I recently outlined how I am “undecided” when it comes to the referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice. I believed most Australians would have a hard time understanding why I, as an Aboriginal woman, felt this way. If I were to put it in a sentence, those reasons would include ignorance of the Indigenous rights movement, the erroneous idea that Indigenous opinion is a monolith, and the dualistic framing of the voice debate in and of itself.
There have been a number of developments since I shared my views back in May – most of which have occurred in the past weeks. For starters, recent reports of opinion polls stated that support for the voice had declined to its lowest level yet. There was also the passage of the legislation to hold the referendum in the first place through both houses of parliament. There was Senator Lidia Thorpe’s gathering of Indigenous sovereignty activists calling for a no vote in favour of more concrete actions, and counteracting claims made by both the yes camp and the conservative no camp. Finally though, there was the sheer exhaustion I noticed in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, from all sides of the debate, when it came to even broaching the referendum.
