To Pauline Hanson and the One Nation supporters.
Pauline: Your comments are not just ignorant, they are cruel, racist, and profoundly disrespectful. You reduce Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the oldest continuing cultures on Earth, to a distorted checklist of European inventions and then use that checklist to claim they “achieved nothing”. That is not serious historical or political analysis. It is narrow-minded bigotry dressed up as a question. The fact that Indigenous Australians did not develop technologies in the same form as industrial European societies does not mean they lacked intelligence, knowledge, innovation, or civilisation. They developed sophisticated and complex systems of kinship relationships, land management, agriculture and food production, navigation, astronomy, engineering, medicine, trade, art, law, and environmental knowledge suited to this continent over tens of thousands of years. You ask, “what have they done?” We survived! We adapted to, understood, cared for, and sustained one of the most difficult environments on the planet for millennia. We built complex societies long before Britain invaded this land. Our knowledge is vital and continues to matter now including in fire management, ecology, conservation, culture, language, and science. And let’s be clear: using phrases such as “the most primitive race on earth” is racist. There is no acceptable historical, scientific, or moral defense for describing an entire people that way. It is an attempt to deny our humanity, our achievements, and our right to be respected in our own country. You do not get to measure a culture solely by whether it copied European inventions. Different societies developed different tools in response to different contexts, different places, needs, resources, and ways of living. A wheel is not a moral benchmark. Nor is boiling water. Pretending otherwise is incompetent and farcical. Rev Dr Raymond Minniecon Aboriginal culture and language deserve to be taught because we are part of this country’s history, present, and future. We deserve respect because Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people deserve respect, not because we must first satisfy your narrow, prejudiced definition of “achievement”. You and those of your racist supporters should be ashamed of repeating these claims.
Rev. Dr. Raymond Minniecon