A question of heritage

Ever wondered what your heritage is? I know I’m an Australian. My mother and father were both born in Australia. While my grandfather on my mother’s side did emigrate from England, I would certainly never claim to be English based on that fact. Yet daily we see and hear Australians align themselves as being indigenous, or First Nation Australians, when visually they are certainly less than 51% Indig-enous Aboriginal heritage.

Why do so many want to dismiss their majority ethnicity, be it Australian, English, Chinese, Afghan, Italian or whatever. To what advantage? Is it fashionable to claim to be of a First Nations blood-line? Is there a financial motivation, and some perceived financial benefit to be gained by doing so? Perhaps it is to provide an umbrella excuse for individual personal failings? Yet many First Nations people of mostly Aboriginal Australian bloodline have achieved significant goals and roles in modern Australian society.

To wrap yourself in a flag other than the Australian Flag, is something I find disquieting as a citizen of this country – especially if the Australian flag is desecrated as an additional power point of protest. First Nations people fought and died in both world wars, under the Australian Flag. I have no objec-tion to State Flags, or the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders Flag, but they should not flown as the primary identifier of any Australians. We are and always should be, all of us Australian’s first.

Think about how full blooded First Nation Australians must feel when they see people of a different majority blood line speaking out, supposedly representing them, about their many issues. Certainly you can be a descendant or partly of First Nations lineage, but that does not give anyone the right to dismiss their true majority lineage.

Are such false claims and self identification to minority lineage simply to boost the perceived small First Nations base numbers for a political purpose? Perhaps. What I do know is, that until First Nations Indigenous people stand up and proclaim, we are Australians first, First Nations Peoples second, there will never truly be reconciliation.

Those people shouting from the rafters about Invasion Day, should also recognise that if the Australian High Court had agreed with that proposition, then all native title rights would be extinguished for First Nations peoples, for all time. That’s simply international law.

Those that claim to be protesting and acting on behalf of true First Nations peoples, should first ac-quaint themselves with what the law is and the ramifications of what they are demanding if such a proposition was ever accepted by our High Court.