A brief reflection before beginning the week of silence

So Australia has chosen to jump back to the 1960s. I will honour the call for a week of silence on this topic, but for the sake of my (neurodivergent) wellbeing,I wish to record a few quick points that I will use after that week: 

• this has emboldened the racist/white supremacists - from the vitriol on social media and elsewhere that Indigenous people in the anti-yes aka “no” campaign tried vainly to distance themselves from, through the pushback on Welcomes to and Acknowledgement of Country to the appalling abuse dumped on the Minister for Indigenous Australians the Hon Linda Burney, MP, we are well on the way to some Aussie version of the USA’s white hooded thugs and cross burnings (again, if one thinks back to all the massacres);
• the suggestion by Senator Thorpe that consultations be based on language groups is, in my opinion, excellent ... but it will require a government that hasn’t shown any great strength at managing a dysfunctional public service to wrangle all the department secretaries into line and issue a direct order that ALL consultations MUST be based on the non-homogenous nature of those being consulted with; 
• Truth Telling is essential - but so too is basic education of younger Australians and immigrants - many of whom, I suspect either don’t know of, or doubt the existence/severity of, the gap and the history of violent oppression that caused it.
  That HAS to be changed - and that, given the possibility of no further government funding, may have to be done at a grassroots level;
• It will take around 10 to 15 years of work to realise a Treaty in this nation, and it is the next generation of politicians that will implement it, not the current mix of progressives and ratbags. To acheive this, Indigenous people MUST identify and start working with those - wherever they are on the reasonable portion of the political spectrum - who will likely to be in power in that sort of time frame, as well as internal power brokers.
  As an example, the ALP platform is set at State and National conferences which, to quite an extent, are rubber stamping exercises - but the lead up to them is not. Get branches voting on a motion to commit the ALP to Truth Telling and education with a view to a Treaty based on proper consultation by (say) 2040, with all service delivery and consultation from now to be cognisant of and genuinely, realistically and effectively adapted to the non-homogenous nature of relevant communities, will set the scene for motions to that effect at the various levels of conference, and then a realistic commitment.
  A similar process will be required for whatever structure the Greens have, and some way of trying to do the same for independents/“teals”/small progressive parties will also be required.
  

This result, by the way, has probably killed any further referendums for decades to come, which also means Australia will not become a truly independent nation - a republic with the (ceremonial) head of government selected and appointed by Australia. 

In the meantime, however, our next Governor-General should be Indigenous.

And now to begin my week of mourning and reflection on this matter, although I will be active on other subjects. 

 

If they are of any use of interest, the activism information links from my former news posts are available in this post. 

 

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Remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.