Indigenous Australians have called for a “week of silence” and mourning after a referendum on giving them more political representation was rejected by the country’s white majority.
With more than seventy percent of ballots counted on Sunday, about sixty-one percent of Australians said “no” when asked if the country’s 1901 constitution should be changed to recognise the country’s original inhabitants.
By voting no, Australians also voted against creating a new consultative body – a “Voice” to Parliament – that could have had a say on issues related to Indigenous affairs in Australia.
Indigenous supporters of the Voice said it was “a bitter irony” that “people who have only been on this continent for two hundred and thirty-five years would refuse to recognise those whose home this land has been for sixty thousand years.
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