Indigenous voice to parliament

[lukedog]

Celeste Liddle, Arrernte woman and Aboriginal writer/activist.

Voices beyond Yes and No

Later this year, Australians will vote on a referendum to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, but many Indigenous Australians remain undecided, reflecting the complexities of the issue. The debate over the Voice to Parliament extends beyond the referendum question to encompass broader...

www.eurekastreet.com.au

As a critical thinker and an Aboriginal person, I can tell you one thing that has not been helping: the continual framing that the 'yes' campaign is progressive and the 'no' campaign is conservative. This ignores the fact that constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was an idea that initially came from the conservative side of politics, as recently pointed out by Noel Pearson. It also ignores the fact that Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price are not the voices of a no campaign that actually represents Indigenous views, as eloquently pointed out by Amy McQuire. Things are significantly more complicated than this. As Thorpe stated on Radio National, we have seen a continual erasure of progressive Indigenous voices who are calling for a 'no' vote, or even those who are more questioning of what difference a Voice to Parliament might really make. Recently, on Living Black, we saw a panel of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from a range of different perspectives tease some of these questions out. I recommend watching this as a starting point to gain some scope of the discussions happening in the Indigenous community right now.

For there are some who believe the order of business in the Uluru Statement is wrong and requires a rethink. There are others who believe that we are wasting our time with both a Voice and a treaty process and believe that Indigenous sovereignty, by itself, is the way forward. There are plenty who tentatively agree that the Voice is a good idea but wish it had more power at its disposal. And there are many others who are asking questions.

 

[Doogie]

Scoff if you like, but the fact is they developed systems which sustained them and maintained ecological balance for well over 50,000 years. The agricultural revolution started about 12000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution less than 300 years ago. In that time humans have over hunted, over fished and destroyed natural habitats of numerous species, pushing many which aren’t even primary food sources to the brink of extinction, or over the brink in some cases.

There were an estimated 320,000 Aboriginal people in Australia at the time of settlement… they had no livestock, no imported animals bred for purpose. Of course they could have done serious ecological damage if they had over hunted in certain areas… or at certain times such as just before breeding seasons.

Populations were much smaller globally in the age of Hunter gatherer societies. Farming allowed us to produce more grain per unit, which led to an exponential increase in breeding. This doesn’t mean Homo sapiens weren’t able to do a lot of ecological damage prior to the agricultural revolution. Sapiens in all likelihood wiped out all other species of humans while still living in hunter gatherer societies… not to mention hastening the extinction of animals such as woolly mammoths. As soon as we learnt to create myths and cultures we became deadly. Every animal plays an important ecological role in the natural environment, so to suggest Aboriginals couldn’t have damaged this country’s natural environment if they didn’t tend to it responsibly is just ignorant.

Aboriginals conducted strategic traditional burnings of bush land, they sowed and stored plants, they hunted selectively taking care not to over hunt on certain areas. Any anthropologist who has studied pre colonial Aboriginal societies will tell you this. But hey, how can the knowledge of experts stack up to that of a conservatively minded individual with a chip on his shoulder and an internet connection?

As for your Inca voice comment, that’s just ludicrous. Because the Spanish wiped out an ancient civilisation in the 1500s, Aboriginal people shouldn’t have a direct route to parliament to make representations about matters relating to their own communities? That’s just ludicrous, dude.

In Peru - some first nations have autonomous governance of their tribal area - such as the Wampis people. Just a little better than the Voice.