Hi AC,

We've all heard someone ask - "Why can't Indigenous
people just get over it? After all, it happened
ages ago..."

The reason why many Indigenous people can't simply
get over the past is because the negative affects
of colonisation are still having an impact on
Indigenous people every day often in drastic ways.

These 18th century colonial attitudes set in motion
events and policies and established systems and
institutions that continue to have an impact on
Indigenous people today.

Despite Indigenous people's determined efforts to
resist and overcome their adversity.

We need to respect the norms and values of all our
people, avoid stereotypes, judgements and biases.
We should try to be clear and inclusive and
establish clear and shared expectations.

It's our choice as to the kind of country we
want to live in. After all we are a country that
values stability. We don't like disturbances,
valuing stability. We're suspicious of
demagoguary. We have a fondness of long-standing
norms and conventions but we
are comfortable when these are challenged with merit and
through due process.

We have allowed a wide diversity of people but we also
prize the arms-length distance from the world that
our geography allows.

There was a time when to be Australian was to be English,
only sunburnt. As national identity has changed in our
own lifetime, it changed in our great-grandparents time,
and even in their great-grandparents time. I guess what
I am trying to say is - we should let our Indigenous
people have their celebrations so that we can become the
tolerant Australians that we aspire to be and more importantly
create the Australia that we aspire to live in.

In the words of of a great Australian - there's never
been a more exciting time tp be Australian -
than right now.

Dear Critic,

«Maybe the indigenous should just face the harsh reality that this isn't THEIR country anymore.»

It never was theirs in the first place, nor is it now yours.

Did you make the land yourself? NO.
Or did you receive the land as gift from its maker? NO.
Or did you purchase the land from its maker (or from whoever bought it from the maker earlier then resold it to you, etc.)? NO.

Even the Bible, when claiming that the land of Israel was given by God to certain people, was written by interested parties, not by God and does not carry His signature, and even if you believe that, then that claimed gift was conditional even by the Bible itself and meanwhile the included conditions were broken.

The aboriginal people wrote no such Bible, nor can you produce any evidence of yourself receiving this land of Australia from its maker - that is because you never did. The land still belongs to its maker and so it will remain!

Yuyutsu,

With all due respect. I don't think that the Indigenous are
saying that we don't belong here of that this is "my country".
What they are saying is their ancestors have been here
for many generations that we are relatively new arrivals.
That they were the First Nations people here.

For Indigenous people " Country" means more than just the land.
It includes the values, stories, resources and cultural
obligations associated with the area.

The "Welcome to Country" ceremonies are a very important way
of giving our Indigenous people back their place in society.
It's a way of paying respect in a formal sense and following
traditional custom in a symbolic way.

Welcome to country ceremonies have taken place for thousands
of years amongst the Indigenous people. What we hace currently
is a new interpretation for non-Indigenous which is quite new
but it is connected to something that is quite ancient.
As the links I gave explained.

" these Old Farts are simply displaying their bigoted racisms"

There exists a class of people who are so desperate to be not considered racist, especially by themselves, that they look on anything less than abject, unthinking, obeisance to all things indigenous as beyond the pail and objectively racist.

So criticise a practice conjured up by a few natives to fleece the nation for their own benefit is racist, even though the practice doesn't help the natives most in need.

So criticise the obvious misogyny in native culture and these genuflecting souls will dutifully cry racist, without giving the slightest thought to the victims of that misogyny who are mere pawns in the efforts toward pretend anti-racism. To these people, merely mentioning the vastly disproportionate death rate among aboriginal women at the hands of the violent menfolk is racist.

The most dangerous, the most detrimental participants in the efforts toward improving the lives and standing of the natives (ALL the natives) in this nation are those claiming to be anti-racist but in reality merely seek virtue signalling approval.

Hi Yuyutsu,

For me wct is neither about indigenous Australians or the question of who own the land. It is about why a ritual has been coercively introduced into our lives without either a legal or a democratic basis.

Foxy laments the views of people here, yet I see the expression of diverse views on a public forum as a healthy expression of democracy. Think of the photo of a group of people giving a Hitler salute and one fellow among them standing with his arms crossed. I guess that we all want to be the champion of truth and justice, yet I would guess that nearly all in the photo believed themselves to be people of moderate views wishing to be part of a prosperous and just Germany.

Democracy is about having a diversity of views and giving everyone a voice. It isn't about introducing something akin to a Hitler salute and then lamenting because everyone doesn't jump up and down cheering about it.

"All anyone has to do is visit their National or State libraries, go to museums...."

Its the worst form of intellectual snobbery to claim that what you want to be true is indeed true merely because its what you want to believe it. Its compounded by the unresearched and ignorant claim that if only someone, but obviously not the person claiming to have this unresearched knowledge,...if only someone would do the research in libraries and museums then they'd find the data to validate the original unsupported and unsupportable claims.

During the 'Dark Emu' debate I invited Foxy to read Sturt's diaries. She simply refused to do so because they might reveal that which she'd prefer wasn't revealed. Again, anyone familiar with Sturt or many other of the early explorers would know that there was no Welcome to County ceremonies in the ancient native cultures, even when natives did indeed welcome the newcomers and especially the new goods and technologies. When Sturt came across tribes that were friendly, he was often offered food, or things like boomerangs (and occasionally young women) in return for flour or metal goods. But never was he subjected to some ceremony that allowed him to enter their claimed lands.

That's why Ernie Dingo had to make it up in 1976.