Yeah, seeing my peers blindly support a culture that would have them thrown off of the nearest rooftop disturbs me.
Same here DMW, same here.
I had lunch with an old friend in Melbourne the other day. Melbourne, the capital of the southern state of Victoria, has been a 'progressive' state for over 10 years now. Despite being smaller than Queensland and New South Wales both in population and geographical size, it has government debt greater than the sum of the other two states mentioned.
Wildly liberal in the US sense, 'Acknowledgement of Country' is chanted like a magical spell before every staff meeting in the public service.
Anyway, my mate has moved employment from the public service to a non govermernment organisation that saves koalas. (did I say he's 'liberal' too?). I mentioned that at least he would no longer have to do the 'acknowledgement of country' stuff and he said he still does but only when it's meaningful...
FFS... I let it go by and didn't respond except to say that the whole thing is a little bit too North Korean for my tastes...
What gets me is that any Victorian aboriginal is white skinned and so interbred with European DNA that they have no culture except ours, speak only English, have all been to normal schools etc etc. Yet they are the most likely to take offence at any hint of a micro aggression.
Me, I left Victoria and spent 20 years in the Northern Territory deep in the heart of real aboriginal country. At the local supermarket you could hear the locals speaking in their own language, looking 100% indigenous etc. No 'acknowledgement of country' up there because no one's white...
I moved back to NSW 5 years ago and was blown away by the pretend aboriginal culture thing and this cringe worthy PC worship of anything suppossedly aboriginal, like special meetings in the public service when they would bring out a possum skin and some pretend boomerangs and everyone would handle them and pass them around and ooh and ah etc. Meanwhile, away from this white middle class pretend aboriginal stuff, 4000 km up north, deep in the middle of absolutely no where, real aboriginals are dying 10 years earlier than the rest of us, living in squalor, not going to so called 'schools' out in the 'communities', some of which are 100 km or so from the nearest police station so no law and order out there, eating fast food from the community stores, babies sucking coke from baby bottle etc.
No 'welcome to country' 4000 km south is going to fix that stuff. But hey, my peers blindly support this crap and even worse, feel superior doing so...