I want to talk about the noble savage trope and how it's used in online discussions. But first, I need to tell you about how racism is different here in Australia than over in America.

In America, there's an ongoing tension between the words "Indian" and "Native American". Different people have different opinions. But most everyone can agree that "Native American" is broadly inoffensive at least in intentions behind the word. It's better than a lot of other words that have been applied to the community.

But in Australia, that word is perceived very differently. Do not call an Aboriginal person "native", it will go very poorly. That's because the history is different. I won't pretend to fully understand that history, but if you're going to use the word "native" in Australia, stick to using it for plants and animals. Do not use it for people.

Tobacco is another good example of cultural differences. It's indigenous to Turtle Island and has been smoked there for thousands of years. The Europeans got hooked on it and did not use it responsibly, and then they hooked the First Australians on it too. I once talked about attending an Aboriginal smoking Ceremony with an American friend, and she assumed I meant tobacco. I had to explain that tobacco is bad here. Australian smoking ceremonies are very different, there's no pipe involved and it doesn't get you high. So the same phrase had very different literal meanings, and the same physical object is imbued with very different cultural narratives.

So let's talk about Country. I don't know much about how Country is constructed in Turtle Island metaphysical ontologies, but in Australia, Country is absolutely central to philosophy, culture, and daily life. That's why I'm capitalising it. Country is a living, spiritually significant thing, very different to how Europeans conceive of "land". Connectedness to Country is a central feature of every single Aboriginal culture. All of the hundreds of them, that's how important it is.

So if a European-descended person like Myself says "Indigenous people have a profound connection to the land", I'm led to believe this is a racist thing to say in America. It's connecting to these noble savage tropes, it's this form of orientalism. But in Australia, when talking about Australian Indigenous people, it's not racist. It will not be perceived as racist by the people it describes, because it's coming straight from their own self-identified cultural values. It's aligning with self-determination of these cultures.

So if you're scrolling the interwebs and you see an Australian living in Australia talking about Australian Indigenous people in this way, you might have an impulse to see this as racist, coming from an American perspective. And if I were talking about American Indigeneity, I would agree. But 'round these parts, this isn't the European idea of the noble savage. This is what I have been taught directly by Aboriginal people and am trying to amplify, because us non-Aboriginal Australians need to educate each other on these issues, we can't put all the work on Aboriginal people. And I genuinely think the science and technology that enables this deep connection is worth learning from, not as "explorers", but as students.

So yeah, point is: Not everything you learn about racism on Turtle Island will be applicable to completely different cultural groups everywhere in the world.