MY RESPONSE TO THE REFERENDUM

It’s a month today since I wrote this response, and I have waited till now to publish it.  To see what I still want to say, or  to change,  but I don’t see the need.

I knew by the 15th that the YES vote would fail, for all sorts of reasons.  I did not anticipate however how deeply it would affect me personally.  How I would feel that my indigenous brothers and sisters had been set up and betrayed.  How I would feel ashamed to face up personally to my indigenous friends.  And yet I would know that anything that I felt was irrelevant, and way worse for them than it ever could be for me.

WHO AM I?

My name is Dianne Mann Povey, I am a white woman of primarily Prussian heritage, and as of 15 October 2023, I am far from being a proud Australian, in fact I am deeply saddened, ashamed and disheartened at my country’s inability and overwhelming complaisance in rejection of the opportunity to acknowledge Australia’s First Nations Peoples.

There has been little comment from significant Aboriginal leaders since the Referendum, even after the 7 day mourning period announced by them. A letter of response appeared a few days prior to me writing this, but its provenance was indeterminate, and it has apparently no signatures. Journalist Stan Grant made some comments recently, of a broken-hearted nature which pretty much describes my own feeling.

There’s been nothing from Noel Pearson, Marcia Langton, Pat Anderson or Mick Dodds, all of whom (except for Langton) continued to show optimism in the face of polls. They continued to believe in the intrinsic goodness of the Australian people and spoke messages of reconciliation and hope for healing.

THE TEASE

But all they got for their gentle outreach and trust in our government was a deeply nasty and ignorant slap in the face. It was almost a set up, for they had been asked what they wanted, which resulted in the Uluru Statement from the Heart, confident that it would be heard after years and years of bipartisan political support, and then with the help of white-anters like Peter Dutton, Lidia Thorpe and Jacinta Price it turned into an event that felt like an ugly tease: acknowledgement and a say in your own affairs? No, joke’s on you, never in 250 years.