A client nation in their own land. NOT.
There’s no plumbing the depth of this government’s ignorance. Actually that has to be a contradiction in terms. Something with depth enough to plumb would a thing of substance. The point here is that the measure of this government’s prescience is so shallow that it flickers on the surface of the country’s affairs. It is a mirage. The slightest shift in one’s line of sight and it disappears. It’s latest attempt to conjure an image of itself as getting things done (remember “practical reconciliation”?) is to declare that all Aboriginal children must learn English – the language of this country (sic!).
Some people never learn. Remember when Cathy Freeman carried two flags on her victory lap at the Commonwealth games? One was the Aboriginal flag. The other was the Blue Ensign – the flag that most people still to this day mistakenly think of the Australian flag. Mean spirited ignorant people berated her for having the Aboriginal flag with “the” Australian flag, wilfully ignoring the fact that there are at least ten Australian flags, one each for the states, territories and the Commonwealth, and the Aboriginal flag.
How many Australian languages are there? There used to be several hundred. But now the one spoken by the overwhelming majority of people living in Australia is English. That makes it an important language – not the Australian language.
Most of the languages spoken in this country before English arrived no longer exist. But those that do are spoken by people whose cultures have existed on this continent for tens of thousands of years. The cultural heritage value of those languages, if that is not too crass a way of putting it, is incalculable, and their maintenance is nothing less than a sacred trust. Those who are learning them at their mothers’ knees should be groomed in the manner a young Dali Lama. Yet all this government can do is threaten to withhold resources from people if they do not do things the way the government wants them done.
Lets be clear about one thing here: everyone living in this country should have the opportunity to prosper. Learning English would indeed be a good thing, and every effort should be made to provide that opportunity for all who are not proficient at English. But there is a an unbridgeable gulf between that position, and regarding indigenous people as wilfully recalcitrant in preferring their ways to white fella ways, and holding their very existence to ransom. Far from being people who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into white fella ways, Aborigines have an inalienable right to self determination, and Australian governments have an unequivocal obligation to foster that outcome and lead all other Australians in accommodating it and adapting to it rather than coopting ignorant and ill-informed prejudices for electoral advantage.
The way to get Aboriginal children to learn English is to value and support their culture; value them for who they are, and to support them in their most important task – being Aboriginal – and offering English as an additional language that will make them bilingual, and therefore significantly more skilled that the majority of the population who are monolingual; and provide an opportunity to play a vital role in the education of the non indigenous population.
Why wouldn’t the rest of us aspire to be bilingual as well, and learn the truth about the continent we occupy? Why wouldn’t we learn one or more of the most ancient surviving languages on earth and embrace the opportunity to know this country from the inside by learning languages that name its seasons and topography with an authority and subtlety that comes from relationships sustained over scores of millennia, instead of remaining uncomprehending, if sometimes fascinated and very possibly temporary occupiers?
This is not something anyone in this government is capable of thinking about - let alone contemplating. It’s a government that knows only the language of the bottom line – which may be another way for saying the lowest common denominator. Treating Aborigines as a client nation in their own land is as despicable an act as it is possible to imagine – especially in the light of what the world has learned about the importance of and need for human diversity in the era of decolonisation. It’s not too late to decolonise Australia. Non indigenous Australians can learn to become of the land, and we have the very best teachers available – and the language to mediate that outcome.
There’s no plumbing the depth of this government’s ignorance. Actually that has to be a contradiction in terms. Something with depth enough to plumb would a thing of substance. The point here is that the measure of this government’s prescience is so shallow that it flickers on the surface of the country’s affairs. It is a mirage. The slightest shift in one’s line of sight and it disappears. It’s latest attempt to conjure an image of itself as getting things done (remember “practical reconciliation”?) is to declare that all Aboriginal children must learn English – the language of this country (sic!).
Some people never learn. Remember when Cathy Freeman carried two flags on her victory lap at the Commonwealth games? One was the Aboriginal flag. The other was the Blue Ensign – the flag that most people still to this day mistakenly think of the Australian flag. Mean spirited ignorant people berated her for having the Aboriginal flag with “the” Australian flag, wilfully ignoring the fact that there are at least ten Australian flags, one each for the states, territories and the Commonwealth, and the Aboriginal flag.
How many Australian languages are there? There used to be several hundred. But now the one spoken by the overwhelming majority of people living in Australia is English. That makes it an important language – not the Australian language.
Most of the languages spoken in this country before English arrived no longer exist. But those that do are spoken by people whose cultures have existed on this continent for tens of thousands of years. The cultural heritage value of those languages, if that is not too crass a way of putting it, is incalculable, and their maintenance is nothing less than a sacred trust. Those who are learning them at their mothers’ knees should be groomed in the manner a young Dali Lama. Yet all this government can do is threaten to withhold resources from people if they do not do things the way the government wants them done.
Lets be clear about one thing here: everyone living in this country should have the opportunity to prosper. Learning English would indeed be a good thing, and every effort should be made to provide that opportunity for all who are not proficient at English. But there is a an unbridgeable gulf between that position, and regarding indigenous people as wilfully recalcitrant in preferring their ways to white fella ways, and holding their very existence to ransom. Far from being people who need to be dragged kicking and screaming into white fella ways, Aborigines have an inalienable right to self determination, and Australian governments have an unequivocal obligation to foster that outcome and lead all other Australians in accommodating it and adapting to it rather than coopting ignorant and ill-informed prejudices for electoral advantage.
The way to get Aboriginal children to learn English is to value and support their culture; value them for who they are, and to support them in their most important task – being Aboriginal – and offering English as an additional language that will make them bilingual, and therefore significantly more skilled that the majority of the population who are monolingual; and provide an opportunity to play a vital role in the education of the non indigenous population.
Why wouldn’t the rest of us aspire to be bilingual as well, and learn the truth about the continent we occupy? Why wouldn’t we learn one or more of the most ancient surviving languages on earth and embrace the opportunity to know this country from the inside by learning languages that name its seasons and topography with an authority and subtlety that comes from relationships sustained over scores of millennia, instead of remaining uncomprehending, if sometimes fascinated and very possibly temporary occupiers?
This is not something anyone in this government is capable of thinking about - let alone contemplating. It’s a government that knows only the language of the bottom line – which may be another way for saying the lowest common denominator. Treating Aborigines as a client nation in their own land is as despicable an act as it is possible to imagine – especially in the light of what the world has learned about the importance of and need for human diversity in the era of decolonisation. It’s not too late to decolonise Australia. Non indigenous Australians can learn to become of the land, and we have the very best teachers available – and the language to mediate that outcome.
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