caffeine and native title do not mix well
Gah, have just overdosed on coffee from brunetti's and have this massive headache. But I still have to forge ahead and try to clear my native title assignment.
Really, the more I read about native title in Australia and the rights of the Aborigines here, the more annoyed I get. I don't really see myself as being the activist type but honestly, those poor people ought to get a better deal than what the current Australian government is handing out.
Maybe I'm growing up, I've always been more than ready to accept the status quo at home, easy to say coz I know I'm one of the luckier ones. I'm a member of a majority race, belonging to a comfortable upper middle class household....the fact that my parents can afford to send me overseas to study is already an indicator of my general good fortune.
So why the sudden surge of pity for the Aboriginal people? I suppose because this is the first time I've studied or read so much about their situation. For example, even when the Aust government has granted them legal rights to land that they had occupied for several thousand years( and by the way, those rights were 200 years in the making cos before they were deemed to not even exist) they're only allowed 'traditional rights'. All this just means that ,ok they're allowed to fish and hunt and maybe do some cultivation, but the minute they discover anything valuable in the land like copper, then they pretty much have to bugger off and let some mining company take care of that.
No none can read about all this and not feel the inherent unfairness of it all. They've been sitting pretty here for ten thousand years and suddenly some white men show up and now they have to ask for rights to their own land???WTF???
Of course its more complicated than this but I'm headachy and hyper from caffeine and in no mood to be reasonable.
Truth? They're a dying culture and people. In another hundred years, most of them would have just adopted white culture just to get on with life. They live on the fringes of society as it is, poor and inebriated. In my own selfish way, I'm glad that it didn't happen to chinese culture and the chinese people. But eventually the lack of cultural diversityas evidenced by the vulnerability of minority groups around the world will work to our detriment anyway.
Funny that I'm studying this right alongside international law and the right to seld determination. Self determination is probably exactly what they want and what they'll never get.
'you think the only people who are people
are people who look and think like you..' Colours of the Wind
This is from the soundtrack of Pocahontas which as a Disney film is ironically part of the whole onslaught of western cultural imperialism.
Really, the more I read about native title in Australia and the rights of the Aborigines here, the more annoyed I get. I don't really see myself as being the activist type but honestly, those poor people ought to get a better deal than what the current Australian government is handing out.
Maybe I'm growing up, I've always been more than ready to accept the status quo at home, easy to say coz I know I'm one of the luckier ones. I'm a member of a majority race, belonging to a comfortable upper middle class household....the fact that my parents can afford to send me overseas to study is already an indicator of my general good fortune.
So why the sudden surge of pity for the Aboriginal people? I suppose because this is the first time I've studied or read so much about their situation. For example, even when the Aust government has granted them legal rights to land that they had occupied for several thousand years( and by the way, those rights were 200 years in the making cos before they were deemed to not even exist) they're only allowed 'traditional rights'. All this just means that ,ok they're allowed to fish and hunt and maybe do some cultivation, but the minute they discover anything valuable in the land like copper, then they pretty much have to bugger off and let some mining company take care of that.
No none can read about all this and not feel the inherent unfairness of it all. They've been sitting pretty here for ten thousand years and suddenly some white men show up and now they have to ask for rights to their own land???WTF???
Of course its more complicated than this but I'm headachy and hyper from caffeine and in no mood to be reasonable.
Truth? They're a dying culture and people. In another hundred years, most of them would have just adopted white culture just to get on with life. They live on the fringes of society as it is, poor and inebriated. In my own selfish way, I'm glad that it didn't happen to chinese culture and the chinese people. But eventually the lack of cultural diversityas evidenced by the vulnerability of minority groups around the world will work to our detriment anyway.
Funny that I'm studying this right alongside international law and the right to seld determination. Self determination is probably exactly what they want and what they'll never get.
'you think the only people who are people
are people who look and think like you..' Colours of the Wind
This is from the soundtrack of Pocahontas which as a Disney film is ironically part of the whole onslaught of western cultural imperialism.
posted by adinahaes at 11:35 PM
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