Do the people of Deutschland ever get annoyed at everybody calling their country completely different names with widely different origins?
Sorry we took your land and killed off many of your people but we’ll call it the name you used to so we’re good right?
I’m not entirely sure that this is a good faith question, but nonetheless, I’ll use it as a jumping off point.
The short answer is because a number of aboriginal authors and activists that I follow think it’s important. So I’m just gonna respect that.
The slightly longer answer is because interpretation of history matters today. Australia in particular has a particularly fucked up view of its history. One which views settlers as mostly benevolent or not as bad as other places at least.
For example our Prime Minister recently dismissed our Black Lives Matter protests by saying that “Australia never had slavery”. Which is just false in multiple ways. We had slavery of aboriginal people and Pacific islanders that counts by any definition, and ongoing wage theft through to the 70s and 80s that would count under a slightly broader definition.
That fucked up history informs voters perspectives on aboriginal people, who are one of the most incarcerated people on the planet and subject to daily racism and abusive policing. There’s racism in media and the workplace. All informed by a really limited and inaccurate view of Australian history.
Making clear that these places were and are aboriginal, that these are important cultural places, and that they have a history that predates some white bloke showing up 150 years ago is a small part of getting a more accurate view of history that can inform change.
Regarding Ayers rock/Uluru. The names changed in 1993. There’s been a ton of media and information about why Uluru is a sacred place and not just a tourist landmark. After 27 years of that, if someone still insists on calling it Ayers rock. That tells you something about that person’s attitudes. It’s doesn’t make them “my enemy”. (Wtf chris) but it does suggest that they have fairly different views on politics to me.
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Very good point. Like i don’t think it matters that much. But it’s just so low cost, why wouldn’t you?
I think Ayers rock/Uluru is even more straightforward. Because both are equally recognized, at least in Australia.
But calling a few landmarks by their indigenous name doesn’t actually even begin to address any of these issues. It’s a bandaid on a gunshot wound. You’re naming all these important issues that actually do drastically impact indigenous people in profound ways and then talking about what to call a landmark.
And if those views still permeate society then if a minority of allies try to push alternative names for Melbourne or wherever then it could easily backfire. Because if a majority are actively prejudiced against indigenous people then they’re going to be angry and push back. The racism has to change first, and that’s what’s actually hurting indigenous people.
Abolish Australia!
no defund Australia
Indian place names are super complicated. A lot of the changes were respellings or minor changes to reflect local pronunciation. Some were political. Some were hotly contested, others met with a shrug. Some places that were later renamed were barely inhabited before colonization. Mumbai was a handful of islands. Kolkata was a couple villages in a swamp. Then there’s the issue of places having multiple historic names still in use within India that aren’t tied to Europeans in any way like Varansi/Benares/Kashi. And these are all English spellings of places in a country where English isn’t one of the 22 official scheduled languages, but it is nevertheless an official language in some states and remains the dominant second language everywhere. And none of that even touches on the hot mess of all the different written scripts used.
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Reiterating. This isn’t something that’s coming from allies and white people. This is what at least some aboriginal people say is important.
The argument that we shouldn’t do something to combat racism because it would upset the racists and make them more racist… is not something I would expect to hear on this board.
History is not neutral, names are not neutral. Colonisers calling a place by their own name (especially in the many cases where that name comes from someone who committed atrocities and massacres) is an act of racism itself.
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We killed your people and we kind of don’t want to think about, so we will erase you from history.
FFS, yes it is a tiny step. Nobody here is arguing against that.
That’s fine but it’s not an argument and so is tough to argue against or be persuaded by.
If you’re examining tactics to make Australia a better place for indigenous people to live, then you certainly should think about those sorts of effects. If calling Melbourne by its native name will accomplish nothing but stir up a racist backlash, then of course it is unwise tactically. I don’t know enough about Australia to comment on if that’s a likely outcome.
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landmarks named after our exterminated genocide victims
Not just in some states. It’s an official government language at the federal level.
Agree that many of the different place names in India aren’t in the scope of the discussion that Rugby started.
There is some misunderstanding of place names in a cultural context embedded in the question.
First, it assumes places only have one name. The same place will have many names depending on the language and culture naming it.
There is field in archaeology called phenomenology of landscape which studies this.
The process of enculturing the landscape starts with naming places. But these names are always changing. This is especially true as people migrate. So while we like to think of today’s name as imposing on the previous name that is because we assume the previous name has some kind of permanence it didn’t have either. There is an unintended assumption that pre-western cultures were static and whatever name they used was “The correct name”. We know this isn’t true. People have been moving across the land for hundreds of thousands of years. Every place has had many names.
On the other hand we know place names play a central and anchoring role in people’s cognitive map of their landscape. Therefore, it is also patently false to say the issue is meaningless or not important. It’s very important to some cultures.
The rule of thumb is use the name of the culture you are currently interacting with.
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Dude. This was your response to Keeed.
That is incredibly fucking hostile.
Not a day ago, when I mentioned that I tend to use Uluru and Ayers Rock interchangeably out of habit, you told me I should consider getting more serious about not doing this. If this is an issue you think is important enough to advise someone on the internet that you have never met that they need to think about changing their behaviour, then you’re not open to having your mind changed. Those things are mutually exclusive. This is only becoming clearer as I’m writing this post, because you’re now saying downthread that you came to your opinion on this by adopting what indigenous writers think, essentially. How then is your opinion open to change or even debate? Are you claiming to be open to an argument of “fuck what indigenous people think, who cares”?
You have a massive blind spot here in that you are very frequently advising others to introspect about their motivations for their behaviour, but when I attack your motivations as I did just above, that’s “hostile”. It was a similar story in the Warren/Sanders affair, I remember you advised me that maybe I should think about whether I might be being a wee bit misogynist. Keeed’s response of just “yes” to the virtue-signalling question immediately arrived at what is really off limits here, which is the suggestion that you’re just a sanctimonious person. I’m invited by you to consider whether I’m guilty of misogyny or insufficient respect for indigenous people, but if we suggest that you are sanctimonious, this thread never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ends with you being like “you know what, maybe I am just being self-righteous here”. How could we suggest such a thing? How hostile.
I’m aware that you probably feel personally attacked at this point and I’m not writing this to make you feel bad, I don’t have any ill will towards you. I’m trying to point out what you don’t seem to get, which is that suggesting to people that they haven’t thought hard enough about their own opinions and motivations is inherently arrogant and dismissive. When you tell me that I should really think about changing the fact that I use “Ayers Rock” sometimes, you are implicitly telling me that you think your own position on whether this matters is more considered and evolved than mine is. There’s simply no other way to interpret this. It’s therefore galling when you turn around and pretend that you are going to put my ideas on this on a level playing field with yours. You already told me very clearly that you are totally confident this is not the case.
By the way, I think it should be called Uluru, I think the name change was a good idea and I hope that in 50 years’ time the name “Ayers Rock” is a forgotten memory. Where I differ is simply on whether it’s a big deal that people sometimes out of habit use the old name.
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I always get a kick out of white dudes who insist that none of this is a big deal.
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Aren’t a lot of these names of things the slang version that the indigenous people don’t associate with? Like, that’s a good thing? Yeah, bigger issues blah blah. We can do both.
Our Prime Minister stripped local government areas of the right to conduct citizenship ceremonies because they refused to celebrate Australia Day on the 26th of January - the date when the settlers landed and the genocide of the indigenous began. So yeah many Australians can compete with Americans in the racist backlash battle.
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Chris is right.
@anon10396289 my original response to yours was out of line. Definitely not the right way to kick off a debate. Sorry. Too much time in the comment section on Facebook I think.
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