The Contradictions of Aboriginalism By Paul Walker M.A.

Conor Ross has a challenging article at the ever-interesting Quadrant.org.au, part of a series beginning a wide-ranging critique of the coming referendum on the so-called Aboriginal voice in parliament, essentially creating a third chamber. The main point made in the quotes below is that the ideology of Aboriginal culture being the oldest continuous culture on Earth is false, with the southern African San people being at least 150,000 years. But the more fundamental issue is that this is a conservative/traditional claim, yet the Left championing multiculturalism and diversity, are all into progressivism, singing the virtues of globalism, cosmopolitanism, and racial and cultural change, unending. So, if the Great Replacement is so good for whites, having trashed and eliminated Anglo-Saxon race and culture, why should any culture be preserved at all? If so, why bother with the referendum, since in the end, all races and cultures must be melted down, and maybe the human race itself replaced in the transhumanist agenda of the World Economic Forum?

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/07-08/imprisoned-in-the-oldest-continuous-culture/

“The frequent claim that Australian Aboriginal culture is the oldest continuous culture on Earth, measured at 50,000 years, is a curious one. First, it is incorrect. This title belongs to the San people, who have existed for at least 150,000 years in southern Africa. Second, it is curious that this claim is used as proof of the value of traditional Aboriginal culture. Curious indeed, since the claim, which is a claim of conservatism par excellence, is frequently made by those who themselves subscribe to a view that culture should be dynamic, embracing change, in other words progressive. The question arises of how this strange alliance between white political progressivism and indigenous cultural conservativism came to exist and how it continues.

The favourable view of indigenous peoples has been an old companion of progressive politics. It arose after the discovery of the New World, with ideas such as Rousseau’s “noble savage” fascinating the intelligentsia of his day. This fascination extended to the reading public, who developed an insatiable hunger for stories of the otherworldly virtues and vices of people untainted by civilisation, as found in, for example, Melville’s Typee and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. These texts attracted readers not only by their descriptions of a people utterly unlike those in the Old World but also as means by which these authors placed their own civilisation in a new light. To this day, this hunger for the exotic continues, albeit under conditions of severe scarcity—those untainted by civilisation only exist in isolated pockets and the people once featured in those famous novels adopted modern lifestyles long ago. …

These same anachronistic hopes run through intercultural relations between indigenous and white Australians, forcing the former to either conform under the weight of a 50,000-year-old way of life or else feel they are betraying their authentic self by assimilating to mainstream Australian culture. This kind of binary is unique in the progressive discourse, which prides itself on its romanticisation of spectrums, especially in the fields of sexuality and gender. Perhaps the trans-racial is an impasse for progressivism, or perhaps a logical leap in waiting. Either way for now the binary remains and is a kind of spectre haunting both mainstream and indigenous Australian culture. Evidence for this can be found in political issues that plague indigenous communities such as problematic attitudes towards education and women. These issues are caused in part by traditional Aboriginal culture, as Aboriginal politicians such as Jacinta and Bess Price argue, rather than being solely the fault of colonisation as is so widely believed. The African-American economist Thomas Sowell has made similar observations in the face of the scapegoat of slavery regarding issues within black communities. He regards current social problems not as the remnants of the institution of slavery but rather as the result of the southern “cracker” culture that blacks adopted and later the welfare state that destroyed the integrity of black families in the 1950s and 1960s.

As Professor Emma Kowal describes in her book Trapped in the Gap, progressive whites affected by post-colonialism find themselves trapped by endless ambiguities, contradictions and double binds when they attempt to help the indigenous. At the heart of the issue is a contradiction between, on the one hand, the desire to see Aboriginal Australians become statistically identical to whites in health, wealth and education, and on the other, maintaining their separate cultural identity and resisting cultural erasure. For those Aborigines who need assistance, the choice presented to them is a Faustian one: betray your culture and gain the benefits, or remain authentically impoverished. The progress towards the Close the Gap targets has been agonisingly slow (and in some cases, no progress has been made at all) which is no surprise when you consider the attitudes and philosophy behind those endeavouring to help.”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/07-08/from-class-war-to-race-war/