The Voice’s Makarrata Truth Commission: What Is it? By James Reed
The notion of Makarrata, arising from the YES side of the Voice referendum succeeding, will have profound consequences, more than even the critics have canvassed. First, consider what this concept entails. Literally the word is from Yolngu and means a spear penetrating the thigh (usually), of a person who has done wrong:
So, we are not off to a good start here if one is white, as it is pretty clear from the Uluru Statement from the Heart that whites are the bad guys, the invaders and committers of genocide. Another article at the blog today has direct quotes from this document for verification. But, assuming it is just a metaphor, after the Voice, there will be a Makarrata Commission “to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.” So, what will this notion of truth be, perhaps like that of the South African Truth Commissions? Here is one view from Paul Collits:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-voice/2023/08/truth-telling-of-the-pontius-pilate-variety/
“It is said that “truth” is the first casualty of war. Well, it has certainly been the main casualty of the post-modernists’ war on everything that came before about 1970. Drawing (irrelevantly) on Einstein’s theory of relativity, the post-modernists dispensed with both the idea of objective truth and the idea that “truth” could be discovered beyond an individual’s constructed “narrative”. The recently emerged conception of Aboriginal truth-telling fits all-too-neatly into this latter day, ersatz version of truth.
There is no evidence Aboriginal communities developed any version of this Western evolution of the notion of truth, of (to borrow from Matthew Arnold) “the best that has been thought and said” on the subject, prior to European settlement of Australia. Yet, truth-telling is at the centre of the Makarrata revolution about to be foist upon us all. Which version of “truth” is it? The absence of a written record of pre-European era Aboriginal culture doesn’t help us. So we are left with the likelihood that it is post-1970s indigenous reflection that lands us where we are, truth-wise. A little like the 1980s Maori understanding of the “principles” of the Treaty of Waitangi, or, indeed, “the spirit of Vatican II”.
Where does Makarrata truth-telling come from, then? Christopher Nance explores this problem:
Truth-telling. The use of this term has been copied mainly from various overseas bodies (such as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission), but it is not really about people telling the truth; rather it is a term that has become politically weaponised, a means for berating white Australians. In the current discussion it entails non-indigenous people admitting the truth about our past, that the continent had been “invaded” and colonised, and that the original inhabitants had been ill-treated.
This all sounds like the post-modernist notion of truth-as-narrative. Not worth a pinch of salt, in other words. This is the age of truth-as-power. The Aboriginal pro-Voice activists are seeking to ride the relativist version of truth wave to the beach. This isn’t very “traditional”, of course. It might be even be construed as cultural appropriation, in other words. Quelle horreur!”
…More truth-telling? The enforcement of top-down PC totalitarianism is not even close to a simulacrum of truth, and not especially reconciliatory either. But this is the way of Makarrata: ‘truth’ as power. No doubt, practices like this are being rolled out all across the land. A veneer of truth lends weight to the cause, like sprinkling magic dust on a pile of dung.”
In other words, what the Makarrata Truth commission will deliver is more of the same. That whites are eternally guilty for being here, for establishing civilisation on this continent, something that they must be shameful forever, and made to pay for. How could it be otherwise given the framework outlined in the opening pages of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which is classic woke Leftist black arm band history and philosophy. And that is what lies behind the Voice referendum.
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