CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The focus on both Australia’s black history, and future, has stepped up this week – and not just in Betoota.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, history and storytelling is on display for all – with NAIDOC events right around the country.
Traditional Owners across the land proudly celebrated and showcased their culture, and with renewed calls from many for Aboriginal people to be included in the constitution.
And in trend with the last decade of progressive neoliberal perfomances, the top end of town is also nodding to the contributions of Australia’s First Nations People – in their own special way.
Not by hiring any of them, but by plastering the red, black and yellow colours on every corporate logo they can.
The rush for the corporate sector to join in on NAIDOC symbolism has seen the LGBBTI flags of last month’s Pride Festival disappearing over night, with not one underpaid and uninsured gig economy cyclist glowing in rainbow colours on the iPhone screen as they whizz through red lights to hit their deadlines by delivering a $40 pad Thai to someone coming down from Ketamine abuse.
As of today, the gays have been told to take a hike, as tax-dodging corporations turn their attention to acknowledging Indigenous people, a community that hs been undermined and trodden on for hundreds of years by the same systems and institutions that they lobby favourable treatment from with billions of dollars in political donations.
With the flag changing from a month of rainbow colours to a week of Aboriginal colours, board members and CEOs across the country are starting to forget what their own logos actually look like outside of these waves of performative symbolism.
Not that it matters, because logos don’t really change anything.
The gays will now have to wait another 12 months for their turn to exist again.
