on sense of resentment and obtusely – with an unrealistic attitude of entitlement and privilege.
Excellent comment Padraic (I have read you for years and years) thank you.
A year or so ago, I was on Kangaroo Island and visited the Flinders Chase National Park Visitors Centre. Their display included five paintings of aboriginal legends each accompanied by a text that explained the legend. At first glance I took them to be by Ainslie Roberts. Some of you may remember Roberts from the 1960s. His genre was retelling Aboriginal myths and stories per medium of oil paintings – and very good they were too. At least I liked them very much, as did many others judging by his success. Roberts published a number of books of his paintings in collaboration with Charles Mountford who wrote the text of the legend accompanying each painting.
But no, on closer inspection these works were revealed as the work of one Jacob Stengle, an Aboriginal artist, quite clearly of no mean talent. I looked in vain for some acknowledgement of Ainslie Roberts’ influence on this series of paintings.
For some obscure reason I felt aggrieved on Roberts’ part. These works are clearly derivative. So I decided to look further into Jacob Stengle.
To give him credit, he appears to be quite a private man. He has no Facebook page nor any other significant internet presence, not even a Wikipedia entry. He was born in 1954.
Tandanya is a multi-arts centre in Adelaide owned by the National Aboriginal Cultural Institute Inc. Back in 2015 it sponsored an exhibition by Stengle. The press release http://www.tandanya.com.au/events/jacob-stengle-press-release/ tells us:
Born in Renmark, South Australia, Jacob’s mother was a Ngarrindgeri woman from Raukkan (Point McLeay) and his father from Prague Czechoslovakia. When Jacob was three his mother died and he was subsequently placed in Colebrook Children’s Home in the Adelaide Hills, thus becoming one of the members of the Stolen Generations.
What this quote omits to say is that Stengle’s father had departed the scene well before his mother’s death. It also ignores the unpalatable truth that many aboriginal communities themselves regarded mixed race children as outcasts.
I decided not to proceed with an article on this because I have no real gripe with Jacob Stengle and no evidence that he himself subscribes to the idea that he was stolen. He seems a quite inoffensive man. I suspect he was bestowed with the ‘stolen generations’ mantle by others, as it fits the glib narrative. But he does not appear to have repudiated it.
Great paper Patrick.
You have covered all areas of concern which are dismantling the very fabric of Australian society.
I have to add that U live in rural/urban Australia and the identifiers do not want to be considered Australian and are forming their on ghettos almost.
Embracing white sycophants who support their saving of ‘sacred site’ to close down our farmed forests to a Great Nationl Koala Park – under a land claim wherein they become managers of several parl and one ‘cultural park’ being Nambucca State Forest.
I have shared this paper wherever I can – people need to be aware of the plans for a 7th state – a black state.
Thanks also to the commentators above.
*I live in rural/urban
*own ghettos
*National.
I must add that our local Councils are supporting this new cultural drive – mine in changing the name of Australia Day to ‘NATIONAL CELEBRATION DAY AWARDS 2021’ – out of ‘respect for the indigenous who have suffered trauma since colonisation.
Another supports The Great National Koala Park – that is closing a sustainable primary industry and locking up the forest.
Oh dear what a “Pandora’s Box” the Turnbull’ and Morrison Governments and Shorten and Albanese Oppositions have blighted Australia with. It stems from the “Cultural Appropriations” they introduced by changing Ministerial nomenclature from “Aboriginal” to “Indigenous” without any change of responsibilities. By allowing the terminology change they have denied the 17 or 18 Million of Citizens born in Australia of their birthright for the benefit of perhaps 700,000 citizens (many of disputed heritage).
People born in Australia of some or all European Blood have long since been called “Currency Lads” or “Currency Lasses” and they have not been called “British Subjects” since 1949 and legally since 1983. They have a natural claim to be “Indigenous Australians” . But if they have Aboriginal blood it also entitles them to be called indigenous Australians but this is not their exclusive right. In fact if their aboriginal blood line extends beyond 8 to 9 thousand years then they might be justified to claiming to be “Indigenous Sahulians” but that would create a cultural problem with the aboriginal citizens of Papua and New Guinea. Please note that the Western Australian Government which had made the same cultural appropriation has reverted back to using Aboriginal instead of Indigenous.
Back in 1996 the great Australian Poet Les Murray published a poem “The Suspension of Knock”, the second verse saying:
“Where will we hold Australia,
we who have no other country?
Not Indigenous, merely born here,
shall we be Australians in Paraguay
again, or on a Dublin street corner?
Some of them like us in Dublin.”
Les Murray was an Indigenous Australian born in Nabiac but he married Budapest-born fellow-student Valerie Morelli in 1962 and she, like me, was not Indigenous but an Australian by Contract (by Naturalisation if you prefer) but with her own enduring love of her adopted Country.
There were many horrible acts committed by Aboriginal people and by Convicts and Settlers while the Australian continent was a series of British Colonies. No living Australian participated any of them. Their ancestors chose to become a single nation called Australia starting on the 1st of January 1901. Judge us by what we have done since, condemn us for the wrongs we have committed and praise us for the good which has flowed from our toil since that date. But do not steal the birthright of 17 to 18 Million Australians to appease the spite of those who prosper from promoting a black armband of history (much of which is a fiction).
For many the road from Stone Age to Iron Age was a difficult one. No matter where they joined the road every living Australian has travelled it with more safety than when they began. Don’t let the current travels of 25 Million Australian on the road into the unknowns of the Technological Age be hampered by those seeking to destroy the road.
The use of the term race, should be qualified as ‘race.’ There is no Aboriginal race and never was. The many different peoples first called Indians, then Natives, then Aborigines by the British were descended from different and earlier migrations and colonisations and were a mix of peoples, and what was once called races. Modern genetics says there is less than 1% difference between so-called races and so, in essence there are no races.
Beyond the different tribal ancestry, Australians who register Aboriginal Ancestry and call themselves indigenous, cover a broad range from 100% Aboriginal ancestry, very few of those, to less than 1% ancestry, and many, perhaps most, have more Anglo-European ancestry than Aboriginal. Whatever mix of what could be called ‘race’ is at work, none of it creates any kind of racial unity, even if one were to apply the term.
There is an element of neo-feudalism here. An aristocratic class who, by right of birth, have special rights to their feudal lands, special rights under law, pay no taxes, and soon to have their own House of Review in Parliament, and separate identity in the Constitution. Its like 1066 in reverse – where the “defeated” end up in charge, being endlessly supported by the “victors”!
rosross, I think that we who subscribe to Quadrant on Line are literate enough not to be mislead by the occasional typo that we are all guilty of from time to time. I’m sure the Editor may be forgiven if he misses the odd one or two, and I, at least, would rather see Quadrant’s limited resources used more constructively than on professional sub-editing. Indeed, judging by the print media that I see, I often wonder if sub-editing is an extinct trade.
I take your point rossross about “race”. As far as I am concerned there is only one “race” – the human race. But in the context of these commentaries I use the term “racist” to fight fire with fire.
It’s pretty clear where this is leading to. Plenty of aboriginals really believe that only they should live in Australia (I spoke to an Indian security guard who worked at my gf’s pharmacy who told me he’d talked with these various groups of aboriginals and got that from them directly). Now activists and “leaders” realise that kite won’t really fly, and don’t push for it. Instead they push to make aboriginals the landowning caste/race in this country. This has been the aim since “Nugget” Coombs and Co in the mid-70’s, and is really what the “treaty” push is about. Sovereignty was clearly invoked by Coombs as what the rest of us would get out of signing such a “treaty”. But typically this notion that aboriginals have “sovereignty” has now become an article of faith, and something that will not be given up. So now there won’t be this “treaty of cessation” Coombs talked of. Any formalised cessation would be denounced as “colonialism” and “imperialism”. We will ultimately get all land in Australia shifted to leasehold with rents paid to aboriginal authorities (the land will be held in common with the wealth controlled by whomever runs these organisations). Pay the Rent and “always was and always will be aboriginal land” are meaningless unless they mean this! But whilst this was more or less the totality of Coombs’ aim, it isn’t enough anymore. Aboriginals will have a separate set of laws and be judged by different courts and subject to different sanctions. We can already see the germ and f this today. The push will come for a fully sovereign “voice”, with Aboriginals not only travelling on separate passports, but this “Voice” being able to conclude separate treaty’s and other agreements with other countries independent of the Commonwealth Government. What do we get out of it? Well they graciously allow us to live here, and supposedly in clear conscience (a monstrously expensive one). Except I’ve no doubt the aboriginal leadership will still find it convenient to blame us for aboriginal social problems and demand further redress on top of “the rent”. Except there will be no legal pushback against these demands. Like excessive LGBT claims it won’t end well, but they’ll just push until disaster strikes. Doubtless they’ll try to gang up on whitey with the various “ethnics”, and this may well work for a time. But this is where we are headed. The woke white virtue signallers simultaneously deny this whilst proclaiming the justice of it. Just as they imagine it won’t negatively impact on them personally. But the various campaigns are meaningless unless this or something very like it is the end campaigners have in mind.
Indeed Homo sapiens can be classified into races. Following is an extract from my paper at https://www.scribd.com/document/458064355/.
Racial classifications and sub-classifications are many. However, there are four main racial classifications into which modern Homo sapiens can be classified, the Australoids, Mongoloids, Negroids and Caucasoids. All have measureable and usually obvious physical characteristics, often involving the structure of the modern skull. The genetic origins of these modern races are different, with each having interbred at various times with different archaic humans, including especially the Neanderthals between about 65 to 47 thousand years ago (kya) and the Denisovans about 54 to 44 kya.
The Aborigine is of, or is descended from, the Australoid race.
Much of modern thinking shies away from the concept of race because of discrimination against particular races in the past. The preferred view of activists is that Aboriginality is defined by ethnicity, not race. Ethnicity is based on the social and cultural groups to which a person belongs. Hence, anyone living according to Aboriginal tradition and culture is an Aborigine. Aboriginal descent seems irrelevant to many activists. Note that a person can have more than one ethnicity but only one race, even if it is “mixed race”.
Activists deny race by claiming that “no single gene has been discovered that defines race”. They ignore that genetic differences overall are relevant and support the case for race.
Such activism denies reality. People of different races do have different physical characteristics. Activists seem fixated on continuing to conflate the physical and genetic differences of race with social inequality. Equality and inequality are social constructs, not inherent in race.
I agree with you lhackett01. Distinct races do exist. My comment about the “human” race was because I believe that racial differences do not set people apart socially and how they behave as basic human beings. There is a common thread to humanity. The differences are social constructs in the form of “culture”. Many of these activists seem to think that “culture” is genetically inherited, like race or skin colour. We saw that here in Australia with the “convict stain” (apparently an inheritable trait) which was a big deal before and at Federation (and I suspect is still around in some quarters). If you are to have a stable nation state where all citizens are equal under the law then you can’t have special laws for some citizens based on “race” or “culture”. One they can’t help and the other is their own business. “Race” is also applied by the PC mob to different cultural groups of people who are from the same race, so the words “racist” and “racism” are losing their original meaning in the whirlpool of modern identity politics.
Patrick, your comments about cultural appropriation are sound and the belief must be resisted. The idea is ridiculous. Why is it forbidden for a white artist to create a dot painting merely because Aborigines claim the technique is owned by them when the converse is seen as acceptable. That is, many Aboriginal artists paint using techniques developed in Western and other schools. Albert Namatjira was an exceptional example.
Cultural appropriation, however, is now encouraged in many other spheres. Actors throughout history have taken the part of peoples from other sexes, races and colours. However and importantly, when acting the part of a person of different colour, great pains were taken to replicate the sex, colour and the language of the subject (men often played the part of women in Shakespearean plays). Not today! Today we have, in the recent David Copperfield film, an obviously Indian man (Dev Patel) playing the part of the English boy David Copperfield and an obviously Asian man (Benedict Wong) playing the part of Mr Wickfield, an Englishman. This ‘colour blind’ casting destroys the authenticity of the story, as it does in the several other new colour blind casted plays and movies. Why has this happened? Because we ‘must’ not see racial, colour, or cultural differences anymore. This is annoying and confusing to anyone who knows the stories.
What do these conflicting scenarios show? The message is that Aborigines must be set apart and given special status. For anyone and anything else, there are no rules.
What else may I ask? Will we see Peppa Pig depicted as a cow, perhaps, or even a tree?
At the risk of sounding fatuous, when will there be recognition of the various blood groups in Australia? There are four main blood groups, but no recognition in the Australian Constitution! As an AB positive, I have a tough time.
One of the very sad consequences of this “culture” (some might say ideology, with attendant Government funded propaganda – a la Anthony O’Hear’s very pertinent article in the Jan/Feb Quadrant), is the consequences for the aboriginal peoples. As a psychiatrist, I am only too aware of the importance of meaning in life, in preventing suicide, and often work with patients specifically on this. This “indigenous” propaganda is generally hopeless, offers no real solutions, and perhaps comes after many other attempts to help these peoples have failed. No convincing evidence is presented of a model of self-determination initiated elsewhere, that would support what they seek.
The real purpose of the propaganda is often not overt, and seems to be directed towards self-determination, but with no clear idea about how a vibrant culture might be developed. Idealising a past culture that has not been maintained by its peoples, admittedly through some tough circumstances, will not help. I feel that the development of a strong and hopeful modern aboriginal culture could have some merit, and I thought that Noel Pearson was trying to achieve that in the past. This cacophony of propaganda is not helping the development of true empathy within the majority population, and is not helping the aboriginal peoples. For good, and rarely for ill, eventually the majority of Australians must vote for any significant changes that may be desired.
bpring, I disagree with any move towards developing a modern Aboriginal culture. Likewise, I disagree with any and all efforts to divide Australians into racial or cultural groups, as is happening. Such divisions provide fertile ground for grievances and fostering differences. Surely, the aim should be to bring all Australians together as one, regardless of their origins. This includes the Aborigine. Such a bringing together can include adopting elements of other cultures. However, Australians would be the better for seeing themselves as a united people with one culture.