Further Effects of "The Voice" debate

[old man emu]

If there is one thing that can be said for the debate about "The Voice to Parliament" is that it has brought Aboriginal culture and even knowledge to the fore. More non-Aboriginal people are interested in those things than ever before. It is within that interest that I see massive potential for economic and social good for Aboriginals.

 

The other afternoon I called into my local pub about mid-afternoon for a quick beer. The only other person in the bar was a middle-aged Aboriginal bloke, nursing a can of bourbon and coke. We got to talking and  we got onto the subject of what I did. When I mentioned Tooraweenah, his ears pricked up and he set out his idea for a tourist business. He said that it would be great to send up tethered people-carrying balloons  just before sunrise on the western side of the Warrumbungles so that people could watch the Sun rising above the unique shapes of the Mountains. What a brilliant idea!

 

I said that in my opinion, there are thousands of Australians and Foreign visitors who would love a close encounter with Aboriginal knowledge. He said that he hated the didgeridoo because it wasn't something from his particular mob - its from Arnhem Land. And dot painting was bullshit. His mob expressed themselves through X-ray painting. Then we got on to bush tucker and bush medicines. I didn't get to talk to him about Aboriginal astronomy, which would be a great topic at Tooraweenah because Warrumbungle National Park is Australia's first Dark Sky Park and Siding Springs Observatory is next-door.

 

I reckon an Aboriginal Experience would be a tourist magnet, especially if it didn't follow the stereotypical Central and Far Northern Australian examples.

[Old Koreelah]

That conversation demonstrates the enormous untapped potential among people who lack the skills or resources to make good on their dreams. 

 

[Marty_d]

Here's an idea. 

Why couldn't one of these social media giants build an ideas platform. 

Person with the idea posts it and their details are stored.   Moderators thin out the bullshit.

Blue sky investors pay a subscription to view the ideas and agree to pay the original poster a percentage of any profits arising from an idea they use.

[nomadpete]

Sounds like a fair concept.

 

Which makes it unlikely to happen because it is against the capitalist success model.

[Jerry_Atrick]

https://www.crowdcube.com/

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

It's too late to edit the above post, but I am sure crowd-funding is how Soar Aviation got started.

[willedoo]

8 hours ago, old man emu said:

didn't get to talk to him about Aboriginal astronomy, which would be a great topic at Tooraweenah because Warrumbungle National Park is Australia's first Dark Sky Park and Siding Springs Observatory is next-door.

ome, have you seen the Emu, the Aboriginal constellation Emu I mean.

[old man emu]

I know about it. I know the significance of the emu in the sky( https://spaceaustralia.com/news/moonhack-coding-story-emu-sky ), but I would need someone to point it out to me in the sky.

 

As I was writing this reply, I googled aboriginal astronomy and found this site http://www.aboriginalastronomy.com.au/ It contains links to a lot of research papers on numerous topics relating to the practical and spiritual application of astronomical observation. Did you know that in Victoria there is a placement of stones that is aligned to East/West direction and also indicates the times of the summer and winter equinoxes? Cop that young Stonehenge!

[Bruce Tuncks]

Aboriginal "astronomy" is similar to aboriginal geology. It has nothing in it that was not obvious to primitive people, and some extremely unlikely dreamtime stories.

What I got from the discussion with the old aborigine in the pub was different....  I got that his dislike for dot paintings etc showed the truth that they never constituted a nation, they were a bunch of warring tribes who hated each other more than the whites who came in.

There was, in history, a "nation" of red Indians in the Mississippi valley that could have put ten thousand warriors into a fight. Alas for them , disease had killed most of them a hundred years before any whites arrived. Australian aborigines never had that, although they were also weakened by disease before they saw any whites in general. In the meantime, I suggest that calling themselves " First Nations" is not a good opening for a discussion ....  it is beginning with a stupid lie. 

AND, I wonder what % of aborigine is that ex-Greens senator?   She looks to me to be about 25%. Does anybody know?  Yes it does matter to me. If she is less than 50% then it shows that facthunter was wrong.

 

[nomadpete]

4 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

looks to me to be about 25%.

Therein lies an issue that is convenienty ignored by most.

 

If prople are going to be honest about their ancestral heritage, they should equally revere all the branches of their heritage.

 

A 25% aboriginal person should honor the 75% percent 'other' blood line.

 

To only obssess about one minor portion of one's ancestry, is hypocricy.

[facthunter]

Their own historical attitude to the Yella fella's was pretty bad..  Nev

[nomadpete]

Otherwise it makes as little sense as if I returned to Great Britain and expected the King to owe me for past historic opression of my welsh ancestors (which represent 50% of my cultural heritage)

[Marty_d]

I think it's ok if people want to identify with one particular part of their genetic makeup.

 

I'm a bit of a mongrel so I just identify as Australian.  Dad came from Sri Lanka (his paternal ancestors moved there from France around the time of the head-chopping) and Mum's heritage is Scottish/English/German etc.  There's certainly no particular bit of this heritage that I strongly identify with, but I have no problem with people who do favour one bit over the others.

[old man emu]

Look at the discord well into the 20th Century between the Protestants and Irish-Catholics. It lingers in the Government/non-government schools funding debate. And the Anglicans weren't backward in coming forward about discrimination amongst the Protestants. British genealogical records differentiate between Anglicans and Non-Conformists (Presbyterians, Methodists, Quakers etc.)

[facthunter]

Protestant  is what they were known as. Calvinist in lieu of methodist also. Lutheran was a protest against the Roman Catholic Church that morphed into a separation.  Nev

[nomadpete]

This above all else. To thine own self, be true.

 

To me, that means "be honest with yourself, about who you are".

 

It seems hollow to only 'be true' to a chosen % of one's "own self". Folk who don't, are choosing to miss out on the valuable mix of genetic inputs that created themselves.

 

No, I haven't done my family tree, but (like Marty) I acknowledge my mix of genes, without trying to relive any past tragedies (every family has had, somewhere down the line).

 

There currently seems to be a certain group who choose to greatly promote a part of their 'own self' for the purpose of demonstrating a grudge against others, because of what past generations did. And are trying to impose guilt upon present generations who appear like they might be descendants of somebody who was not fair to grandparents on one side of their own family.

 

As pointed out by others, the greatest grievences of the noisiest aboriginal activists happened generations ago. And most of the 'lost traditional culture' was lost because their own families failed to teach that culture. No reason for any living whitefella to feel guilt for that.

 

Neither parties are presently responsible for the actions or cultures of long gone generations.

 

It is far more important to focus on today's problems, than to agonise over the past

Edited February 12, 2023 by nomadpete

[willedoo]

5 hours ago, old man emu said:

I know about it. I know the significance of the emu in the sky( https://spaceaustralia.com/news/moonhack-coding-story-emu-sky ), but I would need someone to point it out to me in the sky.

Yes, it's best to have someone point it out. It's tricky to see because it's partly made up of dark space and the eye tends to concentrate on the stars. Viewing it is a bit like one of those left brain/right brain puzzle drawings where you can see two different results depending on what the brain is doing.

[nomadpete]

My maternal grandmother had a aboriginal nanny. So had learnt quite a bit of lore, during her childhood. So, in the 50's when our school was teaching us that the aboriginals were not advanced, she told me about the aboriginal astral navigation and that her mob had trouble learning whitefella arithmetic because they counted to base five, and our system confused them.

[Old Koreelah]

1 hour ago, nomadpete said:

There currently seems to be a certain group who choose to greatly promote a part of their 'own self' for the purpose of demonstrating a grudge against others, because of what past generations did.

 

 

1 hour ago, nomadpete said:

As pointed out by others, the greatest grievences of the noisiest aboriginal activists happened generations ago. And most of the 'lost traditional culture' was lost because their own families failed to teach that culture. No reason for any living whitefella to feel guilt for that.

NP I agree with much of what you say, but this bit is dead wrong. Kids were stolen up until after I left school. Like Indigenous peoples in Japan, Canada, USA and probably many other places, even in my lifetime, Aboriginals were severely punished for speaking their own language, let alone passing on their culture to their kids.

 

(I also know a Welshman who copped the stick for speaking his langage at school).

 

1 hour ago, nomadpete said:

Neither parties are presently responsible for the actions or cultures of long gone generations.

True, but we’ve all benefitted from having the black fellas removed their land.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Old K, did you really know of stolen generation kids? Did anybody complain at the time?

This is a serious enquiry, I really didn't know of any when I was a kid.

The worst thing that happened to my rellies would have been the german exodus from Silesia in 1945, not that i knew anything about it. ( they were fleeing stalin's savage troops)

But really, I'm one of Marty's lot and able to claim english, scottish, irish and german as forbears about 5 generations ago. I reckon I'm as Australian as anybody else and I never stole any land from anybody., nor did any of those forbears. Nobody ever hurt a black person and they paid top money for any real estate they owned.

My problem is that aborigines have been given much more in recent years than they appreciate. They own vastly more land than I ever will, and they are not made to do a mimimal amount of work.

[spacesailor]

'' Their own historical attitude to the Yella fella's was pretty bad..  Nev ''

The Poor Dutch had a rude awakening when they attempted to take a look at this land of ours. Way before Cook .

'' In 1606, the crew of Dutch VOC vessel Duyfken, under the command of captain Willem Janszoon, made landfall near Mapoon, on the Cape York Peninsula, and constituted the first recorded contact on Australian soil between the Indigenous people of Australia and Europeans. ''

spacesailor

[Old Koreelah]

34 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Old K, did you really know of stolen generation kids? Did anybody complain at the time?

 

Like some of the most heinous government atrocities, we never heard much about it at the time and what we did was glossed over. (My late mum was adamant that being taken from their parents was always for their own good, such was the mindset at the time.)

 

It was only long after they’d died that I realised a couple of much loved “Aunties” were actually aboriginal. My cousins remember that when visitors arrived, granny was told to get into the cupboard. I remember her lovely, cultivated voice and only ever heard that “accent” used by survivors of the Cootamindra Girls Home.

34 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

I reckon I'm as Australian as anybody else and I never stole any land from anybody., nor did any of those forbears. Nobody ever hurt a black person and they paid top money for any real estate they owned.

Most of us could claim that, but my point is that collectively, we all got this continent on the cheap; my grandad was a selector who worked hard and did well, but he would never have had that start without the government giving him title to someone else’s land.

34 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

My problem is that aborigines have been given much more in recent years than they appreciate. They own vastly more land than I ever will, and they are not made to do a mimimal amount of work.

That I totally agree with.

[nomadpete]

Old K, I appreciate you sharing your experience.

In my case, my views are developed from my grandmother's considerable personal experience (she had learned a lot in her youth) and she had no knowledge of aboriginal children becoming wards of the state in her area (suggesting that although it was done badly in some places, it was not common in her area. Her mob were strong in their culture. Local farmers welcomed their seasonal presence, since they had been migrating there since before the farms existed and it was no big imposition. So I don't think it was all 'rape and pillage by violent invaders', as some are claiming.

I later spent many years working in and around a number of aboriginal communities. And I have had as many frightening moments as rewarding ones with aboriginal folk.

 

My main point is that everybody has a large amount of autonomy in this country. Therefore to a large degree, the quality of our lives (regardless of who our father or grandfather was) is the result of our own input, especially in the event of adversity. We are not responsible for the actions of our predecessors (unless we keep doing what they did). So I reject the notion that I should personally owe anything to a group of strangers with whom I have no connection, and whom I have not wronged. I am as Australian as any other Australian, regardless of anybody's genetic past.

[Jerry_Atrick]

On 12/02/2023 at 12:08 PM, nomadpete said:

And I have had as many frightening moments as rewarding ones with aboriginal folk.

I can say the same, except not for Aboriginals, but Austtralia, the UK, US, Europe and the Middle East. There is nothing different. Go to deprived areas in any country..

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Jerry, by what standard do you regard aborigines as being "deprived?"

They may well have a poor standard of diet etc, but on the scale of government handouts they are certainly not deprived. And their poor diet, for example, is the result of ignorance and indifference, not the lack of money.