Aboriginal Identity
Saturday, January 01, 2000
The chronic and severe problems of rural aboriginal youth call for radical solutions. And I would like to suggest one here. Perhaps we have made a mistake in trying to uplift their spirits by urging them to get involved in an aboriginal nationality.
Why? Because they know it is dead and gone. There is no future for an aboriginal way of life, and the vast majority of people know it intuitively. Does it help a disadvantaged people to preach them a vision that nobody believes in?
So what hope do they have? Reality, as always, holds the key. Aboriginal people live, as we all do, in 21st century Australia, a first world country that is far advanced along the path of global culture. Race pride has been rejected by today’s youth as an unviable idea — and for good reasons.
Sure, engaging in one’s ethnic traditions can be gratifying: dance, ritual, art, dressing up, stories, … . Such things can be an aesthetic delight, harmless nostalgia, family bonding, an emotional comfort, even a spiritual inspiration. But we now draw important truths about human life indiscriminately from all available sources: we know now not to romanticise or demonise any one race.
Aboriginal youth, like all youth, need to be involved in a hopeful future, not nailed to a dead past. Teach the aboriginal young that racism and racial ideologies are dying out. This millennium, the challenge is to participate and contribute as caring, courageous and creative individuals in our new age of world culture — celebrating humanness above ethnicity.
Philip O'Carroll