Tonight's Tafe lesson differed from the other lessons which I frustratingly have to sit through in boredom every Thursday evening. This week happens to be Reconciliation Week (something I wasn't actually aware of, thanks to our mainstream media) and to celebrate the occasion, my lecturer had made the decision for our class to spend the lesson watching an ABC Education special about Indigenous horticulture.
The documentary itself was centered around Bruce Pascoe, author of the critically acclaimed Dark Emu biography. It basically went into detail about how our society, the Australian society, has such a limited understanding of the agricultural practices used by Indigenous Australians prior to European settlement. It was a pretty thought provoking document actually. Watching it definitely opened up a can of worms on the debate over what still needs to happen for equality among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to be achieved.
When my lecturer informed us on what we were going to do for the lesson, it sparked two reactions within me. One was the frustration that I had to yet again sit through a lesson where we do little to no work at all (which is unsurprising really, given the amount of budgets cuts under a Liberal Government). However, it also raised the thought over how tragic it is that something so significant and integral to our national identity is not covered in the Tafe tertiary curriculum and that is the basis of this article;
I'm going to be honest, I have generally always had a relatively mixed opinion of Indigenous Australians. I personally have full respect for Indigenous elders, full-blood Aboriginals or any genuinely decent human-being. Don't get me wrong, I believe the majority of the actions by the European settlers and past generations of white Australians were absolutely sickening.
However, in saying all that, I have little to no sympathy at all for the members of the Indigenous community who partake in crime or use their racial status to undermine others. Having those views doesn't make me a racist. As a child, I had always been under the impression that those type of people had simply chosen that lifestyle, thanks to being spoon-fed a cocktail of lies by the education system and the media. I realise now that the issue is far more complex than that. The fact that Indigenous Australians have high incarceration rates, and have lower life expectancies than non-Indigenous people on average, are just some of the many issues with Australian society at the present time. That cannot be disputed.
Regardless of what your views are on race or society in general, one thing we should be able to come to agreeance on is that all aspects of our national history should be taught in our schools. The fact that we are continuing to ignore Indigenous history is something that we, as a society, should be absolutely ashamed of. There should be no bias whatsoever on the teachings of historical events and artifacts. Indigenous history is equally as important as the history of European settlement.
I just think it's so hypocritical that we are giving ourselves a false sense of satisfaction by thinking that we are achieving equality by proposing to recognise Indigenous people as the "first Australians" on the Constitution, yet we're doing nothing at all to resolve the issues that many Indigenous Australians are facing in their day-to-day lives, nor are we doing much to improve people's understanding of Indigenous history.
It begs the question; how can we progress forward with Indigenous rights and equality when we can't even get the fundamental basics right?
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