Do Australians have a claim against the British for exiling them from their homes forcibly?
Can you let me know this? If so, what claim and against who and for what?
I have aboriginal blood, therefore what ought the government give me and why?
I can pose a number of similar questions but these are obviously more pertinent to me. But I can take it back and back. You can say it is not the same and it is not. BUT the things that separate one from another is likely to be semantics. Yes we can find more examples and slowly make every instance of this kind of thing related to another and in the end it would mean that all of us would have been stolen from and have stolen off, even though we didn't personally do this, and we all give and take back. It would be a mess.
I know you are saying "yes but it requires a paradigm shift" No really it doesn't. It requires that you accept people have a right to a very different belief than you and that they do not have to think differently and that by thinking differently they are not wrong, bigoted, intolerant, uneducated or not sensible. You know this right? If not, you are being intolerant.
Why do I feel saying that everyone has been wronged detracts from the issue at hand? We could go on and on discussing different wrongednesses (and I would enjoy that conversation), but in relation to the OP, I don't want that to be an excuse to forget all about the situation at hand. Is this really how things are thought to get done?
I am more interested in looking at the current problem and figuring out how we can prevent further harm. That requires understanding that oppression and genocide don't just go away because new children were born. yeah right, if that was so we could really say "time heals all wounds", but that is clearly not the case.
As for your specific examples (aboriginal blood, British exile), I suggest you look into those things yourself. I don't know much about Australian history, and I'm not about to speak for aboriginal peoples, you can find their various points of view online. You can also look up the UN declaration of the rights of Indigenous peoples and see if Australia adheres. Once you have facts, and look at them with a clear head then you can be in the position to enter a philosophical debate about what questions to ask.
Thanks for the suggestions. This had been done before I raised the question. Thank you though. I mean thank you for being helpful enough to set up a series of steps I have to pass before I am deemed reasoned and of education enough to be able to hold a decent position on this subject.
Again you are being condescending and patronising and more than a little arrogant. Cut that shit out.
The Australian Aboriginals are not unlike the Native Americans in respect to the history of subjugation and invasion. They like the Native Americans were an indigenous tribal people. They were hunter gatherers and a Patriarchal society with Elders passing down knowledge to the young. The land was spiritually connected to the people. They believed in Dreamtime and spirits (good and bad) associated with particular locations.
Pretty much every effort to destroy their culture was thrust onto them by Early settlers. These practices continued on and on.
Settlers shot them on sight for being on "their land". They cheated them. They stole from them. They developed their sacred places into farmland or housing. They took their children off them and placed them in missions to break up the family relationships and teach them God. They plied the Elders with grog until they could no longer care about their culture. They spread disease through the tribes. They poisoned their well and often massacred them. They either put them in communes or bought them away from the bush and into the city areas to work for them and usually underpaid them if at all. They also tried to breed them out (which needs no explanation)
Effectively they took a wrecking ball to their culture. Most aboriginal kids do not know their sacred sites nor the legends of their people. They have few if any role models. Their health and life expectancy is alarming ( yes as expressed by UN). They are jail at a rate in population that is massive. Education is generally remedial and unemployment rate huge
For the most part apart from a few lucky communities, the culture is irretrievably lost.
However even with this there are still many aboriginal activists. Mostly I do not have the time of day for them and consider most of them full of self-importance, hot air and using their positions of power to get a bit of fame and pay before they die.
Mostly. I REALLY like Noel Pearson and Tania Major. They talk the talk and walk the walk and do not do anything less than everything they can do for their people. It is probably not nearly enough but it IS having big impacts in their communities and for Aboriginals as a whole.
I know my shit SG. It was an ignorant position you took suggesting I and others here don't and are not able to take part in your debate unless you believe they meet your standards of intellect, foreknowledge or morality to venture their opinions.
I will say it again. People holding different perspectives does not make them immoral, bigoted, racist, intolerant, Nazis, unreasoned, unintelligent, uneducated or any bloody other thing. Do not be throwing this about.
That's the problem, people take the little understanding of an issue that they have, and then assert some sort of opinion feeling that it will be validated even if its based on false information. That's like bringing a bunch of men around who never experienced harassment and only know of women being raped who had short skirts and were drunk and seductive, and then sitting the men down to chat (w/o a moderator) the ethics and laws and concerns relating to the protection of women and prosecution of rapists.
Does that sound like a reasonable course of action to take if the goal is to prevent future harm of women and lenient prosecution of rapists?
Does it sound like a reasonable analogy to compare people saying: that the Land Usage rights stolen of the Native American tribal community by non-Americans, generations ago is not easily given back to the descendants of the people it was stolen off; to a lot of morally challenged and bigoted men talking about rape?
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
So by this analogy....let me guess? Anyone who is not as wise and educated as you believe you are is unable to hold a moral position, nor make an informed choice and is bigoted (at best) because of their ignorance.
How about....no? You are completely wrong and I suspect you are either:
1) Completely misreading everything you are reading to get such and ignorant, uninformed, and bigoted standpoint
2) You have stopped reading and just want a platform to moralise and talk others down. Like a Zealous Christian Fundamentalist.
3) You are deliberately trolling for a rise from us
4) You are fucking stupid.
Sorry there is not really too many options, are there?
Now if there was someone more knowledgable about the issues at hand who had something to say, to disagree, I am HAPPY OVERJOYED ECSTATIC because a productive conversation can emerge. And if one doesn't know about the issue, the natural gesture ought to be to ask and listen, and then formulate an opinion based on real facts, real statements, and real history...even if it's very little, its better than nothing.
Here is a question.
Why ought we even try and humour or share with you...with this shitful attitude you have adopted in this thread. You seem ignorant of anyone's position but your own (and it does not look like you have really thought through your own positions), you are being arrogant, condescending, patronising, you seem to place a more moral/educated/informed/reasonable/rational viewpoint than others and you have seemingly no position to respect.
Why should anyone here visit your threads or give you the time of day with this current disrespectful attitude?
I don't know what has come over you SG but you should really drop the attitude and back the fuck up. If you can not post a thread to discuss something without spending the thread railing on the membership then don't start the stupid fucking thread in the first place.
Expected better from you, of all people.
