Prior to the threatened rewriting of the Australian constitution can we stop re-writing the English dictionary and the meanings of our words to suit the re-write of what being an Australian is? Perhaps it is all part of the demise of our education system but no human is indigenous to Australia as Australia didn’t even come with a backstory of mammals let alone primates from which came the many iterations of the upright, bi-pedal, Homo species (Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo Heidelberg, etc) and, ultimately, us Homo sapiens. All of whom were indigenous to Africa. The first out-of-Africa population movement of Homo sapiens started some 130,000 years ago and travelled up along the east coast of Africa, crossed what was then a land bridge over the Red Sea heading to Sri Lanka, India,  Southeast Asia and to a land mass called Sahul. Sahul was Australia, with Papua New Guinea still attached, that had been the last land mass to fracture from the Antarctic continent of Pangaea and head north until it collided into south east Asia. At this point the slowly migrating African indigenes could cross (sea levels were 150 metres lower than today) in tribal groups to what is now Papua New Guinea then into our gulf country or, via the island of Flores, further south onto the northern coast of what is West Australia. That journey from Africa took small hunter-gatherer groups multiple generations until first reaching what is now Australia some 45,000 years ago. That remarkable journey makes these slow trekking, out-of-Africa indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes, the first human species to be introduced to the Australian land mass but it does not make them or their descendants indigenous to Australia. Aboriginal – yes, but indigenous – no.

Marsupials are indigenous to Australia but humans are not. So, can we rephrase the call to arms regarding the Voice and delete the ignorant attachment of the appellation ‘indigenous’. That said I would like to recommend a song and two voices that say it all when it comes to the human migrations into Australia. The voices belong to the late, great Judith Durham and her co-singer Bruce Woodley and it is The Seekers song ‘I am Australian’ that says it all and, with lines such as ‘We are one but we are many and from all the lands on Earth we come’, it should be our anthem. If it were, the call to divide Australians into self-identification groups might fade to oblivion as we all take personal pride in wearing the name ‘Australian’. It would also be good to be able to ditch the current ‘land girt by sea’ anthem.

We are all mentioned in that Seekers song. From those of the Dream Time and dusty red soil plains, to sailors on tall ships and iron-chained convicts on prison ships, to the journey from convict to free man, to land clearers/settlers/farmers/bushies, to gold miners and those battlers during the Depression, to Aboriginal artists and legendary horsemen through to bushrangers and to a swagman Waltzing Matilda. They are all there as Australians who have left their past behind in identifying with and belonging to this large continent under one federal government. Is that the problem for some? Do they seek separation of the Australian government into race-based legislatures and parliaments? What gain is there in dividing us by ‘indigenous’ ancestry claims that may not have significant DNA support? Anthropological research from universities ranging from Copenhagen to the US, UK and Australia now estimate that of those original aboriginal tribes there are only approximately 5,000 people left carrying that pure-blood African DNA. That they arrived in their various tribes over some 45,000+ years before Sahul separated from Malaysia and Australia separated from New Guinea is an amazing feat of human resilience and venture. But, now, those identifying as aboriginal are – just like most of us – a mix-and-match batch of racial identities under the umbrella title of Homo sapiens (aka mankind). To identify as belonging to only one caste of your ancestry is appallingly disrespectful to all the other allelic influences on your DNA from other ancestry that make up who you are.

Much simpler, surely, to just be proud of being an Australian that comes with the right to vote for what you want and who you want to deliver this under the one flag. That is all the ‘voice’ we need.

Many years ago when I ran an events company with a significant corporate clientele I engaged Judith Durham to perform at the 50th birthday celebration of a highly respected corporate ‘doctor’. What overwhelmed was the size, resonance, depth and complexity of her beautiful all-embracing voice coming from such a slight frame. Vale Judith Durham, you, along with The Seekers, were wonderful and where you came from didn’t matter because you were Australian.