A video designed to promote reconciliation with indigenous people has been slammed for being patronising to ‘average’ Australians.
Reconciliation Australia released a YouTube video featuring an ignorant white man at the footy to promote National Reconciliation Week.
‘G’day, I’m your average Australian,’ he says.
A video designed to promote reconciliation with indigenous people has been slammed for being patronising to ‘average’ Australians
‘I’m just doing average Australian things like watching Australian football with my Australian shepherd.
‘As an average Australian, I know a fair bit about this country.’
The promotion for National Reconciliation Week, which runs until June 3, has divided opinion in the YouTube comments section.
‘Patronising, badly produced and probably counter-productive,’ one critic said.
Another suggested this kind of video was a ‘nice way to promote resentment’ while others said it promoted ‘white guilt’ and was ‘comedy’.
The promotion for National Reconciliation Week, which runs until June 3, has divided opinion in the YouTube comments section
Another suggested this kind of video was a ‘nice way to promote resentment’
Another viewer said it was ‘good to see comedy is live and well’
Most the published comments on the YouTube page were critical with ‘fantastic’ among the rare praise.
One critic took exception to Aboriginal people being compared to the Greeks.
‘The Greeks gave the world democracy, philosophy and advanced forms of mathematics to name just a few,’ he said.
‘The Aborigines of Australia gave the world the woomera, the didgeridoo and the boomerang. To even speak of them both in the same sentence is an insult.’
A young indigenous man mentioned the ‘first ever bakers’ as he took a bit of a meat pie
The video producers were also accused of promoting ‘white guilt’.
In the clip, the white ‘average Australian’ man walks around the edge of a suburban oval before being confronted by an Aboriginal woman who tells him ‘there is a also a bit that you don’t know’.
‘We’ve got the longest surviving culture on earth,’ she said.
An older man with a beard chimes in with: ‘Even older than the Greeks: 60,000 years.’
A young AFL player caught a football and proclaimed indigenous people were the ‘first ever Aussie footballers’
An Aboriginal man with a beard added: ‘Just your average artists.’
Two women pointed out indigenous people had also produced warriors and inventors.
A young indigenous man mentioned the ‘first ever bakers’ as he took a bit of a meat pie before a young AFL player caught a football and proclaimed indigenous people were the ‘first ever Aussie footballers’.
Concluding the one-minute video, a young, white woman puts her right arm around the ‘average Australian’ to insinuate he is ignorant about Aboriginal disadvantage
An older, white man then made a point about the treatment of Aboriginal people by Australia’s British colonial rulers during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
‘It’s a culture that’s survived centuries of pretty average treatment,’ he said.
Concluding the one-minute video, a young, white woman put her right arm around the ‘average Australian’ to insinuate he was ignorant about Aboriginal disadvantage.
‘The average Australian doesn’t talk about that,’ she said.