I hope that this is successful, even though it’s just a small step. Here in New Zealand I still come across people who claim that giving specific help to disadvantaged peoples (in our case Māori and Pacific peoples) is “racist” and we should just “treat everyone equally”. I even see this justified by some odd uses of Buddhist concepts: “First people/etc is just an identity - and the Buddha said to abandon identity…”. Of course, the people making such arguments are generally overlooking their own identity and preference as White Australians/New Zealanders. The implication is that others should conform to their idea of what an Australian/New Zealander should be.
Luckily in New Zealand there is a treaty that gives the Māori people certain rights so it is harder to argue that their culture should be subsumed by the culture of the majority.
I just want to deeply thank all the Buddhists, monastics and lay people and Buddhist councils here who worked so hard over the last year for the YES campaign! I am so proud of everyone and have been so moved (often to tears) by your generous work and campaigning! The result tonight is heartbreaking, and we can keep working together in solidarity with and alongside First Nations peoples for their rights and dignity! Love is bigger than hate, fear, greed and ignorance
Indeed Letty, however, this result was foreseeable.
I was one of the doctors working with Aboriginal Medical Services that signed the open letter in Fairfax papers endorsing a “Yes” vote based on our experience of the importance of co-design. As one Aboriginal person said to me many years before the referendum idea, but highly relevant: “If Aboriginal people are not at the table, we are usually on the menu”
So true, and they have a lovely way of encapsulating an issue
Great to see that video with Bhante and Noel Pearson as I was away for that even and was wanting to watch it, will do so now!
Finally, to quote the Buddha’s words on not being a Brahmin by birth misses the point. Aboriginal people are not saying they are better than anyone else and need to be worshipped , they are saying that this is their land and they need to be heard. I wonder whether the person who wrote that has read the Uluru statement from the heart? If they have, do they not see the Dhamma quite clearly there?
If people haven’t read it, I would suggest reading it before posting anything, and it is just a pity that almost none of the people voting in the referendum would have read it. The only 2 friends I know who voted no hadn’t read it (while telling me they “didn’t know what Aboriginal people wanted”
Whenever First Nations reach out their hands in friendship and reconciliation, we slap them down alas…
Hey, right, I was so depressed I almost forgot! It’s a huge disappointment, but also a new day. What can we do next? There’s obliviously a long way to go.
I was so inspired from the first time I heard about the Voice proposal. It was a rare chance to engage in a movement with a genuine sense of nobility and compassion, of wisdom and growth.
What we can do is something many are thinking about this morning.
I wonder whether it would be possible for the Sangha Council who presented that incredible Webinar (Thanks Bhante Sujato!) to write to Noel and say that we remain by their side and the Metta and Karuna we have for our First Nations brothers and sisters is still with them. Even if we are not in the majority, there were millions and millions of Australians who stand with them?
I note the non-Aboriginal community posting how devastated and ashamed we all are, whereas the Aboriginal people are responding with incredible resilience and strength (I guess they are used to it after being treated like this for two hundred and fifty years!).
As a lay Buddhist I am so pleased with the Buddhist response, at a quite senior level, in support of the Yes campaign for the Voice proposal. And as a non-Indigenous person I consider myself privileged to have had contact with Indigenous people as early as 1949 in central Australia when, as a skinny kid from Adelaide, I found myself sitting among sand-dunes on a cattle station barely a hundred kilometres from Uluru. There, near a trough with water, a man and woman stopped to refresh themselves a metre from where I sat. It was as though I had stepped back many thousands of years. In an instant, it seemed to me, they were gone. Many years later, working and living in Alice Springs, I asked someone at an Indigenous health service where the man and woman might have been going in such a hurry and she said, without hesitation, “to Uluru”. The memory of that first silent encounter has been forged like iron in my psyche and was transformative. May Indigenous people eventually find justice and recognition of their rightful place in this country to which they have never ceded sovereignty
Wow. First I was surprised at how (relatively) little this referendum would do. And now I’m surprised that something so minor didn’t pass.
I’m also surprised at how many political parties there are in Australia, including the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party. I guess that would just be part of the Republicans in the States. (edit: Never mind. Part of their platform is “tougher sentencing for illegal firearm trade and usage”.)
I also didn’t realize that Australia doesn’t have any treaties with aboriginal communities/nations. Not that Canada or the US have done such a great job at honouring theirs.
Hopefully the coalitions that formed around the referendum can work on other solutions.
