This is the SDMB. Christianity is regularly dismissed here as the superstitions of Bronze Age sheepherders. I very much doubt it’s racist when they say that, I’m not sure why it would be any more racist when Aboriginal beliefs are similarly dismissed.
Thanks,** Aro**, for the OP.
Until reading the article you referenced, I would have said sure, given the chance, I would have liked to climb Uluru just for the experience.
But having read (for the first time!) that the Anangu people ask that visitors not climb the rock, I wouldn’t climb it now.
I mean, when someone has put a sign up right there at the base saying “please don’t climb on our sacred rock”, I’d have to be an utter dick to go and climb on it.
(So, I don’t know. Maybe I would climb it. But I’d still be an utter dick for doing so.)
Very well put.
Thanks for posting this.
Just for the record, I would never say “Aborigines are stinking liars.” You brought the issue up for some reason. I guess as an excuse why Australians aren’t able to make common sense regulations about Uluru.
This is a point well taken. I understand that Uluru access isn’t at the top of anyone’s election platform (or whatever Parliamentary democracies call their electoral priorities). And it’s not at the top of the indigenous people’s wish list either. That makes a lot of sense. But what doesn’t make sense is to blame tourists for doing something that Australia doesn’t have the political will to do. And it makes even less sense to pretend the tourists are the real racists while Australia is blameless.
I’d say they’re being jerks…and are completely within their rights.
I know home-born and bred Americans who refuse to tip. They’re being jerks…but anyone who tried to compel them would be wrong to do so. Tipping is a voluntary custom, not a contractual obligation under law.
If climbing Uluru makes someone a jerk…but is within the law, then so be it. The world has no shortage of jerks. You won’t get anywhere trying to appeal to their better nature. Ban it, or accept it.
Many of those 670,000 individuals are basically urban white people who want to take advantage of the help originally set up to help the truly disadvantaged real remote-community native Australians
I think you are wise not to travel.
No one is saying Australia is blameless. No one could say that with a straight face. But what I don’t understand is why you need the Australian government to make up your mind for you. This isn’t a thread about what the Australian government should do. It’s titled “…would you climb Uluru?”. Like, your personal decision. I don’t make the Australian government the arbiter of my morality and I’m Australian. I am stunned that someone from overseas would do so.
If you want to climb it, climb it. The Australian government is on your side.
Or indeed leave the house: forgive me if I don’t take advice on how best to apply conflicting human social codes across cultures from someone who still struggles with the concept of cleaning.
“Stinking liars” came from you, not me. I believe I made my point quite clearly: the wishes of the Traditional Owners should be taken at face value, and the decision to climb or not to climb should be made on the basis of the only relevant information, which is that they ask you not to. I was responding to the claim that tourists are less informed, therefore are less capable of making an informed decision. I cited Hindmarsh and Secret Women’s Business as an example of information that Australians potentially bring to the decision-making process even though it is utterly irrelevant. It’s prejudice, and it’s a convenient excuse for disregarding anything they say. Hopefully our tourists don’t bring the same prejudice to the process.
There’s so much nonsense in here. Who is pretending tourists are “the real racists”? Who is “blaming tourists for doing something Australia doesn’t have the political will to do”? I’m not privy to the negotiations that went on 30 years ago, and I don’t know how they struck the deal that controls access to the rock. I do know that climbing is an option open to everyone, but to each person the plea is made: please choose not to climb. If they go ahead, there’s no public shaming ceremony. People don’t gather at the foot of the path to spit as the climbers return. Each person decides for themselves and there are no repercussions.
This dramatic flailing around and the accusations of Australia palming its responsibilities onto tourists is ridiculous posturing. Are you really so rarely treated as an adult that when you find yourself faced with a choice that has no real consequences for you, you freak out and start demanding the law be changed to take your choice away?
And this board is very much a sheltered place for those views, where they can be aired among the like-minded in an abstract parlour-room exercise with nothing at stake and no real-world consequences. I suggest that attempting to blithely carry on that debate in a place and with a people, a culture and a context where the stakes are very real and very sensitive is the height of crassness. I don’t believe in the God of Abraham, but I wouldn’t use that as an excuse to take selfies at Auschwitz.
Good point. If we are allowed to mock Christianity and not treat Christian holy places and things with the worship that some Christians want us to, then how is that different from Aboriginal beliefs and places? Is it the “minority” card and minority faiths and/or faiths popular among minorities are beyond criticism, because damn, haven’t they suffered enough, being, y’know, minorities?
If Aborigines think that their gods are going to “get me” somehow for profaning their holy site, then I say bring it on. I don’t believe in those gods. Let’s see what they can dish out, I dare them.
Ok, how about I start a religion that considers Interstate 95 on the US east coast to be holy and that an appeasement must be made to the Ninety-Five Gods of Transportation at a special shrine in Florida before mere mortals may traverse its holy expanse. The appeasement shall be in the form that the gods’ priest, namely I, shall designate. Is that fair?
The comparison doesn’t follow. Christians today belong to every racial group, and Bronze Age sheepherders no longer exist. Aboriginal beliefs, however, are held pretty exclusively by Aboriginals.
Dismissing Aboriginal beliefs isn’t racist if you also dismiss all other spiritual beliefs. It could be if you only dismiss “primitive” spiritual beliefs such as animism while accepting widespread religions like Christianity.
More nonsense. The Aboriginal request for respect of their sacred site does not threaten retribution of the Gods. Can we stick to arguing about the actual situation instead of inventing fictional elements and arguing against those?
An ancient culture was invaded, displaced, massacred, decimated, mistreated, marginalised, abused and neglected, and yet through perseverance they managed to reclaim some small concessions of land and governance, and they now accommodate those from foreign cultures who want to visit their most sacred ancestral site while trying also to keep alive the traditions of their ancestors so their culture isn’t irretrievably lost. But please, tell me more about your freeway cult, because that’s clearly the same thing.
This is a fallacy. Just because someone was abused, it doesn’t mean that their viewpoints must necessarily be more valid or acceptable than mine.
Ok, I finally get it.
One small group of people are attempting to keep their culture alive after it was nearly wiped out, and if you can’t stand on their land and tell them how stupid it is then you’re the one being oppressed.
You know what? In the face of attitudes like this, I’m just going to console myself that I’ve seen Westminster Abbey, and Notre Dame, and the Daibutsu-ben at Todaiji, and the temples at Kyoto, and the torii at Itsukushima and the ruins at Ayutthaya, and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, and the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral in Macau. And if I ever do find myself at Uluru, or Machu Picchu, or indeed Arlington Cemetery, I’ll already know how to behave.
Ah…so this is where the derailment occurred. :smack:
I understand your point Penfeather but unfortunately it distracts from the core issues. I do not agree with a broad-brush tarring of all Americans as insensitive jerks. There are visitors to Uluru from all over the world, including many Australians and some of them treat the Aboriginal culture with contempt.
The same people will also trample over Native American sacred sites because their ego refuses to recognise any rules outside their own.
Jerks come from everywhere.
I’ve lived in the United States and Canada, and Americans are much more respectful of aboriginal/Native issues. It’s very common among right wing Canadians to think they are a bunch of tax exempt freeloaders who block the highways for fun (read the comments in any Canadian news site.)
Let’s not open that can of shit in this thread.
Although I think your post is in fact a perfect example of the kind of baggage **Eliahna **was talking about.
And as **Eliahna **said, that sort of thing is irrelevant to the topic of respecting the Anangu request that people not climb Uluru.
If anyone actually climbed Uluru with that attitude, I think that would be truly offensive.
If you feel the need to challenge superstitions, please just stick to walking under ladders.
Because, y’know, that doesn’t offend anyone, or piss on anyone’s culture and sacred beliefs.
How very odd. Do you actually believe that?
I thought of presenting yet another analogy along the lines of “would you also do ___ to ___ if ____?”
But really, why bother. The actual situation, as it has already been presented in this thread, is simply this:
- Native Australians are a vulnerable minority who have suffered greatly since European colonization.
- They have had their land stolen from them and their traditions ridiculed.
- Their cultural identity is under threat.
- Uluru is considered by the Anangu to be a sacred site, since thousands of years ago.
- It is important to their culture, and thus important to their identity as a people.
- Although the government requires them to allow climbing of Uluru, the Anangu ask that people please not climb on it.
The OP asks whether, given that information, you would still climb the rock.
And your answer is, apparently, “yes”.
Then go in peace, my son.
Very well put. Thanks for all your posts.
Please don’t stop fighting the good fight.
Also, this!
This is the attitude we should have when we visit any place that is sacred to a people.
And to robert_columbia, why do you feel the need to mock any religion?