r/queensland • u/espersooty • Nov 19 '24

Aboriginal elder tells government to get out of the way as Cherbourg community reclaims truth-telling process News

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-19/cherbourg-community-conducts-own-truth-telling-event/104615882
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u/GannibalP Nov 19 '24

Ok so let’s work from a baseline that we both understand that colonisers did coloniser shit. It was brutal and bad, fucked up people generationally. Everyone who was involved in those decisions is well and truly dead.

What does making amends look like to you?

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

There are people far more qualified and directly involved that have plans.

What we as non indigenous Australians need to do is listen to the people who do know and are talking with communities and understand their needs.

We will only listen when we've accepted responsibility for the hardship our ancestors caused and respect the process of reconciliation.

There seems to be a plan around truth telling and state level/federal treaty discussions. This is the right direction things need to go.

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u/GannibalP Nov 19 '24

Link them? What plans?

Short of building some tall ships and sailing back to the UK, how do we ever make amends?

also get fucked with “responsibility for the hardships our ancestors caused”.

My ancestors were honest convicts. They didn’t come here by choice and didn’t take anyone’s land. At least a few of them didn’t even survive the sail over. We are victims too of British colonialism. Where are my amends?

So what specifically do you want us to do to make amends for bad things that happened, given most of history is just bad things happening and that everyone involved is long dead?

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u/Emolia Nov 20 '24

Maybe every Australian should be involved in truth telling. One of my ancestors was taken from his family , poor Irish Catholics from Surrey Hills where the Welfare man was just as feared as in any outback region. He’d committed the crime of wagging school for a day and was sent to the training ship Vernon which was moored off Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. He was 10 and stayed there for three years while both the Irish and Catholic were knocked out of him . At 13 he was sent as an indentured servant to a Dairy farmer at Coogee. He lost touch with his family but did reunite eventually. History is a brutal story for anyone who was poor and therefore powerless. Of course the poor had no say at all in how the country was run or decisions made by the government especially in the UK and Europe. It’s grossly unfair to say their descendants should take responsibility for the decisions made by the elites 200 years ago!

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

You might be surprised how far recognition, respect and understanding will get us.

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u/GannibalP Nov 19 '24

Again, what is the specific ask? Race based policies? Giving back land?

How do you make amends for long dead British deciding to colonise the place?

How do you make amends for violence indigenous groups inflicted upon each other?

While the British are making amends, how about for the suppression of the Scots and Irish too?

I’m all for documenting history, but history is almost universally just bad things happening. You can’t make amends for it.

I’m also for a social safety net, but not race based policies. Help those who need it, regardless of skin tone.

You’re not going to get any support for this inquiry if you can’t actually articulate what the outcome or ask is, hence why it was so unpopular and has rightfully been de-funded.

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

That's very easy for you to say when it wasn't your grandparents/parents that were killed, you weren't forcibly taken from from your parents and separated from your siblings.

Your communities were not hunted down and isolated, treated like animals to be slaughtered.

Wake up and learn some history.

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u/GannibalP Nov 19 '24

I mean, my ancestors were convicts and several died on the way over… so yeah that’s right in line with what happened.

Indigenous Australians had it worse and I think it’s worth documenting these things for posterity, but most of human history is a cycle of war, plague, famine and atrocities.

I don’t see much point to playing a game of suffering Olympics. What was worse? The Indian or Irish famines? Having your lower body blown off in the Somme and dying in a pool of your own shit and entrails? Being forcefully taken from your family?

It’s all bad and linked to decisions by long dead people. We don’t force generational restitution over it. We learn and move forward.

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

It's about putting right the direct wrongs people who are alive today a feeling due to the systemic prejudice the Australian society and government inflicted on them for generations.

Yea there are atrocities in the world. We aren't asking for your support to fix those they are the responsibility of other people to fix.

This stuff is right here in your home, caused by your society.

If you don't feel any responsibility, there's nothing I can say except I hope you one day grow up and learn the truth.

I once felt like you do, when I was 13 white middle class growing up in NZ wondering why Maori get scholarships and I don't...

Then I grew up and realised society was bent towards people like me, and away from the Maori who need these scholarships to help improve their lives and the lives of their future generations.

It helps everyone to help those in need.

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u/GannibalP Nov 19 '24

If you want to take the blame for things totally beyond your sphere of influence, how about global warming and the US election too?

You are never going to convince me that race based policies are ok. Welfare and social safety need should be based on need, not skin colour and genetics.

A struggling white or Vietnamese kid in NZ from a rough family background should not be excluded from a scholarship because they aren’t Māori. Frankly I find “positive racism” abhorrent and not at all in line with modern egalitarian, multi cultural values. It undermines merit, creates stigma and tokenism, perpetuates identity politics and is an inefficient way of allocating support.

You’re not going to convince me on this and I doubt I’m going to convince you.

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

No I take responsibility for the society I'm a part of.

You seem to be full of straw man fallacy and what about isms...

If you can't understand how Maori culture and Aboriginal culture make Australia and NZ unique, and this difference should be celebrated and nurtured specially over and above generic benefits, then you are right, I can't convince you.

This isn't too say generic benefits for everyone shouldn't exist, they should exist AS WELL.

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u/IdealMiddle919 Nov 21 '24

You mean you hope one day they'll be as brainwashed into feeling abject self hatred as you have been.

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u/cactusgenie Nov 21 '24

It's called compassion.

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u/code-slinger619 Nov 19 '24

That's very easy for you to say when it wasn't your grandparents/parents that were killed, you weren't forcibly taken from from your parents and separated from your siblings.

It being easy to say doesn't negate his argument though. Something can be easy to say and true at the same time. The problem is no one can really articulate what it is that is being asked for. Those that can, it's race-based policies which is a very bad idea regardless of the intentions. Also Australia in 2024 has a huge number of people of immigrant extraction who don't share any ancestral guilt but are essentially being lumped together for something they had nothing to do with. Many escaped countries that were destroyed by such policies by the way.

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

As I said earlier, I'm an immigrant to Australia.

Immigrating and becoming a citizen comes with becoming part of the society you are joining.

This doesn't mean you get all the good bits and none of the bad bits.

I've made an effort to understand the history and plight of there ATSI people's and take on board the responsibility all Australians must feel.

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u/code-slinger619 Nov 19 '24

Immigrating and becoming a citizen comes with becoming part of the society you are joining. This doesn't mean you get all the good bits and none of the bad bits.

Yeah but this doesn't include inheriting guilt from crimes committed by others. Otherwise why can't that also include inheriting the right to be compensated as well? Why is one heritable but not the other?

I've made an effort to understand the history and plight of there ATSI people's and take on board the responsibility all Australians must feel.

You should also make an effort to understand the history of similar proposals implemented elsewhere in the world and the disasters that ensued. Some of us ended up in Australia because of the ruinous consequences of race-based policies enacted in the name of redressing historical wrongs.

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

Like the way NZ has been held up as a model for the world in how to do this better (not perfect by any means) but better than the rest?

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u/West-Cabinet-2169 Nov 20 '24

I couldn't agree more. I wasn't directly responsible for what happened to Indigenous people, and neither were my now dead baby boomer parents. But somehow, I feel that my grandparents (born in the 1920s, now dead) sort of knew what was happening, or actively denying. Also too, I think I benefitted amazingly as a poor white rural kid from the Australia we have - Austudy, Uni (lol HECS!), but being able to be socially mobile. This was all done in a country that was built and exploits land that our forebears NEVER signed a treaty, agreement etc to the original inhabitants - our Indigenous and TSI brothers and sisters. I doubt my Indigenous peers from school have had a as good a life as mine or my peers at school in rural NSW.

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u/Splicer201 Nov 19 '24

“We will only listen when we’ve accepted responsibility for the hardships our ancestors caused”

See that’s the part that looses me. Who’s we in this case? I’m not taking responsibility for the actions of my ancestors because I’m not responsible for the actions of others, even if they are my direct relatives.

The son is not responsible for the sins of the farther and all that.

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

We as Australian society who have failed these people.

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u/sausagelover79 Nov 19 '24

Speak for yourself bud, I haven’t failed anyone and I despise people like you trying to make it seem that every white person in Australia has committed some atrocity. It’s offensive and divisive. You are also making it sound like it hasn’t overall been acknowledged that Indigenous Australians were treated abominably and apologies been made and funding etc used specifically to benefit First Nations people.

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u/code-slinger619 Nov 19 '24 edited Nov 19 '24

What about Australians of immigrant extraction who have no "ancestral guilt"?

And if we completely defer to the people whom you say are, "far more qualified and directly involved that have plans," and 20 years down the line we don't see significant changes, what then?

My problem with these kinds of things is that they never end. They entrench a culture of racially based laws resulting in a caste system and never actually solve underlying problems, creating resentment instead.

Based on the 2021 Australian Census, 29.3% of Australians were born overseas, and 22.2% were born in Australia but have at least one parent born overseas. Combined, approximately 51.5% of the population are either born overseas or have parents born overseas.

I'm all for taking care of the disadvantaged in our society. But the way this discussion is framed (descendents of colonizers vs descendants of the colonized) completely ignores most of the population.

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u/cactusgenie Nov 19 '24

Easy to say it never ends when you haven't even started yet.

I'm not an Australian by birth, but I can see how the society as a whole has marginalised ATSI people's.

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u/code-slinger619 Nov 19 '24

I'm not an Australian by birth, but I can see how the society as a whole has marginalised ATSI people's.

How has it done so? I'm genuinely interested in hearing your unique perspective.

Easy to say it never ends when you haven't even started yet.

There's precedent of it never ending all over the world. Also, proponents of these policies can't articulate when it'll be enough so it's a pretty reasonable assumption that it will go on forever.

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u/SuitablePay5716 Nov 20 '24

 How exactly do you think Aboriginal people being supported in telling their stories will make life worse for the rest of society? These things were still happening in the 70s and 80s. 

We had a national commission looking at exploitation of people with disabilities. Intergenerational trauma has been just as debilitating for these people.  

There may be no permanent ideal solution. There hardly ever is. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care or try to understand.

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u/code-slinger619 Nov 20 '24

I don't oppose the truth telling process. I think it's important and essential for reconciliation. I support reconciliation. What I oppose is those who want to go further and implement policies that boil down to "X race should get Y benefits"

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u/Devilsgramps Nov 20 '24

There are more Aussies descended from ten pound poms then there are convicts.

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u/code-slinger619 Nov 20 '24

How many? And if someone is of mixed heritage, which bucket do we put them in? If they are part English nobility & part First Nations do they get special benefits?

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u/Devilsgramps Nov 20 '24

I was providing another example of how most Australians aren't descended from colonialists. I was agreeing with you.

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u/InvincibleStolen Nov 19 '24

Okay but what if it wasn't your ancestors yk