Voice supporters don’t need a reading list, they need a proposal

Well, looks like we’re not going to stop talking about the Voice to Parliament after all. There’s no way to stop, really. Some First Nations commentators and activists have suggested white people stop writing or speaking about it, but what good does that do? Those opposed to the Voice altogether aren’t going to heed that call. And in any case, the referendum is going to be decided, massively, by white votes. There ain’t much alternative but to keep putting in.

For many people on the left, especially progressives, the Voice seems to be some sort of transcendent, heavenly sent deliverance of the nation, emerging from the clouds over Uluru like the product of a syncretic Hand of God, attended by the three wise ones: St Noel, St Marcia and St Megan. 

For the rest of us, who are going to vote “Yes”, because it’s happening and a thing, it looks like a trip to the referendum casino, where the odds are stacked against you, to try and win a body that has no power; is dependent on a settler constitution and parliament for its identity, budget and salaries; puts First Nations peoples in permanent petitioning mode to white authority whose legitimacy it thus reinforces; and, as a form of exile from power, offers what exile always does: the magnification of petty differences among petitioners into major division. Sounds great!