Australia

You asked for my opinion, but the toxicity was clear that I wasn't going to give it. But since you've just said that well, here it is...

I spent years in Australia, much of it in rural areas you’d probably label as “Aboriginal communities”, as such the major city folk did, though in reality they were made up of all sorts of people. No one I knew framed life around skin colour or the actions of British colonists long before any of us were born.

While I was there, Australia Day was of contention, and it's unusual to see it still is. An elder I worked with once put it plainly: colonial dates—Gregorian, Julian, whatever—hold little meaning because they aren’t connected to their culture and lived reality. They did not care and it was hard for them to. More broadly, I was taught that the country is shared, taught, and enjoyed with respect for all living things. That outlook helped me feel at home in a place that was intimidating at first, until I was welcomed in. And if you’ve travelled, you’d know this isn’t unique to Australia, it’s common across indigenous cultures impacted by European colonisation, especially outside Eurasia. A disassociation with the things of different cultures, yet are still having to have them shoved at the forefront and be told how to be about them.

What also struck was how openly critical they were of some Aboriginal activists. They saw them as loud, clueless, and often doing more harm than good. Creating social division to offload what someone once called "the First Fleet guilt” which passes through the generations. It was clear they didn’t want to be spoken for, particularly when those actions clashed with their culture and other's cultures.

Based on your behaviour—both earlier and now—you appear to ve that type of person. British culture was never a part of them and never will be, yet you treat it as central because it’s central to you. You've even gone on to attack a list of people in ways that draw harder lines between groups, when both Aboriginal culture and broader Australian culture aim for the opposite.

The downvote was for you.

Knowing what I know, it's a real shame to see the energy you put out in this post, knowing it could've been spent on so much more things helpful to those communities. But drill down a few layers and I suspect to find it was always about you and not them.