so australia has this important referendum coming up for an indigenous voice to parliament, an agreed upon low level first step to some kind of reconciliation which is so fucking necessary i can't even say how much. it's a weak pathetic little step and of course i opened fb and of course i did a little investigate the 'no' vote reasoning and yeah it's a lot of it fear propaganda that maybe like 3 people believe but. they're calling it the voice of division. and the only voice of division is the one that made this political in the first place, they did it for same sex marriage in 2017 and like ?? it sucks. i still don't know how else to do this. to get these things passed. do i think it's going to snowball into decolonisation the way I hope? i'm not that optimistic. but will it start the conversation or is it too little too late? does it go against the very grain of what Indigenous culture is, a organic and connected and balanced kind of diversity that one voice has the risk of erasing? but if it gets us to listen out for the others, may it do so. it reminds me of people saying 'oh everyone is autistic/adhd now'. it can erase neurodiversity, even though it gets us talking about it. yet aspie supremacy still exists. are we going to do that with our Indigenous culture: what is spoken in english and passes the way whitefellas feel comfortable with? almost undoubtedly. and that makes me so, so sad because, when is it ever enough?? when will this oppressive chokehold stop instead of just easing off slightly and patting itself on the back? something is coming. but please, please don't water our cultural richness down. please let the dam be breaking before any culture dies. our red soil plains are suffering, groaning, how is the red desert going to be healing into the future if all we do is exploit, exploit, exploit? and just. i've been praying for this for as long as i've been alive. shared hope for the future: what even is this? when there are 26 million different souls, different things we long for, some of us with that ancestral connection to the land: are the rest of us not feeling lost? maybe it's too little too late but God, I'm just praying for something. power to go back into the heart of our nation, make us a living, breathing creature. that i can design the cities of like inked tattoos into our dirt, sacred for the lives they carry, and listen, listen, piece it together like the brainstorms i store my knowledge from uni in. spit out something that feels like love. build it into the red clay. fill it with souls, souls happier, less divided, connected. when will we ever be?