As the term First Nations comes to be more commonly used, amongst certain vested agendas, to refer to Australians with Aboriginal ancestry we need to think about what this label means.
It refers to a tiny group of Australians. I have no doubt those who use it think it is a positive reference but the reality is that it it a distorted concept of respect which in truth is patronising racism toward those who have some Aboriginal ancestry - whether a lot or a little.
I have no doubt those who use the term mean well, or believe their use of it is positive but the term is divisive and insulting to the vast majority of Australians. These labels are all about differentiating, separating, dividing, singling out, a tiny group of Australians as something special because of some of their ancestry.
We frequently see someone applauded for achieving something that other Australians do all of the time and yet it becomes exceptional because they have some Aboriginal ancestry. There may be no trace of that small bit of Aboriginal ancestry remaining physically and one can be a blue-eyed blonde and claim Aboriginality, but, because of that ancestral drop, any achievement is miraculous and in need of recognition.
To my mind that is terribly racist, patronising and insulting to those with Aboriginal ancestry. The argument would be that kids in remote communities, the few who are still struggling in our modern world because they are the least assimilated, can benefit from seeing what others with Aboriginal ancestry achieve. But that ignores the reality of tribal affiliations and the fact that most of the achievers are patently more Anglo-European than they are Aboriginal and this sort of information doesn't get to kids in communities and, even if it did, is meaningless unless they are being trained to believe that achieving anything when you have some Aboriginal ancestry is nothing short of miraculous.
This dividing into First and Second Australians does not make a nation, that destroys a nation. The group in question were once called Indigenous, or even more radical, Aboriginal, but now they are called First Nations. Why the change?
I doubt the change is because everyone born in Australia is Indigenous and most of those who register Aboriginal ancestry have such minimal ancestry they are not in the least Aboriginal, so First Nations covers all bases and elevates them above everyone else.
What's in a name you might say? Quite a lot actually and the pen is mightier than the sword and the word has powers beyond its meaning.
First Nations means some Australians because of some of their ancestry are superior to all of the rest - they are first. Everyone else is second.
This is a group where the range is from 100% Aboriginal ancestry, descended from from one or a couple of the hundreds of different tribal/clan groups here in 1788 and not many of those, to less than 1%, lots of those.
We are talking about TEN generations since the British arrived with so much intermarrying and mixing and with most of those who register Aboriginal ancestry in mixed marriages today and fully assimilated into the broader community for generations. And yet for some strange reason they need to be singled out, to be made other, to be deemed above all else.
The majority of the roughly 700,000 who register their Aboriginality are so minimally Aboriginal in ancestry they could not register as such in any other country in the world. But strangely some like to define themselves by this little bit of their ancestry and some do it even while denying they are doing it, but have long boarded the Aboriginal industry gravy train.
They like to see themselves as FIRST amongst all Australians, as exceptional, as special, as superior. I have no doubt that most would not see it that way but instead see it as establishing their Aboriginal validity but that is not what the term means. First is First. Second is Second. And nation, a modern European term, applied to stone-age hunter-gatherer tribal groups, is just a modern projection onto a mythical past.
But, here they are under the dubious label of First Nations. So, what does that term mean?
There were no nations in Australia when the British arrived, just 350 or so tribal groups, many no more than clans, without a common language which is part of the definition of nation, and generally at war with each other.
Nation is a historically recent concept and even Italy and Germany were not nations until the middle of the 19th century so it is patently clear Aboriginal tribal/clan groups were definitely not nations in 1788.
The first and only nation to ever exist on this land was and is the Australian nation.
The term, First Nations is American in origin and was applied in past centuries to a Confederation of Indian tribes. It has no relevance to Australia and has no relevance to Aboriginal peoples in the past and no relevance to their descendants today.
But the use of the term First Nations for those with Aboriginal ancestry, just a smidge would do, relegates other Australians, those devoid of such a 'precious' ancestral quality, to Second Place.
If First Nations means those with Aboriginal ancestry then everyone without it and the Australian nation are Second. That does not sound very democratic or fair since more than 25 million Australians don't have or don't register Aboriginal ancestry.
And in a modern democracy why divide ourselves along such backward primitive lines which reflect tribalism? Time to stop using the First Nations label and to make it known that such a divisive term has no place in modern, democratic Australia.
