The "Reconciliation Action Plan"

of our local council was flung at me by an irate councillor yesterday. I had written an email to all the councillors querying something which was reported. This councillor responded telling me to "get out from behind the keyboard" and come and face them at a council meeting.

I would actually be happy to do that but it isn't going to happen. For a start I was merely querying something. I was not stating it was a fact. His indignant response suggests I had actually hit on a very sensitive nerve.

He sent three attachments with his response. One of them was to do with the council's "Reconciliation Action Plan". I read it with interest and more than a little concern. We apparently have a huge problem here, a problem almost everyone appears to be unaware of. Apparently we need "skilled appropriate advisors for many more activities into the future", activities that is for "culturally sensitive issues".

What are these activities? I looked at the list. There were cultural practices for events on it:

"Welcome to country ceremony"

"Smoking ceremony"

"Dance" (Corroboree)

"Traditional Music" (Yidaki)

"Artwork". 

This was in addition to things like "cultural awareness inductions" and "language and naming of public places" along with "heritage" and "management" and walks and more.  Apparently we have been neglecting these things for years and now it is costing the council a significant sum each year to restore these things.

I sent all this off to my friend M.... in an email. I knew he would be interested. What did he think? 

As I have said elsewhere M... is an Aboriginal man, very definitely Aboriginal. He can trace his ancestry back to his great-grandparents. Seven of the eight of those great-grandparents have births recorded as being of aboriginal heritage. The eighth he has not been able to find but, as he puts it, "it is more likely than not" he is aboriginal. M...gets his surname from that man's occupation.  

There was an answer from M... this morning. He dismissed the "Welcome to country" outright. We both know that it was something invented for Downunder's equivalent of Woodstock - the Nimbin festival. (Brother Cat passed through Nimbin recently and says it is still a town of ageing "hippies".)

M... did the same for the "Smoking ceremony". "It means nothing Cat, you know that."

The words "dance" and "Corroboree"had the comment "ROFL". "Do they," he asked, "expect people to prance around half naked for the benefit of tourists?" It is not what corroborees are about. I know I am never going to be invited to one. They have nothing to do with reconciliation.

Traditional music (Yidaki) had him puzzled for a bit apparently. I need to explain here that the council is apparently talking about "didgeridoos" and the "yidaki" is the particular form of the Yolngu people who live a long way from here. M...'s response was, "That Mob" (meaning the tribe which was here at white settlement) "didn't use them". 

No, I know that not all Aboriginal people used didgeridoos or boomerangs. It is convenient to believe they did but it simply is not the case. 

All of this however is apparently being "sensitive" and "respectful" of "local culture and traditions". We apparently need to spend many thousands of council dollars on such things each year.

"It's really more than a bit insulting Cat," M... told me, "Now they are trying to teach us how things are done." 

That doesn't seem very "culturally sensitive" to me.