Today is Indigenous Peoples Day in the U.S. and we're bringing you an update on our

Australia and Atlas Network episodes about an issue facing Australia's Indigenous

people this week. Talking about the upcoming vote on what they're calling the

voice, a referendum to amend Australia's constitution to add a governmental body

that will act as the quote-unquote voice for First Nations people in the

country. Now it's important to note that First Nations people in Australia do

not have treaties with the Australian government. That's a really big deal.

Treaties are the thing that give Indigenous people in the U.S. for example,

really any power they have to fight back against land grabs to protect

water rights and all sorts of other things. So not surprising then that a lot of

First Nations people are arguing that because this referendum does not

include treaty rights and therefore land rights they would like to see

something better. Fair enough. It also has the support of some of the

country's largest mining companies probably because of that whole doesn't

come with land rights thing which also has some First Nations leaders skeptical.

So there are some valid concerns about this referendum. But there's also, you

guessed it, an Atlas network backed effort to weaponize those concerns.

Turning them into an attack on everything from NIM quoting here,

woke climate hysteria to the very idea of Indigenous people having any

kinds of rights. Period. The redwashing tactic that Canadian reporter Jeff

Dembeke laid out in a piece for our website back in August also a tactic that

turns up over and over again in the Atlas universe is in full force as well.

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