Aboriginal leaders threaten to ban tourists from a top Australian landmark in protest at "racist" government policies.
Kendra King's insight:
I have an issue with the fact this legislation isn’t directly targeting the issue of child sex abuse. Rather the legislation focuses on farther off underlying factor like alcohol (I say this because the article never made a clear link to the use of such substance and the abuse). In a way, I can see why the Aboriginal leader could say it is a racial issue seeing as how their whole peoples style of living is being targeted. Now I am not sure if I would feel differently if the legislation was actually working, but as the article mentioned the legislation isn’t actually having a great enough impact. To me it feels the legislation was really about trying to improve their countries standard of living in regards to life expectancy, etc. Maybe that is because of the way the article read, but really given how indirectly the legislation acts I think there was an ulterior motive. As such, I am of the opinion that trying to change someone’s way of life (even if it is at their own peril) isn’t right. Inform them if you want, but don’t have such bans because I think the people should be able to choose how they live their life. Unless I see more evidence to the impact of abuse, I say this is just an overreach of power by a modern area.
It seems that even though colonialism ended, the aboriginal way of life is still looked down upon. Under colonial times we learned how most of the colonist went to Africa because it was the "white man's burden" to "civilize". Australia wasn't too different. By looking down on these people, the colonist had no qualm about exterminating entire populations. At least the current leaders judgement of the Abortionist's way of life doesn't put the Abortionists entire life at risk. So it is better than the past, but no by much since the people's way of life is still in subject to constraint constrains that don't match how the society operates. I also think they were looked at in a hypocritical manner here too because alcohol and pron are all commodities sold throughout Australia without the same kind of restriction.
I do think the life expectancy statistic and issue of child abuse is troubling. If a more supported cause of the problem were demonstrated, I would have to think pretty hard about regulating the society because I am not a huge fan of telling a local population how to live, yet there is clearly something going on that is harming the population.