G'day Te,
Actually I found what you said somewhat offensive. What gives "first peoples" any greater rights than any other citizen of a nation.
Let me see. My father had an inheritence right in Ireland that was over a substantial amount of land. He could not take up that right because the government created laws that discriminated against inheritence to foreigners. I have no idea if these laws still stand but they were set up for the "purity" of Ireland so that, because of the huge, exodus from Ireland, they did not end up with inherited land going to a large degree to foreign ownerships and therefore foreign landlords. To me this is the same as theft. But would abuse an Irish person over this. Huh!
So my father's inheritence, because of his birthright, was removed because of an accident that ensured that he grew up away from the land of his ancestors.
The Internet is an interesting place. You cannot "see" a person on it so a person can be any sex, age, creed, religioun, colour (as long as they can type in English!). So you would have no idea of my ethnicity. I'm a part aboriginal (a first peoples in your view). Now the tribe that I descend from probably first stepped foot in Australia around 40,000 years ago. That is many centuries before any person of Polynesian descent stepped foot in New Zealand, or any of the Pacific Islands. It is about three times the period that the first settles occupied North America and since the plains Indians or Native Amecicans occupied the plains around 500 years ago for the most part, driving out weaker earlier occupants, it is about 80 times further back than they can claim affinity with the land.
Now I was born on the fringes of a city. I received no special rights at all. My father was injured at work so we were poor. I went to a prestigious school because I was smart but had no hope of attending University except that I was smart and the Navy accepted me and even sent me to University. It was when I was in my late 20s that I discovered that my immediate family was the closest thing there was to a tribe now completely extinct. But the land that the tribe called their own has one of the richest mineral deposits, including oil, in Australia under it.
I was advised to claim "land rights" and was told that the benefits could be immense. I have no more right to that land than the graziers that have held leases over it for sometimes several generations, or even the poor fellow that purchased a chunk of it about a year before anyone discovered that it was claimable under the Land Rights legislation.
Because I can claim membership of a long dead tribe by blood, does that mean that I had a right to the land? Or that I should be treated differently to any other Australian? It still annoys me that if I tick a box on my social security form for my disability pension that, by declaring my aboriginality, I receive a significantly higher benefit and some medical costs that are not covered otherwise, covered, because of this check box. Am I stupid for not ticking the box? I personally don't think so.
The "futility" to which you refer, is generally the doing of the first peoples. Aboriginals that live in remoter areas of Australia do not send their children to school so they end up unfit for any form of employment. Until recently nothing was done because of the "cultural" rights of the parents. They finally decided this was a stupid idea and now they are tying the adult's benefits to the attendance of children at school and, surprise, surprise, children are going to school.
In Australia, there has been an issue that is being reported upon but isn't getting a huge amount of publicity because of the fears of being accussed of racism. Aboriginal groups (often in cities) have ended up with adult males that prey on the very young children, molesting them freely. Until recently, prosecutions have been unheard of because, the claim was it was a "cultural thing". Since I've lived in remote communities with Aboriginals I at least understand enough of the culture to know this has nothing to do with the culture and in a fully tribal system the men would be speared and possible have their genitals mutilated for such activities.
So please tell me why you think "first peoples" cannot speak with anyone except their own cultural people because it is such an excersise in futility. This bit I really do not understand.
This is in a science forum and should never have been here. The thread has developed into an argument about whether the fences are racist and then devolved into whether comments are racist. If you ask me, this thread should have been moved to "Not Quite Science" or deleted entirely. But the comments have been made, have been read, and so I'm going to comment. Because this is something that really annoys me.
As far as I am concerned, all members of a country have the same rights. I don't care whether they are in the country on a tourist visa, a green card, illegally, born there, or are "first peoples". Those that are in the country illegally have rights of respect only to the extent that any human owes to another, not rights to services or freedom for deportation.
To provide special provisions for "first peoples" just because they were there first is not only idiotic, imho, but counter productive and injurious to the "first peoples" so that instead of being able to "pursue happiness" and live a normal life, they become part of a victimhood mentality and believe they are owed something that others in the same country are not. Previous slaughters, genocides, forceable loss fo lands, are meaningless to the generation removed from those to which it was done to. A German born after 1945 has no need to apologise to a Jew that survived a concentration camp and certainly not to a Jew that wasn't even born then. Strangely Jews seem to understand this, as do most Germans.
Refusing to acknowledge horrors in recent histories such as Japan does with its education system that blames the blockade of oil by the US for the Second World War, rather than the appalling attack on the Chinese and very clear racist and superiority based intentions to create a "sphere of influence" in the Asian region, isn't a good thing at all. And compensation probably should be paid to those that are still alive that were "comfort" women in Korea, China, Indonesia etc. Actually it should have been done decades ago.
You only have to look at the Balkans to see just how bad a situation can become when blame for atrocities that no one is now alive to have participated, continues to be made against peoples of a certain type.
In Australia we have demand for apologies for a "stolen generation", where aboriginal children were forceably removed from their parents. The fact that this was most often because of serious risk to the child seems to have been forgotten. The crime appears to be that the children where educated and treated in a similar fashion to any other ward of the state during that period.
My wife was forceably removed from her mother at birth. This was done because in the early 60s a young mother was considered unfit to raise a child and tactics up to and including smothering the mother with a pillow until unconcious so that the child could be removed, as well as forced signatures, threats of being jailed, etc. Is my wife considered to be a "stolen" generation? No, actually, because she is of Russian/Polish extraction. Indeed, the only acknowledgement of this ghastly system, is that it was the "paternalist" society at the time and in the absence of any ability to provide for a child, it might have been cruel to the mother, but probably was fair to the child.
How come one standard can be applied because the child was white, and another, black, especially since the black cases generally involved far more extreme circumstances such as severe alcoholism of the mother?
So just what rights do you think "first peoples" should have? And why is it racist to simply state that all peoples in one nation should be treated the same? Because I believe you called dehammer racist for saying exactly that.
Regards
Richard
