It has always seemed to me that the left’s treatment of Indigenous people has a strong romantic element: the noble savage, truly in touch with his or her environment, and with a connection with the land. Speaking as someone with some Indigenous heritage, it doesn’t follow that just because you have that ancestry, and perhaps even some cultural markers of that heritage, that you are somehow spiritually connected to the land. I discerned in the Voice debate a romanticisation, but also an ethno-nationalist streak (if I have this ancestry I am more genuinely Australian than others, and I have a more genuine connection to the land). If it had been a non-minority group (eg, English people saying that about England) the left would have gone bonkers; given it was Indigenous people, they were delighted. Therefore, romantic ethno-nationalism is allowed for some, but not for others. However, the right can also display the same inconsistency: they might roll their eyes at Welcomes to Country, yet tear up at ANZAC Day, and be offended if someone criticises it. I’m someone who likes consistent rules, but I’m also not particularly romantic. Without modern medicine etc, I’d be dead, and I’m under no illusions that there was a wonderful prelapsarian past where everyone lived in harmony. Anyway, thanks for the post.
Yes it seems that romanticism is something deeply ingrained as a human impulse of sorts and is clearly something that identifies that which is lacking in modernity. But the solution cannot be to do away with modernity itself. It is something that we need to recognise and balance. At the moment, I suspect all of this is in the collective unconscious and needs to be brought out.
It has always seemed to me that the left’s treatment of Indigenous people has a strong romantic element: the noble savage, truly in touch with his or her environment, and with a connection with the land. Speaking as someone with some Indigenous heritage, it doesn’t follow that just because you have that ancestry, and perhaps even some cultural markers of that heritage, that you are somehow spiritually connected to the land. I discerned in the Voice debate a romanticisation, but also an ethno-nationalist streak (if I have this ancestry I am more genuinely Australian than others, and I have a more genuine connection to the land). If it had been a non-minority group (eg, English people saying that about England) the left would have gone bonkers; given it was Indigenous people, they were delighted. Therefore, romantic ethno-nationalism is allowed for some, but not for others. However, the right can also display the same inconsistency: they might roll their eyes at Welcomes to Country, yet tear up at ANZAC Day, and be offended if someone criticises it. I’m someone who likes consistent rules, but I’m also not particularly romantic. Without modern medicine etc, I’d be dead, and I’m under no illusions that there was a wonderful prelapsarian past where everyone lived in harmony. Anyway, thanks for the post.
Yes it seems that romanticism is something deeply ingrained as a human impulse of sorts and is clearly something that identifies that which is lacking in modernity. But the solution cannot be to do away with modernity itself. It is something that we need to recognise and balance. At the moment, I suspect all of this is in the collective unconscious and needs to be brought out.