British backpacker says he wasn't prepared for 'massive problem' in Australia
A British traveller in Australia has highlighted what he sees as a "massive problem" with the country.
Archie has been chronicling his time in the Southern Hemisphere nation on TikTok, having worked and travelled around OZ as well as parts of southeast Asia. While most of his sun-drenched videos show the positive sides of Australia, there is one aspect of life there which he is not such a fan of.
"Racism in Australia is a massive problem,' he said in a video posted last week. "I ain't gonna sugar-coat this, but when you come to Australia, you do hear a lot of bad things about the Indigenous and Aboriginal people. Recently, I've managed to work with a few of them, and, honestly, they're some of the most kind, most sharing people I've ever met in my life.
"Every time you see them, they'd be so positive, so happy. They're just really good people to be around. So, don't judge people by everyone else's opinion on them. You will no doubt hear a lot of racism when you come to Australia. I don't think it's talked about enough."
Relations between Aboriginal people and communities which have moved to Australia in more recent centuries have long been fraught. Hannah McGlade, who represents the Kurin Minang Noongar people at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, recently wrote about the issue for the United Nations.
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"My people, the Noongar, were violently dispossessed from their lands by the British, and were basically enslaved: my great grandmother was an indentured child labourer. People who resisted the very cruel laws of the time were incarcerated and taken from their countries by chains to an island prison, where many died. Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families, en masse, as part of a policy called assimilation," she explained.
Ms McGlade went on to write that the overt racism she experienced in her youth had been replaced by a subtler, more coded form now.
"There’s a lot of resistance to our rights being recognised, even the right to have our own national indigenous body, which should not be argued about in this day and age," she added.
In October last year the effort to have Indigenous Australian voices better represented in the country's politics suffered a setback when a referendum on whether to enshrine a First Nations voice in the country’s constitution returned a 'no'. 'The Voice' was a proposed advisory body, made of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who would advise the Australian parliament and the government on issues that affect them.
During his time in the country Archie has found some redeeming qualities amidst the heavy politics and the legacy of colonialism. In another video he marvels at the size of Australia, which is 20 times bigger than the UK despite having less than half the population. Such low population density has allowed him to be alone in some truly beautiful spots along the coastline.
He is also a big fan of the people in Perth, who the Brit found to be particularly cheerful and welcoming. Archie said his faith in humanity was restored by how regularly strangers would wish him a good day.
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