First Contact

Just got to watch the last 2 episodes. I think the ability to look beyond superficiality is a gift that everyone can develop if they are mature and open enough to. It obviously extends beyond issues related to Aboriginal people but to many aspects of life and relationships. Unfortunately we will always have people who's brains aren't able to look beyond the simple things. Complex situations are never easy to understand, therefore reason why they are "complex". E.g I don't understand depression and probably never will but I certainly acknowledge that people who suffer this disease are dealing with circumstances mainly beyond their control.

I applaud the participants and their honesty, but importantly their valuable lesson that many social circumstances have a deeper perspective over and beyond the easy to state assumptions one can have about a given circumstance.

 

Most definitely.

 

I find it extraordinary that the Aboriginal people want and expect Australians to accept, embrace and learn about their culture and traditions they inherited from their ancestors, but show no willingness to accept, embrace and learn about Australian culture and traditions that we inherited from our ancestors prior to 1788. Just maybe, if the Aboriginal people were willing to look beyond 1788, then might discover that we all have a lot more in common than they think.

What's really starting to annoy me is the Aboriginal people always referring to themselves as "the Aboriginal people" or "our people" during conversations and media interviews, and no one seems to be taking any notice of that specific identification inference.

What would happen if the Australian people publicly started referring to themselves as "the Australian people" or "our people" that didn't include Aboriginals in that identification?

What would happen if Australians had their own TV network like: NITV, that excluded aboriginal content, and excluded Aboriginals from working on that network?

The first thing that would happen, is that Australians would be instantly labeled and branded a racist, and told they were acting discriminatory towards another group of people.

If the Aboriginal people can use an identification inference to separate & segregate themselves from Australians. Then I see no reason why Australians cannot start doing the same.

Instead of saying we are the Aboriginal people or we are the Australians people, shouldn't we be saying we are "ALL" human beings?

 

For the Aboriginal people to segregate and separate themselves from Australians, demonstrates they have just as many misconceptions, preconceptions and racist attitudes towards Australians, as Australians have about them.

Only when the Aboriginal people are seriously willing to leave the past in the past, and Australians forget that skin colour matters, will we every move forward.

A group of little crabs fighting over a single grain of sand on an entire beach.

 

It's a big mix.There are indigenous people, European Australians born here, European Australians who migrated here, non-European Australians who migrated here and so on. We all, to some degree, segregate ourselves from one another and gather into in-groups. And that's no different to anywhere else. My "meh" response is to shrug my shoulders and tell myself I couldn't care less who in-groups with whom, just as long as no-one forces me to support Port Adelaide.

Long as we don't try and burn the place down, all good with me.

 

Its constantly being shoved down our throats that the idea and premises of multiculturalism is working in Australia and in other countries around the world. But isn't there "real" evidence and proof seen in the general community to prove that to be a false theory. Considering as you stated, different ethnic groups that have migrated to Australia "do" separate and segregate themselves into their own cultural groups.

Hell, multiculturalism certainly failed the test between the Australian people and the indigenous people. So why does everyone now suddenly think its working with other different ethnic groups of people?

Doesn't this prove beyond a doubt that multiculturalism doesn't work, and that "multiculturalism" is just a term used to fool the inhabitants of one country into allowing the inhabitants of another country to live in their country under the pretense that the inhabitants from both countries are going to get along like best buddies - and that never happens.

 

If multiculturalism works. Then why do we still separate countries into States by lines on a map, and separate land masses into individual countries. Doesn't the premises of multiculturalism imply no lines on maps and no separate countries?

 

I don't have a problem with the Aboriginal people wanting to revert back to being hunter gathers, and chasing kangaroos through the bush for native food. But it gets a bit confusing when the Aboriginal people want one leg in traditional Aboriginal culture when it suits their agenda, and then want the other leg in modern Australian culture when it suits another agenda.

I think that's what we call kids, who want their your cake and eat it too.

 

Yeah they're more like us then we thought.

 

When I was contending for the seat of New England I encountered this on a daily basis. People that had lived in small country towns all their lives, now they were complaining about the shutting down of services like banks and hospitals. Most changes were brought about by there own doing. They didn't mind driving an hour to the larger centres to shop at Woolworths or Kmart, but they wanted the government to do something so if they didn't want to go to the major centre they could still get the service in the small town.

 

There's a big difference between multiculturalism and free mass migration.

 

Australia has been experiencing mass immigration under the disguise of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism doesn't work, in the sense of different groups of people with different cultures living together in one country, thinking all these different people with different cultures are going to be best buddies. Because if it did, we would have no need for independent separate countries. We would all be living where we want, when we want, without any problems, and that doesn't happen.

The idea of multiculturalism has always been a sham and a scam.

 

Not really D.V. I don't know of any cultures, besides native indigenous ones, who decided to separate themselves from the mainstream dominate culture to live independently, and then blame the dominate culture for all the problems their self-sufficient independence created.

I feel really sorry, that due to colonisation, the Aboriginal people didn't get the opportunity to advance and develop their culture naturally over time like many Australian cultures got to develop their culture throughout the centuries.

But we cannot turn back the hands no matter how much we would like. We cannot live like our ancestors did, and I think it might be time for the Aboriginal people to understand that the problems between our two cultures is not so much a clash of cultures, but a clash of generations and progression.

 

Sorry mate,, I have to disagree.

And all would over populate the 'rich' developed countries, leaving us where?

 

That would be another good topic to discuss.


If the Aboriginal people think that Australians have been hard and tough on them, wait until their new Chinese masters take total control of Australia in a few years time. The Chinese will make Australians look like guardian angels.

If the Aboriginal people think the Chinese will tolerate all the same nonsense that Australians have tolerated for the past decades, then they have another thing coming. They are not interested in preserving any other culture besides their own. If they want something; they buy it and take it.

 

Indigenous culture, like any human culture, has a lot of adaptation in it. When humans first came to this landmass they worked out how to survive (those that didn't are obviously not with us, even in the shape of descendants). I'm not lauding that, merely pointing it out. And indigenous culture in our land mass adapted in different ways depending on the local environment. And because it worked it didn't change much. But for some that's something to be derided. It was Ross Lightfoot who, I think, suggested indigenous people were backwards because they didn't have wheel. I suppose they could have done without, look at North American indgenous people with the travois - oh wait, no horses, that could be a bit of a problem then.

That sort of derision misses the point. The adaptive behaviour worked. For a long time. Until 1788 in fact.

To another, connected point. The purpose of human culture - among other things - is to survive and even thrive. Anything that gets in the way of those objectives, in any culture, needs to be dumped. I'm certainly at one with those who decry others who would, allegedly, trap indigenous culture in aspic and protect its adherents from change. This is where I go off on a tangent. Those behaviours among indigenous people (and that is the group to which we are referring at the moment) which seem to us to be "barbaric" should be re-labelled as "unnecessary". They should be changed so that the harm they do is minimised and other forms of behaviour, adopted from western ways, should be promoted.

Necessity is a powerful driver of human behaviour. If something isn't necessary then it can be safely discarded.

 

Yes it's a bit more than "get over it" or "move on".. Firstly, what we (non-indigenous peoples) is a hodge podge of cultures, and in varying degrees. We are a product of both our environment and our experience.

We expect the Indigenous peoples, not just here but pretty universally, to change to our ways, ways which in some cases such as the Australian Aboriginal, they have held for up to 50K plus years.

We also retain remnants of many different times, things like shaking hands, raising your hat and saluting are all part of our military history, the days of swords, knives and dastardly deeds. Other days from the bizzare like Halloween to others like May day and those where we remember certain times like Anzac Day, Thanksgiving ... AUSTRALIA DAY.

The Water Diviner, Crowes latest film takes us for the first time to the "other side" of Anzac Day. First Contact, Redfern Now and earlier films like Ten Canoes and Rabbit Proof Fence just show another side to our story and our countries history.

By not listening and not learning, it is us that becomes more ignorant.

 

I'm yet to be proven wrong, that the main problem between the Aboriginal people and the Australian people stems mainly from the Aboriginal people not wanting to accept or embrace progress unless its on "their" terms.

Every civilisation has its ancient culture and traditions, but the majority of civilisations have been willing to leave some aspects of those traditions in the past and move forward, especially when they realise that those ancient cultural traditions have stopped them from progressing, and have been detrimental to their communities and societies - all except some indigenous peoples. Its been proven to the Aboriginal people that its financially unsustainable to sustain small groups in outback communities. But, the Aboriginal people still persist in staying in these unsustainable settlements by stating they have a connection with the land, or they have to stay there because family members have died there, and they have to take care of the deceased people. It really does logically sound like a lot of superstitious cave-man nonsense, that you would expect to hear from backward thinking people living in remote hunter gather villages in 12th Century, not people living in 2014.

What's the bloody point of holding onto ancient cultures and traditions that have NO relevance "now" and in the future.

How the hell is a group of backward thinking people wanting to revert back to being hunter gathers, going to help us, or be any advantage to us, in leaving this rock and colonising space?

If we don't colonise space soon, we are a doomed species, and I don't see how people wanting to run back into the cave is going to help us achieve our ambitions of space colonisation.

I don't mean to be harsh, but maybe there is something to be said for Charles Darwin's theory on Natural Selection of a species.

 

Why should I, or other people, be financially burdened paying for the superstitious beliefs of another culture? If our culture can leave behind its superstitious beliefs in the past and move forward, then the Aboriginal people can do the same thing.

 

Rewind to 1788 when the Invaders didn't want to be burdened with the fact that a whole nation of people were already living here. So they committed genocide and called the land terra nullius.

When it comes to Indigenous matters, I get astounded at how terribly little concessions you make, culldav. Do you not understand the legacy and repercussions of history?

 

Oh yes he does, read his earlier posts about the terrorists, he says he can understand their anger, even for generations, he said something along the lines of "What would we do if someone came here and murdered our children and parents etc"

Well it happened here, but he doesn't want to address that, it doesn't suit hiis agenda.

 

Yes, I read those posts and also responded to the astute way you pulled him up on it.

I would say someone has been CAUGHT - quite clearly - by their own words.

 

I'm all for getting rid of superstitions. The big one is religion but that's not going to go away very soon, too many vested interests. In fact I'm all for getting rid of the rubbish that holds us back. But this isn't going to be done by fiat, it's got to be consensual. I don't have time at the moment but I bet there are lots of things we do that we don't need to. Sort of an Ashram Cat situation. That applies to all of us, indigenous and non.

 

Most Australians recognise and understand the atrocities that occurred to the Indigenous peoples during 1788, and how they were treated up until the 1970's. Mistakes happened, and the majority of people are sincerely sorry for those mistakes.

There is going to be no positive future with the Aboriginal people and do-gooder groups raking up the past all the time, and chucking in back in Australians face all the time.

You might have the type of character; whereby you allow children to bully and embarrass you into buying them lollies or toys during a shopping trip, because they chucking a tantrum - I don't.

Therefore, I have no intentions in agreeing with the Aboriginal peoples philosophy in wanting to be financially supported to stay in unsustainable situations and locations, simply to fulfil on their immature spiritual superstitions.

Australians are not allowed to get away with all this cultural spiritual nonsense. So why are we allowing the Aboriginal people to get away with it? Oh, that's right, we feel so sorry for our past actions, that we now allow and accept a group of adults to behave and act like children chucking tantrums, that we just give in, and give them anything they want - even when its to their and our detriment. NICE.

 

Move on D.V. You just proved my point. This is more about a clash of generations and progress rather than culture. The Aboriginal people you advocate are refusing to move beyond the past. What hope do we have for the future with that kind of attitude?