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Can Australia afford not to be reconciled? : Comments
By Patrick Dodson, published 3/12/2010Patrick Dodson's reflections on the way forward for indigenous Australians
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Just to add to what Spindoc wrote, Scotland is probably not unique in being the product of a few thousand years of migrations and invasions and colonisations, which have all contributed to the make-up of the population.
The various Celtic groups, the Picts, the Scots, the Norse and the Danes, the Normans, the southern border populations, the various mongrel breeds of English, long-term interaction between the Islands to the north and west and the mainland these have all added to a very complex gene-pool. Japanese ship-building crews, Russian refugees, post-war immigration - Scotland is nowadays a very beautiful, polyglot, poly-ethnic society.
And they ALL vote in Scottish elections: there is no 'racial' or ethnic qualification required: whoever is there, can vote. All of them, together.
I guess, my mob, from Aberdeen, Forfarshire, Lanarkshire, and Roxburghshire, are a mixture of all of those groups.
So how does that square with your notion of an Indigenous-only electorate somewhere in Australia ? Conversely, how similar is your notion to the old Apartheid dream of separate 'nations' for 'different' groups, with the whites of course fairly explicitly still in charge ?
Is that what you really want ?
Meanwhile, the great majority of Indigenous people live in towns and cities across the entire country: I'll repeat - do you really think they would tolerate being deported away from their homes, to their 'own' country, just for your perverted fantasy ? I don't think my kids would agree.
For Christ's sake, think about what you are saying.
Joe