Outcry as Australian opposition refuses to back constitutional recognition of Indigenous people
Leaders condemn the Liberal Party over ‘Judas betrayal’ after it said it would campaign against establishing an Indigenous ‘voice to parliament’
Who, among the varied populations of the UK, qualifies as an indigene? Those descended from the neolithic inhabitants? Celts? Picts (should they have priority over the Irish incomers, the Scots?), perhaps Angles and Saxons with the Vikings being the latecomers? All pre-Norman? Those not part of that current 14% of the population born elsewhere? Any grouping of pale Northern Europeans as opposed to non-pale non-Northern European derived folk?
And what should those political privileges be?
This is a serious question too. If indigenes get privileges then which indigenes and which privileges? And if it applies to those oppressed by my tribe (one part of the family did get an assisted passage to Oz – charitable, not criminal – in the 1850s) then why doesn’t it apply to my land and my tribe?
All Britons, Gaels, Angles and Saxons are indigenous, but it’ll be a cold day in Niflheim before I tolerate the fucking Jutes.
Steady now, the Jutes are just as indigenous as the Angles and Saxons.
The Reparations negotiations are going to be mind-bogglingly complicated. Do we have enough lawyers?
Jack: I think that’s what will finally bring on the grass & gruel society – all the country’s GDP will be spent on those lawyers, and tax will be asymptotic to 100%.
Exclude anyone descended from those legionaries who oppressed indigenes from 44BC to AD 400-ish
There’s a science fiction trope (or maybe it’s just Twilight Zone) where we suddenly get a new technology which causes a huge war etc. because “we’re not ready for it.”
I think I know what tech would actually do this – easy instant knowledge of all your ancestors, where they lived and what they did.
Australia has something like a “shall not be questioned” policy regarding this, where you get a lot of people who look Norwegian, but they say they’re indigenous, so they are.
If a man can self-identify as a woman, why can’t someone self-identify as an Australian indegene? Asking for a friend…
Kim du Toit occasionally points out his Dutch (Boer) ancestors were in South Africa long before the Zulu showed up (having migrated from somewhere nearer Nigeria, I recall).
So that would make hime indigenous to SA, and the Zulu not.
Popcorn.
When I lived in Oz in the early Seventies, Bob Hawke and Labour won the elections and their first step was a grant of AUD 40 a week for every Aborigine adult. Not that bad when the minimum wage was around $60 and Aborigines living in settlements paid nothing for housing. The cynical remark doing the rounds was that the Liberal Country Party wanted to starve the Aborigines to death, now Labour wanted them to die of cirrhosis of the liver.
Trick – they do.
Australia is choc full of blue eyed ‘Abos’.
“Those descended from the neolithic inhabitants?” At least in the male linage only traces remain. They were pretty well wiped out by the Indo-European immigrants who arrived just before the Bronze Age got going properly. Troublemakers from Russia and Ukraine they were, by origin. See, we’re all East Europeans really.
Though it’s been a while.
Tim the Coder: Is it the Zulu? I thought they were the only folk who were there before the Dutch rocked up. Either way, it’s certainly true that the Afrikaaners have a better claim to indigenuity than most of the rest of ’em down there.
Being indigenous in Australia means being accepted BY the indigenous in Australia. Brucey Whiteface can claim he is of some nation he thinks he is connected to, but he’s not unless that nation agrees with him. They have their own systems for handling that question, as they must be allowed to (see TW’s numerous posts decrying whitey telling non-whitey how to run his business).
Doubtless there are grifters seeking indigenous identity for clout and access to some privilege or other.. but, generally, if you are indigenous in Australia you are poorer, less employable, more discriminated against and likely to die much sooner than if you aren’t.. it’s not a club that’s especially worth lying to get into.
The people who come on here because they can make the sort of edgy racist comments that polite British society has moved on from would find that their allusions to drunken abo’s are safely mainstream across much of Australia.
@ Sam Duncan
The indigenous inhabitants of South Africa are the San, commonly called “Bushmen”
@ dearieme
Those of us with some trace of Neanderthal DNA have a better claim to be indigenous. Features of Neanderthals include thicker bones and larger brains.
j77: Ah. Okay, fair enough. Somehow I’d got it into my head it was the Zulu, but that makes sense.