I think you make a lot of good points but miss on why the left in the USA is ineffective. Basically the left in the USA is ineffective because there is a lot of money on the line so any freewill is basically illusory. The only thing that causes great change he is if something stops the modes of production, because then the masters have skin in the game too. ///derail
Federal government too. My employers do it constantly.
3 Likes
A good chunk of the names of places in America are anglicized versions of Native American names. I see nothing wrong with that.
From a practical perspective, it would be extremely difficult. Cities sometimes span the territory of more than one Native American region and the original names of these places can be hard for the average person to pronounce given the diversity of Native American languages. Toss that on top of suddenly having a bunch of cities, town, counties, rivers, lakes and whatever else changing in one go and it would be chaotic.
On the list of things that annoy me, it barely registers.
Well said. We have to stop with the all or nothing demands on the left. Politics just doesn’t work that way. Never has and never will. Progress is made in random steps of varying effect. It’s never to perfect on the first step.
Of course, acknowledging indigenous lands at the start of meeting doesn’t give them back their land or address their many other valid concerns. It does however centre the discussion. It brings it up. When the PM does it at a meeting at is a megaphone that this is an issue that matters.
5 Likes
No complaints about this, and I am generally supportive of the acknowledgements. I am just in basically a permanent state of anger about Canadas treatment of indigenous peoples. Like, there’s regrettably never any money for them but the instant that the economic security of white Canadians is threatened we are ok with running a 300+ billion dollar deficit no questions asked.
5 Likes
I am certain we agree far more than we disagree. My cynicism is IMO somewhat justified here because Trudeau talked a pretty big game about Truth & Reconciliation and then more or less abandoned native Canadians in terms of actual policy decisions. Maybe if the left doesn’t want to be accused of virtue signaling the Liberal head of state should stop doing it?
What’s your take on this, too pushy???
“ Power concedes nothing without a demand . It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both."
It’s also always a little vague what “the issues” exactly are, which makes me suspect that indigenous cultures are primarily being fetishized or used as props in conversations that are primarily about Westerners. The concrete issues are that 150ish years ago, the US and the UK waged aggressive wars against the numerous small-scale societies that occupied North America, Australia and New Zealand, with the result that those societies lost control of nearly all their former territories and their political independence. Those wars are currently (and were at the time) widely understood to be unjust and were characterized by extreme cruelty and countless atrocities.
The basic resolution to these issues now is that those descendants of indigenous societies who still adhere to the cultural practices of those societies have a semi-autonomous status within the conquering polities. I’m not sure if there’s any other plausible solution out there to the big picture question. I guess the US could retrocede Oklahoma or some other appropriate territory to modern indigenous societies, but that seems extremely unlikely to happen and probably a very bad idea. Another key question is whether and how material/social conditions within indigenous communities can be improved by outsiders.
The question of whether non-Aboriginal Australians should refer to the big rock by the name used in Aboriginal societies or by the name used in their own society seems like…not a question at all. Unless Ayers was some kind of monstrous racist that we don’t want to name anything after and you’re actively looking for a replacement, the basic premise that you would just swap out some other cultural name for a landform instead of your own culture’s is very strange and inherently performative. That is what leads me to suspect that what’s really at issue is a debate about how Westerners view their own societies. Which is fine and healthy, but it actually seems actively disrespectful to have that conversation through the medium of adopting isolated pieces of indigenous culture rather than on its own terms.
1 Like
I’m curious what has led you to beleive that despite 100% of the first ~25 POTUS waging genocidal wars against indigenous people, that they were in fact acting in opposition to their citizenry’s widely held contemporaneous beliefs.
Who said anything about not being pushy.
I’m saying too many people on the left think the only path to change is for 100% to happen on one step. This almost never occurs. You get to 100%, 10% at a time. However, too many people act like getting 10% is worthless.
You criticized all or nothing demands. I could have been more clear that I was being oppositional to that point.
What is the problem with all or nothing demands? I don’t see an advantage to demanding incremental justice rather than the full thing.
Perhaps you can fill me in on the benefits.
It’s often native tribes asking for renaming of things.
1 Like
I think the point isn’t so much that it’s all or nothing, but that some people do something symbolic and easy as a strategy to avoid doing the harder thing. Or that’s the feeling some people have anyway.
1 Like
Lots of good discussion here.
A few additional points.
First. There’s an implicit assumption that this use of language, here or out in our normal conversations is between white people. We can’t assume that. There’s plenty of Australian lurkers on this board. It’s not impossible that some of them are aboriginal.
Out in conversation that’s the case too. Many aboriginal people today have lighter skin and are assumed white. The next time you accidentally say Ayers rock, you could be saying it in front of an aboriginal colleague who doesn’t talk about it.
Whether that matters of course is another question. Which brings me to my next point.
I’ve posted this before. But I changed my views on performative symbols recently. I.e. pronouns in email sig. Rainbow flag on desk. Signs in aboriginal language in office. Aboriginal flag above power station etc. This was due to two separate conversations. One with an LGBT person, and one with an aboriginal person. They both said that they constantly feel unsafe, and are always scanning for signs and symbols that tell them whether they are safe or in danger. So if you want people to feel safe, make the effort to show them.
Finally. I definitely agree that lecturing people doesn’t work. However we are pretty nuanced and persuasive people, and we know how to taylor our message to different audiences. Constant friendly and respectful conversation and persuasion in day to day life can have a big effect.
For example. On Ayers rock. I’m not going to beat people up in person, but depending on the audience might say “I read that the aboriganal custodians have changed the official name to Uluru now” and then use that as a segue to an interesting story .
On Naarm/Melbourne. I would never correct someone else or even bring it up. But might use it in emails at work, which will probably introduce the idea to people who had never thought about it.
Finally. This stuff works. I once had a respectful conversation with a rugby coach about his using “faggot” as a friendly insult during training sessions. Four years later he told me that not only did he remember it, but he had stopped doing this because of that conversation.
7 Likes
One more. There’s a few comments that this is “just a rock” in the middle of the country.
I’d say it’s pretty famous. like many of Australia’s landmarks. Part of australians identity. I mean, same category as kangaroos, the great barrier reef, Sydney harbour bridge and the opera house.
As such, the name tells a story. Uluru is a reminder that one of Australia’s major landmarks is an aboriginal place. That aboriginal history is our history.
4 Likes
I still feel this viewpoint is missing the objective. In the American context, its not to necessarily rename things whatever they once were, as that is often not relevant. I think the objective here in the states should be more to cleanse ourselves of reverence to oppression and its not much different than tearing down statues of conferdate generals.
1 Like
Gotta say, we have a bunch of beard-stroking dudes in here telling us that these names probably don’t actually matter to indigenous peoples and maybe renaming them is somehow counterproductive. But then, the guy who actually is from Northern Ireland does seem to place some real value in returning these place names back to the Gaelic.
And I totally get that this is only a small thing. Renaming some buildings in Ulster isn’t going to create jobs or revitalize Northern Ireland. Renaming the Redskins isn’t going to help poverty and unemployment on Native American reservations. But can anyone explain what the tangible danger of SJWS GONG WILD is?
Like, I’m in Ohio; I 1,000% support renaming Columbus, Ohio to Flavortown, Ohio because (as far as I know) Guy Fieri has never committed acts of genocide. Surely this is crazy SJW nonsense gone wild, but can anyone explain to me what the downside risk is? Is a single person harmed if we #CancelColumbus?
1 Like
Oh, it will make white people racists on spite and vote for Trump. We might get four more years just for this post.
Fun story. I work (or used to pre covid) next to Batman park.
John Batman… founder of Melbourne (Naarm)… in his own words after raiding an aboriginal camp in the 1820s/30s
“(they) were in the act of running away into the thick scrub, when I ordered the men to fire upon them, which was done, and a rush by the party immediately followed, we only captured that Night one woman and a male child about Two years old, the party was in search of them the remainder of the Night, but without success, the next morning we found one man very badly wounded in his ankle and knee, shortly after we found another 10 buckshot had entered his Body, he was alive but very bad, there was a great number of traces of blood in various directions and learned from those we took that 10 men were wounded in the Body which they gave us to understand were dead or would die, and Two women in the same state had crawled away, besides a number that was shot in the legs… on Friday morning we left the place for my Farm with the two men, woman and child, but found it quite impossible that the Two former could walk, and after trying them by every means in my power, for some time, found I could not get them on. I was obliged therefore to shoot them.”