Trying to take a bit of a refresh with community building, I’m an organiser in a large (for me) solarpunk discord which I think has a lot of potential for praxis and movement building but I think it could do with a bit more direction and hopefully I can encourage some of the cool projects that are emerging there. I’m hoping to kickstart a local solarpunk community but it’s in the early stages, I’ve got some typical projects in mind like seed bombing that are as much as anything a way to get the group together, but I’m hoping I can bring my learnings from that community back to a wider audience because it would be awesome to see communities like that springing up across the world

I’d love to think so, but I’m struggling to imagine what could initiate that sort of cultural change in the rural communities responsible for food production since the referendum has shown that the sorts of attitudes needed for a solarpunk society is missing from a lot of those areas. I’m sure climate change will soon make sustainability a priority for rural areas but that alone won’t change most of the other values

From some more reading, it looks like the no vote very closely correlates with conservative voting regions, so while the progressive no voters presumably had some impact, it looks like the referendum outcome is largely due to anti indigenous sentiment. I’m not sure weather this is more concerning, or the fact that the no campaign pretty much fully controlled the narrative with social and news media misinformation and manipulation.

Not to minimize the pain a lot of people are going through right now, but I want to provide some context:

While a lot of people who voted no on this referendum had poor intentions, there was a significant percentage of progressives including indigenous people who voted no based on concerns that this proposal would be an unreasonable compromise, and potentially be an obstacle in the way of establishing a body/system that would have actual power rather than being advisory only.

A lot of the media and politicians worked hard to silence the questions and concerns especially of indigenous activists, including the most progressive party removing an indigenous senator for refusing to endorse the proposed system, it seems clear to me why a lot of people did not trust the proposal.

It remains to be seen what proportion of the no vote came from pro vs anti indigenous rights proponents, and how the population will react to other proposals such as treaty and truth telling, but it’s certainly not as clear cut as the media narrative that “most voters don’t want indigenous rights”, and in my opinion, there is a lot of potential for much more substantial positive change in the near term, based on the efforts of the past few years and decades

Thanks!