The acknowledgement to country has been around for a decade.
Well I am well and truly sick of hearing it multiple times per day for the last decade
Sorry MT, but I’m with Chuck here.
It’s not how long it’s been around, it’s how often it’s said these days. You can’t compare 10 years ago with what’s happening today … today it’s constant
Gotta laugh in a room of six businessmen and the acknowledgment takes place .. not a single percent of aboriginal blood amongst them .. therefore the relevance is zero
I understand showing respect , but I think it’s gone over the top
It could be argued that that kind of attitude in bold is the reason why we have it and still need it reinforced. If you are an Australian then the complete history of this land is relevant to you regardless of your ethnicity.
The 'not my ethnicity' excuse doesn't wash either given the majority of Aussies aren't poms yet we still have a pom as our head of state, the pom's flag in the canton of our flag, and we have our national day as the day the poms arrived (Jan 26, 1788) rather than the actual anniversary of the birth of our nation (Jan 1, 1901). Do these businessmen laugh at needing to celebrate Australia Day on the wrong historical date? Something tells me they don't. However, see the howls of outrage from the same types who mock Indigenous acknowledgment if anyone dares say we should replace any of these now irrelevant foreign things
with actual relevant Aussie ones
.
I'm not ethnically Indigenous nor Anglo. This is about acknowledging the full and correct history of this land which didn't begin in 1788 as some still falsely want to (make) believe. British colonialism is just one part of this land's history. While it has some significance, it is neither the beginning, the present, nor the main part to who and what Australia is now. It's just one part in the long history of this land and its people. We should strongly acknowledge all parts of our history from indigenous history all the way through to becoming and being proudly and fully independently Australian as a modern nation. Problem is we either still don't in terms of the latter or if we try to regarding the former there's always the usual cultural cringers opposing or sooking about it
.
A lot of the basic Australian "history" we were taught as kids was BS and I'm not just talking about the nonsense that Cook "discovered" Australia or "our nation began in 1788". We have been fed crap as so-called "history" to diminish anything that were uniquely Australian achievements that had nothing to do with Britain. Nah, let's not be proud that beginning with the fallout that followed the Eureka stockade, everyday Australians ("white" at least) were one of the first on Earth to have actual democracy: full adult male suffrage, full adult female suffrage (after NZ), the secret ballot, the 8-hour working day, plus a democratic bicameral parliament. None of these were inherited from the UK. We took the plutocratic Westminster system at the time from Britain and made it democratic here. Then most of these Aussie democratic innovations were exported/adopted by other nations around the world including the UK. That's something as Australians to be proud of. The days of being told "you little Aussies have no history and no culture and are insignificant to world history" be it indigenous or non-indigenous are gone! We desperately need more real actual Australian history promoted and taught to overcome the rubbish that lazily still gets sprouted [hello ignorant morons like Pauline Hanson
]. If that annoys certain folk then so be it!
