Prepare to set sail on a voyage of discovery with us in the third and final part of a three-part series of conversations with our insightful guest, Robert Greenfield. We're mapping out the territories of Indigenous Peoples' rights, immigration complexities, and the landscape of digital media. We're journeying through the rich historical narratives of Aboriginal people in Australia to the ongoing debate on their recognition. As we navigate these waters, we promise you'll gain new perspectives on the global surge of Indigenous rights, highlighted by the Maori reclaiming the name Aiotera in New Zealand.
Our expedition doesn't stop there, as we examine the intricate routes of immigration in the context of the United States. Enter the debate arena as we weigh the implications of affirmative action and a recent Supreme Court decision's effect on selective universities. Finally, we're casting our nets into the vast ocean of digital media, focusing on platforms like Substack and Radio Garden. We'll reveal how podcasting has become a crucial instrument in promoting dialogue and transmitting ideas. So, join us on this journey - let's bridge the gap of understanding together!
Engage the conversation on Substack at The Common Bridge!
Prepare to set sail on a voyage of discovery with us in the third and final part of a three-part series of conversations with our insightful guest, Robert Greenfield. We're mapping out the territories of Indigenous Peoples' rights, immigration complexities, and the landscape of digital media. We're journeying through the rich historical narratives of Aboriginal people in Australia to the ongoing debate on their recognition. As we navigate these waters, we promise you'll gain new perspectives on the global surge of Indigenous rights, highlighted by the Maori reclaiming the name Aiotera in New Zealand.
Our expedition doesn't stop there, as we examine the intricate routes of immigration in the context of the United States. Enter the debate arena as we weigh the implications of affirmative action and a recent Supreme Court decision's effect on selective universities. Finally, we're casting our nets into the vast ocean of digital media, focusing on platforms like Substack and Radio Garden. We'll reveal how podcasting has become a crucial instrument in promoting dialogue and transmitting ideas. So, join us on this journey - let's bridge the gap of understanding together!
Engage the conversation on Substack at The Common Bridge!
Welcome to this episode of season 4 of the Common Bridge, where policy and current events are discussed in a fiercely nonpartisan manner. The host, richard Helpe, is a philanthropist, entrepreneur and political analyst who has reached over three and a half million listeners, viewers and readers around the world. The Common Bridge is available on the Substack website and the Substack app. Just search for the Common Bridge. You can find the program on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. The Common Bridge draws guests and audiences from across the political spectrum and we invite you to become a free or paid subscriber on your favorite medium.
Speaker 2:And welcome to the Common Bridge. This is the third and final part of a three-part series of a conversation that Richard Helpe had with Robert Greenfield. Greenfield's a very popular guest and he's been on probably every season since we've started this, and we think you'll really enjoy this last segment of their conversation. So, without any further ado, we join Richard and Robert in conversation.
Speaker 3:One of the things that we often talk about is that people have differences and people have similarities around the world. The history of humankind is full of this. Today, we thought we'd chat a little bit about three topics that may not seem related but kind of are. First of all, affirmative action, dei, diversity, equity, inclusion and also a little insight to Indigenous Peoples. I am going to be doing a series about Indigenous Peoples and hope that you'll tune in for that as well, robert. Here we are back again in studio, caffeinated, after an opportunity to talk about what's going on in the world. Let's begin on the Indigenous Peoples. You lived in Australia for how long?
Speaker 3:Often on for 25 years and most people don't understand it. They see Australia from the English perspective, but there's more to it than that with the aborigines. Could you maybe try to take people like me from the kindergarten level at least to maybe a reasonable age greater?
Speaker 4:Yeah, in Australia when Europeans arrived late 1780. There were around 300,000 indigenous people spread across 200 so-called nations. They called them nations with different languages, etc. So essentially the Europeans come in, they have the little communities and they keep pushing in the indigenous. As you know, in most cases, even with the Sammi in Finland, they push them to a smaller, smaller area. They were never recognized, they were not part of the constitution, they were not citizens until around 50 years ago when they became citizens. So they were very marginalized. So this is very true with most colonial kind of situations, not true like, say, in South Africa, where there were a very large population of local people, of Africans, but in Australia there was not a huge number 300,000 for the size of the United States basically, versus the US number which ranges from 3 million to 6 million when Europeans arrived here. So what's happened in Australia is, in the last 50 years, a highly paternalistic situation which has not worked. So you got a lot of administration about and they had the same issues as the United States take away the children, put them into Catholic schools, those kinds of things. So there's a lot of family destruction, huge amount of alcoholism, etc. So this has been the long-term situation. There are about 3% 800,000 today of the Australian population. So what's happened today?
Speaker 4:The big deal in today in Australia is mining. Mining is what the country makes money. Without mining, we're pulling coffees and got tourism. We don't make anything in Australia. So mining and all the mining people, rio Tinto is huge. My daughter works for Rio Tinto, so that's a disclaimer there, and she works on the heritage side with indigenous people.
Speaker 4:So they're trying to figure out a way forward, how to be able to do the rights of indigenous same thing that they're doing in Nevada okay, through all these kind of legal mechanisms. But the big question that's come up right now and this is an important one for people to understand is that they have proposed to alter the constitution of Australia to not just recognize the indigenous people, which they call now traditional owners, moving from First Nations to traditional owners but also to give them an independent voice. This has set off the alarm bells. The alarm bells are that effectively, the independent voice could stop mining, it could stop development of any way. It could say you know we had this song lines they're called like travel routes across. You can't go across that.
Speaker 4:So Australia is now going from a pretty leftist orientation going down that road very strong to give more and more rights. And, by the way, australia spends on average $50,000 per year per indigenous person, so it's not like money is not being spent in that area. Obviously, it's going to a lot of experts and everybody else. The indigenous people are not getting that much. But it looks like this referendum, which is going to be held in September, is going to lose, even though the government is really pushing it and really supporting it, because the majority of the people are saying we do not want to have an independent voice, we want to continue our life.
Speaker 4:So what happens with the to me, with indigenous rights in a lot of places, what starts off as a really, really noble thing, a really good thing to redress wrongs, now you know, with the leftist side saying, well, you know, we need to do this, we need to do that. The expansion is such that it's pushing against the majority and the majority are saying whoa, this is too much, too fast and maybe never. Similarly, by the way, in New Zealand with the Maori's, the Maori's want to rename the country Aiotera and there's a whole host of things that are happening there. So, around the world, I think you can look at. Indigenous rights are really becoming to the fore.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Well, New Zealand not wanting to rename it, but to reclaim the name Iotera and of course, New Zealand was populated the Maori by the Hawaiians coming down, and the native Hawaiians were subject to many of the indignities and the repressions that other indigenous people like couldn't practice or religion, couldn't speak their language and such. I've just returned from a visit to the Sami lands in very northern Finland. The parallels are amazing. I am far from an expert on this, but I do intend to learn even more. It's my heritage there that the Sami people, who are largely nomadic, could work things out with families. That this is where my reindeer are going to run, this is where my winter home is going to be, this is where my summer home is going to be, but not a concept of you can just carve up everything into squares and own land. The Sami heritage was something not to be proud of but to be ashamed of. The language was suppressed, the healing arts were suppressed and that identity. Now that has changed and there's actually a Sami parliament now in Finland and the conflict is almost exactly what you described in Australia that the Finnish government wants to get the mining for the nickel and the other precious metals that are needed for electric car batteries and to do that it would destroy the reindeer farming and reindeer herding of the Sami people.
Speaker 3:I am hopeful, in future episodes, of having Pila Colorado, who is a worldwide expert she runs the Worldwide Indigenous Sciences Network and then tried to bring on people from Sami land, hopefully aboriginal people, potentially some native Hawaiians. But we do have a dilemma because our colonialism stomped out cultures, but not quite, and now it's time for redress. And probably that brings us to an interesting evolution in the United States, where African Americans, one drop of African blood made you a black version. That made you subject to enslavement During our lifetimes. It was perfectly legal, Based on the pigmentation your skin, to not allow you accommodations, couldn't get a hotel room, couldn't eat in a restaurant, couldn't use a restroom, couldn't use a water fountain. I'd like to say that we've made progress and I think we have. But what's the next frontier and where is the notion of diversity and equity and inclusion fitting into this?
Speaker 4:Well, diversity and inclusion are a massive subject. I'm not qualified to talk about that. In some ways I came. We came as a very poor family to this country, but we were not enslaved, particularly not what's called chattel enslavement, which means family, family, family generation. So it's not even like you came as an indentured servant and you're done right. And the more. I learned about this in the background of the United States, and you know 16 of the first 17 presidents, 16 had slaves. The only one that did not was Abraham Lincoln. You know, kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Had sides while they were in office too.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Thomas Jefferson, you know, bred slaves, including his own family. A lot of the stuff that needs to be looked at. It needs to be looked at dispassionately. I know that's it's easy for me to say, but I also think this that throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not a good thing. I do write about this quite a bit and I think that the principles were right, but they were not applied equally, and that's what you're saying. They were not applied equally even in the 20th century until, quite you know, recently.
Speaker 4:I think the question for the average person in America is this it's kind of a different question, which is do we want an America that's going to continue generally on the same lines that we are now, or are we going to kind of reorder society using those principles of diversity, equity and inclusion? In principle sounds great, but also with people going to the other subject, which is affirmative action, type of redress, a lot of people are saying well, wait a second, how much redress do we need to do? What type of redress do we need to do? And I think the reason not to jump to it, but the recent SCOTUS Supreme Court decision, which said the type of affirmative action that was being used for selective universities, but it was being used everywhere. Right was outmoded. So I think that we are at a inflection point in our history and I think it's a good time to do that. But I would say this nobody owns the playing field not of African Americans, not anybody, not poor Irish, not anybody, not even the sound right. Nobody owns the playing field. Everybody needs to be looking at how can we come up with a way to make a more inclusive society but at the same time, you know, throwing out our basic principles.
Speaker 3:When I think about the notion of diversity, equity, inclusion, juxtaposed against this colonial history and then overlaid with immigration. I was reading some family archival information the my great grandfather was ridiculed. He was an accomplished pharmacist, apparently in Finland, but never learned the language, and was ridiculed with his attempts to speak English so he'd stayed in their little town where they could speak Finn. That is not an uncommon story about immigration that every group that's come here has come for a purpose and voluntarily, except for those that were enslaved. And now I think that we've lost sight of what a equal opportunity society should be and who's actually been harmed. So, by way of example, you mentioned affirmative action and we see that Asian students are actually proactively discriminated against. They have the scores and all the accomplishments to be admitted to these very competitive universities, but they're kept out by their skin color.
Speaker 3:I don't know that anybody thinks that that's a right thing. Also, corporate America is de-investing in. Dei. Blackstone, one of the largest private equity firms, says you can be in a ESG or environmental societal government fund or just a business where we're just trying to make money. I think we need to get to an equal playing field and be inclusive of all people and loving toward all people. But I wonder, does the Asian person that came here voluntarily, the person from Central America or Mexico or South America, are they also African? And what about African? Black versus African?
Speaker 2:If you don't have.
Speaker 3:African roots. Does it matter what your heritage is? And is a homosexual or a transsexual the same as being discriminated against a black person? These two may have the questions.
Speaker 4:Yeah, those are very large and fundamental questions, which leads to your subject on immigration. Immigration, next to climate change, to me is the largest question globally. It's true for your, it's true for here, it's true in a lot of places Without and I don't want to be the right wing, secure boarder's advocate but unless you have some kind of order, control, you can't do any of those things that you're saying. If you are just allowing people in and you don't know who they are, you don't know what they do, you don't know anything about them, but they're just coming in because quote, unquote their families or some other, you know, just kind of, wow, we've got to take them in, then you're not going to have a society that you can figure out how to move forward together. And I think that's the United States is really has a, and we're not the only ones. You know Europe has just decided no more. Okay, they're pushing votes back. Refugees will say we're not taking any refugees, these kinds of things.
Speaker 4:Australia puts them on an island. Okay, so it's a big island, they put them on a smaller island. You can't get into Australia unless you've got a proper visa. So immigration to me, is a kind of a part of this entire discussion If you flip it on the other side. I just want to give you a little anecdotal story. Go ahead, okay.
Speaker 3:So so what I think about that? Immigration has been going on since beginning to human kind. People move because it was cold or their crops didn't grow or the animals they were hunting weren't there, and some societies believed in building towns and some are just we're just nomadic. More sustenance.
Speaker 3:We all came from someplace else at the beginning of time and throughout modern history, and when I think about immigration in this country in particular my experience with immigrants they just want to come here and work. They want to have a home, get an education, raise their children, provide for an opportunity in the modern world, I think we should be embracing that. I think what we're doing on the immigration front is the cruelest thing possible, but we need to do a better job. There's been better answers, but it's become part of our dysfunctional political system that we just can't do the right things. We need more people here. We're not giving birth to enough people, and if people can come here to work, great, they should be coming here to work and we should have a common set of laws that everyone has to abide by.
Speaker 4:You know, in my writing my blog and a question I asked was asked does Australia need immigrants? I had 5 million views of that, by far the most of anything. So I have to tell you this is a hot subject, you know, even in a place like Australia. But I want to mention one other thing is for going back on the not necessarily affirmative action. But what are we doing with our existing population?
Speaker 4:I went to something over the weekend in Westland Michigan and I have to say this, and I'll say this right to the camera I saw a broken people. These are people who are obese, they are wheelchairs, in both blacks and whites, and they're not productive and they're not in the system we have not figured out. It seems to me, looking around In Harvard, it's a, you know, kind of a center of excellence, right, but there's a lot of places in the Midwest that are not, that are. These people have been left behind. I don't have necessarily the answer for that, but I know this just bringing in immigrants who are going to work hard, we're going to add a lot more value than these people. What do we do with the people that are left behind? Yes, it's true.
Speaker 3:Well, we don't send them to Canada because you know Canada's got the medical assistance in dying and that's reason enough. You're old and fat, but okay, here's the drugs Problem solved. Canada's a mess probably a different topic. But having a society where everyone has the ability to achieve and also those that are informed, whether they're an agent or obese or suffering from an injury, illness, accident, whatever it might be, we need to lift them up and support them. We need to make sure people are housed and fed and that they can become as contributing as possible. And I think we've gotten away from that by kind of getting into the grievance Olympics. Well, that's fun Victimization Olympics.
Speaker 4:Contribution is where you and I really come together. In my view, people who are just sitting on the sidelines it's a bad thing for them, it's a bad thing for society. Contribution is everything, and if you start that with a starting point and add that things like immigration, add that with a new way, in affirmative action, we as people, we're unstoppable.
Speaker 3:Robert, this has been a uncharacteristically short conversation that you and I have. I really have a lot more to talk about. I really want to thank you for this time that you carved out of your schedule on this whirlwind tour of Europe and parts of North America, including America Park, which pretty much is on everybody's list, I think. Thank you, but I'm happy to have you here. Anything else you'd like to just say as a closing comment to our audience?
Speaker 4:I would like to say this about the Common Bridge, actually, and the two of you that have done this amazing job I think it's wonderful that you took your trip to Finland and to your ancestral areas up in Lapland with the Sami people. You are constantly broadening as I tried to do myself broadening your horizons. What you just said just a moment ago was incredibly compassionate and inclusive, if I might say so, and so I want to congratulate you on your continued success with this, but also on your own personal journey, how you are now doing more than just the political spectrum, more than just some of the topics, and now you're looking at this kind of globally. So I'm looking forward to our next conversation, when we can get together and I'll come back with more European perspective and you will come back with more indigenous perspective and we can take it from there.
Speaker 3:And we'll unite around great policies for the United States of America in this world. Okay, robert, it's been a pleasure. This is Rich Helpe with our special guest, our favorite guest, robert Greenfield, signing off on the Common Bridge.
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