We will be reconciled with Aborigines when they tell us we are. By Peter O’Brien.
Other than in a financial context, ‘reconciliation’ has two meanings.
- You can become ‘reconciled to’ something, which means you accept the inevitability of what you cannot control. That is the form of reconciliation that Aborigines should embrace if they really want to eliminate disadvantage in that 20 per cent of their population that is still genuinely disadvantaged.
- Or you can become ‘reconciled with’ someone, which means you put away your differences. This implies a compromise – some give and take on both sides.
But the form of reconciliation demanded by the Aboriginal Industry falls into neither category. It is an open-ended process: We will be reconciled with Aborigines when they tell us we are. …
- Overcome racism? Yes, that should work as an action plan. The definition of ‘racism’ is now a moveable feast. In the minds of many activists being white is synonymous with being racist, so this is a determinant of reconciliation that is never likely to be achieved. …
- When Aborigines have their own parliament and are governed by their own rules, will that mean we are reconciled? …
- Let me translate the ‘action’ plan: blackmail woke corporations to flush shareholders money down the toilet in devising programs and jobs to make otherwise unemployable people feel good about themselves. …
- How much more recognition do they need – for a primitive and not-fit-for-purpose culture and a history of violence, cannibalism, infanticide and superstition – above and beyond the incorporation of Aboriginal themes in every facet of our lives at almost every moment of the day? …
- How much further do they want to penetrate our education system beyond the fact that an Aboriginal perspective is mandated as a cross curriculum priority for all subjects? That children are being taught Wiradjuri rather than becoming proficient in English?
So far, non-indigenous Australia has done all the reconciling — witness the ubiquity of the Aboriginal flag, the constant refrains of ‘we acknowledge the traditional owners’, the Aboriginal domination of the opening ceremonies of all major public events, the Aboriginal-only study grants and job placements, the constant and sickening and patronising deferral to Aboriginal ‘deep spirituality’ and ‘connection to country’, the relinquishment of 60 per cent of our land mass to some form of native title, and so on almost ad infinitum.
It’s time for the Aboriginal people to throw off the shackles of the Aboriginal Industry and do some reconciling ‘to’ the fact that the vast majority have never had it so good and wouldn’t come within a bull’s roar of their current lifestyle under traditional culture.
A point of view that has been censored from the media.
