Talk:Kuku Yalanji

Neutrality or cultural imperialism
Hello, I'm Laterthanyouthink. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit to Kuku Yalanji seemed less than neutral and has been removed. If you think this was a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 23:42, 1 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Dear Laterthanyouthink,


 * I see you reverted my additions to the Kuku Yalanjis in name of a neutral point of view. If we accept your understanding and use of this position as unilaterally and tacitly formulated by you then, comparatively speaking, for instance,

- we should not speak about any history of the Germans and Germany before the Australians contacted them in the 20th c - we ought to limit any history of the Germans to that of their contacts with Australians - we would need to limit any discussion of German langauge and culture to Australian scholars' monographs on these subjects - we would need to deny and disregard the existence of Chinese culture and language prior to the founding of the PRC in 1949 - we should see the ethnic cleansing of Turks/Muslims from Greece and Bulgaria as 'removals' - while the wartime genocide of Jews we should present as 'mass murders.'


 * Hence, this kind of neutral point of view is nothing other than:

- denial of genocide and ethnic cleansing - denial of any pre-invasion history to the Kuku Yalanjis - approval of forced assimilation - approval of depriving the Kuku Yalanjis of agency.


 * Such attitudes in writing about an ethnic group/nation are indicative of racism and (cultural) imperialism. If in doubt of what I am proposing, try to apply this supposedly 'neutral point of view' to writing about history, languages and cultures of European nations and states. And then see what other Wikipedians may think.


 * I am not going to engage in any eitorial sparring enjoy this specific kind of self-serving western 'neutrality' that justified cocnentration camp-like compulsory boarding schools for 'natives' children,' snatched from their parents to 'civilize' into 'white fellas.'

Hyrdlak (talk) 10:21, 2 October 2021 (UTC)Hyrdlak


 * , a descriptive article about one of hundreds of Aboriginal Australian peoples is not the place to insert a general discussion or point of view about cultural imperialism, genocide, etc., and categories such as Mass murder, Genocide and Imperialism were not created to include thousands of articles about individual peoples across the world who may have been subject to these practices. In addition, your style changes are not in accord with Australian terminology and style guidelines (there is a difference between Indigenous Australians and Aboriginal Australians - see the relevant articles; names of peoples are not pluralised in Australia (an alternative is to use "[x] people"); and we always capitalise the initial letters of Indigenous and Australian). You added, uncited "Yet, none of the works has been produced by or consulted with the Kuku Yalenjis, which is a form of linguistic imperialism" - the sources do not state that Kuku Yalanji people were not consulted, and the latter clause is WP:OR. The existing content already includes several long paragraphs describing ethnic cleansing and the damage done to the people by colonisation; I had changed the heading to "History of contact" because that is a common heading used across a number of Australian articles on similar topics. If you are interested in contributing to articles relating to Australian history and its Indigenous peoples, I suggest that you start by looking at the more general articles - History of Australia (1788–1850) might be the place to start. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 02:09, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

"One of the oldest living cultures"?
The citation for this statement is an unsourced quote from a "Queensland environment minister", found is a news article from the guardian... The encyclopedic validity of that statement is, in my opinion, absolutely not supported by the citation. The article in general is written in a way that seems completely centered on the "white" misdeeds, rather than being informative. Added to that the typos ("patritic defence" war), it gives a quite poor impression of its quality. (Unsigned comment by 83.85.142.68, 25 January 2022)


 * Thanks for your comment. That led me to notice some earlier editorialising that had been added to cited content, which I have now removed, and I also added more detail and another citation to the "oldest living cultures" bit. Laterthanyouthink (talk) 00:29, 25 January 2022 (UTC)