PSA : THE INDIGENOUS VOICE REFERENDUM 14th October 2023
The Yes Vote is literally just giving indigenous Australians A SEAT AT THE TABLE to give information and advice about issues and governmental decisions that affect them.
Indigenous information and advice for indigenous issues from indigenous Australians.
That's it . It's acknowledging their existence as the first peoples of Australia and recognising that they have valuable information to contribute about their cultures, the ways they live, what their most pressing needs are and the best ways in which to help, to enable governments to effectively help them.
The government already provides "help" each year, in an effort to close the gap on education access, healthcare access, and many other pressing needs - they are already using taxpayer money to do this but crucially, these efforts have not been successful because we are missing out on crucial information.
The Voice to Parliament gives the government access to invaluable information that enables it to create and better implement aid, education, healthcare , equal opportunity.
I have been very actively involved in many Reconciliaton efforts for the vast majority of my life -
At 16 I travelled to some of the indigenous rural communities in Australia, met elders and individuals no tourist has access to meet, learnt from them, and saw what was there.
I saw the attempts, the efforts to provide access to Western education, that the rest of the country has, to provide healthcare, housing etc.
They are based on western ways of life, ideas of community and interaction.
Fundamentally because even if well intentioned, your efforts to help can actually harm if you don't have access to crucial information about how indigenous communities live.
We need to accommodate our help, our efforts, our aid to the specific needs and ways of life, values and dynamics of the many indigenous communities, especially rural, that exist across Australia, so that they have access to the same human rights we all do.
The human right to healthcare and education that we all have- it's not accessible in the same ways for indigenous communities.
It's provided, but on western terms- with the western expectation that children will leave their families for 6 months at a time and travel extremely far away to attend school, for example.
This is so backwards and outdated even for western sensibilities, and an incredibly outdated mode of education that is unhealthy emotionally for any child, let alone vulnerable people who have to choose between a western run school and their culture, their families - literally being a part of their community, a present member.
There are better ways to provide access to education than this. Ways that don't disrupt their connection to community, land and culture.
And the best people to ask, to provide information that can properly inform us about these issues, and how best to navigate them, fix them, are the the indigenous Australians themselves- they are the experts.
So that our aid and help and efforts actually do - help. Actually work.
The funds are going there anyway. So we need to put it to use in effective ways.
What we have now doesn't work.
We can only make it better.
Please Vote YES for The Indigenous Voice to Parliament
It is the beginning of lasting, effective positive change for vulnerable communities, and for us all.
