Australians have resoundingly rejected a proposal to recognise Aboriginal people in its constitution and establish a body to advise parliament on Indigenous issues.
Saturday’s voice to parliament referendum failed, with the defeat clear shortly after polls closed.
This is where the US is waves ahead of Australia. The indigenous population is small now (2%) but hasn’t always been, and we put them (and still do) through many, many atrocities… If you’re at all interested, check out indigenous deaths in custody. There’s also the constant destruction of their traditional heritage (birthing trees, rock art etc.). The stereotype here for an Aboriginal is that they’re drunkards and drug users. This is not reality but a huge majority think this.
As a country, we have deep seated institutionalised racism that has taken root and flourished over the last few decades. We have this national way of thinking where the indigenous population needs to comply to our laws, our way of life. If an indigenous family wants traditional education, nah - go to one of the ‘normal’ schools. Want to learn an indigenous language? Nah, learn German or French or Japanese.
We also have severe tall poppy syndrome where we can’t let anyone have it better than anyone else. Our Australia Day is also a huge issue since it’s on the day of the first colonists landing.
All in all, we don’t have an equivalent because we have a rotten attitude to our first nations.
There are many things to look at, but this is a bad one. Bad in terms of being misleading. You actually have a higher chance of dying in custody if you’re white than if you’re indigenous. The “indigenous deaths in custody” figure is intentionally misleading in that it counts deaths from things like car chases as being a “death in custody”. There are multiple examples on there of things like an indigenous person running from police after stabbing someone and jumping in a river to try and escape, only to drown - they count that as a “death in custody” which is ridiculous. There is one example on there that counts 3 deaths in custody where police had a report of a stolen car, they saw it driving in the opposite direction to them, so they turned their lights on and did a u-turn, and the stolen car full of indigenous teenagers put the foot down and crashed into a tree 15 seconds later, killing them all. “Death in custody” my arse.
Some links https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/media-releases/calls-end-indigenous-deaths-custody
And from the Royal Commission back in 1995. Feel free to check if any of the recommendations have been adopted over the last two decades. https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/indigenous-deaths-custody-chapter-3-comparison-indigenous-and-non-indigenous-deaths