Opinion If we give indigenous Australians special rights, how about indigenous Germans?

[650lb Sumo]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...s-special-rights-how-about-indigenous-germans

Does being the first to reach a piece of land give you special rights? And are those rights collective and inherited? That is the question Australians are gearing up to answer in a referendum.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s

centre-left government, elected last year, wants a constitutional amendment to recognise a special place for autochthonous Australians, giving them a formal representative body, alongside Australia’s existing democratic structures, called the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

In a country that is rich and getting richer, 30% of Aboriginal Australians are in poverty — vastly higher than any other ethnic group. Successive administrations have tried and failed to tackle the problem. Despite one government programme after another, more than half of adult Aboriginals are in receipt of some kind of welfare payment, and their communities are plagued by unemployment, alcoholism, and domestic abuse.

But the current proposal is not about the travails of the indigenous communities so much as about the very fact of their being indigenous. The question on the ballot paper is: “A Proposed Law: To alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?”

It is worth noting that this is not an internationally transferable principle. The people who strongly support giving extra rights to indigenous peoples in Australia, the United States, and Canada would, by and large, be horrified at the concept of giving additional rights to indigenous Germans over descendants of postwar guest workers, or indigenous Scots over more recent Commonwealth arrivals. And they would be right to be horrified. A successful multiethnic polity rests on the understanding that all adult citizens of sound mind are equal before the law.

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States vie to show that one of their citizens reached a disputed territory before anyone else. When it comes to plants and animals, we can be nativist to the point of genocide, seeking to eradicate invasive species for no reason other than that they are competing with a native one. The native species is not defended on the grounds that it is stronger or prettier or more useful to man, but simply because it is native.

What, then, is wrong with extending that principle to groups of people? Not that it recognises the value of a long-standing claim but that it treats people as members of a collective rather than as individuals.

A family might have lived in a particular house for generations, and that sense of permanence might give the rest of us a vague sense of satisfaction. But our satisfaction is trumped by the right of ownership the moment the family sells the house. A descendant of the original family does not get to boot out the current owner simply because his great-great-grandfather built the place.

For the same reason, museums should not give away artifacts to people whose sole claim to them is living in a particular place, speaking the same language as the creators, or looking a bit like them. In his book The Dying Citizen, Victor Davis Hanson

explains that free and rational societies rest on the idea that citizenship is our primary political identity, that citizenship must matter more than our identity as, say, rich people, or black people, or Presbyterians.

Australia is one of the most successful countries in the world, as the lengthy line of would-be immigrants testifies. Its success rests on equality before the law. That precept would be undermined if certain Australians were given different political rights on the basis of ancestry or physiognomy. Australian voters know this in their bones, which is why the polls are turning and why, when the proposal is put to the vote, they will almost certainly throw it out. I wish I could say the same with equal confidence about the rest of the English-speaking world.

 

[weed]

RIP in peace @bobgeese

 

[skold]

Are you forgetting the little part about how indigenous Australians were treated by the Europeans that colonized the continent?

Perhaps that may have something to do with it, rather than just simply "being there first"

 

[Anewt]

It's a terrible idea for me. Nope no race based laws for me. Hell even the booze bans in some communities are wrong imo.


Issue is, I have absolutely no idea how to fix those communities. The kids need to be removed from some of those areas. But then with the " stolen generation thing " which was brutal, its a impossible situation.


The children have been failed by their families and our system alike. Imo any nurse / Dr who finds evidence of sexual abuse and there's no action by police or medical practitioners is so fucked up its mind boggling to me.

 

[PG29 red0 Jr]

No race based laws, no race based anything. Simple as that.....

Don't have it on the census, etc.

 

[panamaican]

That is an idiotic premise. The United States definitely gave special rights to their indigenous populations. The idiocy in the OP is in claiming "indigenous Germans"...as if we don't have actual Native Americans who were here long before the Germans, lol.

Canada also has special laws for their indigenous populations...who were not German, French or any other European settler.

The aborigines, native Americans, native Canadians are the peoples who predate the European settlers, I cannot believe that anyone with a basic understanding how of how these nations came to exist would equate the indigenous populations with the subsequent settler groups.

 

[Ruprecht]

Most of the English speaking world, sadly including Australia, still recognises an aristocracy.
Compared to which a parliamentary voice representing an indigenous perspective seems spectacularly less of an encumbrance on the idea of equality.
The point of the voice is to give the indigenous population a degree of self determination in drafting the national approach to indigenous affairs. Since simply throwing money at their problems, paternalism and authoritarianism have been overwhelmingly awful failures.
The proposal is adopted directly from the Uluru Statement from the Heart, delivered at the First Nations National Constitutional Convention. It's the culmination of a process of political self determination for the indigenous population.
Of course that doesn't mean it'll be effective in addressing the problems the communities are currently facing, but failing to recognise that both the current and historical situation of indigenous Australians is not the same as the migrant populations and their descendants is denying reality.

 

[syct23]

Didn’t the Germans already try to
Re-indigenous themselves.?

 

[milliniar]

That is an idiotic premise. The United States definitely gave special rights to their indigenous populations. The idiocy in the OP is in claiming "indigenous Germans"...as if we don't have actual Native Americans who were here long before the Germans, lol.

Canada also has special laws for their indigenous populations...who were not German, French or any other European settler.

The aborigines, native Americans, native Canadians are the peoples who predate the European settlers, I cannot believe that anyone with a basic understanding how of how these nations came to exist would equate the indigenous populations with the subsequent settler groups.

The special rights were agreements

 

[submerged88]

Should Mexicans be able to come to the US, as they please, and establish themselves under the might makes right code?

 

[panamaican]

The special rights were agreements

Sure, agreements that the nation had to vote for. Agreements that granted the indigenous populations land within the continental land mass and many of the privileges of citizenship without some of the restrictions. More importantly, "agreements" that we unilaterally and frequently just throw out and then tell them tough shit because they can't do anything about it.

They are agreements but the indigenous population has/had very little leverage in making those agreements. And don't get me wrong, this isn't about bashing the arrangements, only that the label might be different but the effect is largely the same - they're granted special rights that we can rescind whenever we want.

 

[Denter]

I think TS was referring to indigenous Europeans in Europe. For example, English DNA has remained basically unchanged since the 500s AD, and more realistically to 2000 BC. This is far longer in one spot than say, the Maori, who are considered indigenous to New Zealand, even though they arrived there in the Middle Ages.

 

[I Am Legion]

I do a lot of research into early hominids/Sapiens. The aborigines in Australia look to be WAY closer related to our ancestors than Africans do. I know people like to say that Africans were the first, but man I think the Aborigines could argue that.

 

[AWilder]

I do a lot of research into early hominids/Sapiens. The aborigines in Australia look to be WAY closer related to our ancestors than Africans do. I know people like to say that Africans were the first, but man I think the Aborigines could argue that.

 

[djacobox372]

Are you forgetting the little part about how indigenous Australians were treated by the Europeans that colonized the continent?

Perhaps that may have something to do with it, rather than just simply "being there first"

That describes every population that was supplanted by a more advance population world-wide.

 

[Whippy McGee]

I am a bit torn on the whole Indigenous people concept. If we keep going back in history, then we will find the Apache, Comanche, etc. slaughtered those before them and took their hunting ground. The history of man has been, those with the greater weapons and tactics take the land. Let's consider Constantinople. The Muslims didn't have a shot until they got to the cannon technology and took down the walls. Had they not, do they have a right to the land? How about the Jews in Israel? It as their land, then not, now again... it's quite convoluted.

I don't have an strong answer for either side, but certainly more questions. I don't want to trounce on indigenous cultures either.

 

[Hdfi]

Natural selection is real and if the native europeans want to survive they better get rid of liberals and their open-border policies.

 

[Starck]

That is an idiotic premise. The United States definitely gave special rights to their indigenous populations. The idiocy in the OP is in claiming "indigenous Germans"...as if we don't have actual Native Americans who were here long before the Germans, lol.

Canada also has special laws for their indigenous populations...who were not German, French or any other European settler.

The aborigines, native Americans, native Canadians are the peoples who predate the European settlers, I cannot believe that anyone with a basic understanding how of how these nations came to exist would equate the indigenous populations with the subsequent settler groups.

You misunderstood. TS meant, for example, native Germans getting extra rights in Germany.

 

[panamaican]

You misunderstood. TS meant, for example, native Germans getting extra rights in Germany.

No, I understood just fine. He positioned Canada and the US as countries that wouldn't support indigenous populations getting extra rights if it was in someplace like Germany. But it's an idiotic comparison because those countries support the premise in their very own countries. What better example of their consistency on the issue than how they've actually performed in their own country?

We should judge them on how they would respond to a hypothetical German issue but ignore how they responded on a real world parallel that actually affected them?

 

[Starck]

No, I understood just fine. He positioned Canada and the US as countries that wouldn't support indigenous populations getting extra rights if it was in someplace like Germany. But it's an idiotic comparison because those countries support the premise in their very own countries. What better example of their consistency on the issue than how they've actually performed in their own country?

We should judge them on how they would respond to a hypothetical German issue but ignore how they responded on a real world parallel that actually affected them?

In you first post, you reference native Americans being here (in America) longer than Germans of settler descent. TS meant, for example, indigenous Germans getting rights in Germany.