What's new
The Front Row Forums

Register a free account today to become a member of the world's largest Rugby League discussion forum! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Players refusing to sing the National anthem in protest

Sphagnum

Coach
Messages
12,908
Do these guys ever consider that the reason they get overlooked for rep honour is not because they're aboriginal but because they will parlay their selection into some totally unrelated agenda they'll pour down everyone's throat.

He'll most likely get shown up pretty hard at this level so hopefully we only have to endure this crap for one game.
Wish I could've got some serious coin on this. If you're gonna carrying on like a f**ken princess, at least do something once the game your trying to hold to ransom starts.

Useless merkin
 

magpie4ever

First Grade
Messages
9,992
So f**king what?
That doesn’t make it any better.
The fact is the place was invaded by white fellas .
They killed thousands, they enslaved men.
They raped women, stole children
Stole everything.


Now their descendants don’t want to join in the glee club that sings a song that offends the memory of their ancestors.

If you are not indigneous, Carcharias; I'm asking you to leave this country to show us the way.

Please let me know where you settle.
 

Danish

Referee
Messages
31,853
So is an aboriginal player not singing the anthem in protest more or less offensive than half the other players also not singing because they don’t know the words
 

Knight Vision

First Grade
Messages
5,066
who cares who was here first?? ....second or third....or came last week? Geologically 60-70 thousand years barely rates as an epoch...its nothing. In terms of the earths age its the blink of an eye a nano second.

Arguing over singing a song? really ? how juvenile. Sing it or dont sing who gives a f**k.

Up to 200 species a day disappear from the earth, scientists are sounding alarm bells and the plebs? they fight over a song.......we really are f**ked.
 

DC_fan

Coach
Messages
11,980
who cares who was here first?? ....second or third....or came last week? Geologically 60-70 thousand years barely rates as an epoch...its nothing. In terms of the earths age its the blink of an eye a nano second.

Arguing over singing a song? really ? how juvenile. Sing it or dont sing who gives a f**k.

Up to 200 species a day disappear from the earth, scientists are sounding alarm bells and the plebs? they fight over a song.......we really are f**ked.

Maybe the human race will be next
 

Willow

Assistant Moderator
Messages
108,302
Though it also shouldn't be forgotten that the same things, rape, torture, murder, slavery, were inflicted on most of the non indigenous population also. It was a brutal time and the elite British hierarchy enforced misery through much of the world, including on their captive colonists in what would become Australia.
What you say is correct, but unfortunately this line of discussion is often used by racists to diminish the impact that colonisation had on the indigenous communities. eg "The convicts had it hard too, and we got over that, so harden up!"

Interesting article from the indigenousx website:

(Excerpt from https://indigenousx.com.au/debunking-it-was-hard-for-convicts-too/ )

...the chains were removed from the transported criminals shortly after their arrival. And they were not confined behind bars, or anything else, for too long. It was First Peoples who’d felt the chains around their necks, and heard the locks turn in doors, the longest.

Unlike the prisoners transported from England, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were not sentenced for committing a crime. They were chained and incarcerated during waves of invasion and colonisation, as the colonisers/settlers swept over the lands of many sovereign peoples.



In 1938, the 150th year of British colonisation, the last transported prisioner (convicted for arson) died peacefully in a WA nursing home.

Also in that year, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:

  • had no citizenship rights
  • could be denied the right to own homes, property or businesses
  • could be confined on missions and reserves against their will
  • could be forced to work as station hands and labours without pay (i.e. slavery)
  • had limited access to doctors or hospital; were not allowed to give birth in many hospitals
  • could be denied the right to marry
  • could have children forcibly removed on the basis of eugenics; to be indoctrinated into Christianity and trained as unpaid domestics and labourers (i.e. slavery)
  • could be denied schooling
  • could be barred from pubs and clubs
  • And subjected to other race-based laws, policies and procedures.
 

Mr Spock!

Referee
Messages
22,502
Not only did "this" (the sorts of misery you describe inflicted on indigenous people by British invaders) happen a lot, it is often conveniently forgotten, and people do have a right to be upset about it.

Though it also shouldn't be forgotten that the same things, rape, torture, murder, slavery, were inflicted on most of the non indigenous population also. It was a brutal time and the elite British hierarchy enforced misery through much of the world, including on their captive colonists in what would become Australia.

And many people have since come to Australia precisely to escape these sorts of things in their countries of origin.

The real issues are deeper than the misery from imperial British hierarchies of two and a bit centuries ago (who were horrible, but not especially worse than any other ruling forces in the world at the time).

The issues are that the legacy of that invasion has left us a scarred nation, with ongoing, real problems today, some of which are cruelly targeting indigenous people disproportionately to the rest of us. Mind you, it would still be cruel to have terrible child mortality, for example, in an otherwise modern, healthy country, even if it was not a problem really affecting a segment of our population more than another.

The real strength of our nation is that despite the crap dished out to our indigenous people, our first penal colonists, the underpriveleged and those fleeing persecution from elsewhere, we have a strong, healthy, vibrant population that has created a very pleasant place to live for most of us, most of the time.

One of the many things we have embraced is the idea that we are democratic, not just in having a right to vote, but in having a right to a good life (a sort of egalitarian pluralism that we mostly believe in). While this does not always turn out to be true, as long as we continue to agitate for the right of all our people to have good lives, we are heading in the right direction.

The anthem is seen by some as uniting us, and not singing it is therefore dividing us. But the anthem is a symbol, as is not singing it. It is the ideal of everyone having a "fair go" that unites us. If not singing an anthem is one way that someone can point out an area that is important to them where they feel everyone is not getting a "fair go", then really, that is being a part of us.

I think the respect shown in this forum, in the media, by the NRL, to this idea of a protest, is also part of our united faith in the idea that we should all strive for everyone to have a good life.

It may not be a perfect protest. The criticism of it may not be perfect. But mostly it is coming from a place where we want to see all our people have a fair go.
Compare the treatment of Australian Aborigines with the Maori.

This whole yeah but the poms were brutal to everyone doesn't wash.

Not only that but convicts who behaved did really well.

It was only those who kept on breaking the law that were treated like shit in places like Moreton Bay.

The words Advance Australia were a straight out white supremacist meme.
 

mave

Coach
Messages
13,060
Other than not singing the National Anthem, did Walker do anything last night ?

Cause I remember watching him not sing, then nothing for 80 minutes after that, well except for the bench warming.
 

Sphagnum

Coach
Messages
12,908
Other than not singing the National Anthem, did Walker do anything last night ?

Cause I remember watching him not sing, then nothing for 80 minutes after that, well except for the bench warming.
One of many useless souths merkins pretending they're a rep player.

Absolutely f**ken woeful
 

magpie4ever

First Grade
Messages
9,992
But another me could’ve been Chinese
It was gonna happen anyway...right?

Nah, in the age of colonisation if the Poms didn't arrive, it wouldn't have happened.

And a stone age people would have continued to exist right up to today.

Let me know what country takes you in?
 

magpie4ever

First Grade
Messages
9,992
What you say is correct, but unfortunately this line of discussion is often used by racists to diminish the impact that colonisation had on the indigenous communities. eg "The convicts had it hard too, and we got over that, so harden up!"

Interesting article from the indigenousx website:

(Excerpt from https://indigenousx.com.au/debunking-it-was-hard-for-convicts-too/ )

...the chains were removed from the transported criminals shortly after their arrival. And they were not confined behind bars, or anything else, for too long. It was First Peoples who’d felt the chains around their necks, and heard the locks turn in doors, the longest.

Unlike the prisoners transported from England, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were not sentenced for committing a crime. They were chained and incarcerated during waves of invasion and colonisation, as the colonisers/settlers swept over the lands of many sovereign peoples.



In 1938, the 150th year of British colonisation, the last transported prisioner (convicted for arson) died peacefully in a WA nursing home.

Also in that year, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people:

  • had no citizenship rights
  • could be denied the right to own homes, property or businesses
  • could be confined on missions and reserves against their will
  • could be forced to work as station hands and labours without pay (i.e. slavery)
  • had limited access to doctors or hospital; were not allowed to give birth in many hospitals
  • could be denied the right to marry
  • could have children forcibly removed on the basis of eugenics; to be indoctrinated into Christianity and trained as unpaid domestics and labourers (i.e. slavery)
  • could be denied schooling
  • could be barred from pubs and clubs
  • And subjected to other race-based laws, policies and procedures.

I don't believe anyone is denying the horror stories.
 

Latest posts

Top