Comparison is oft drawn between Australia's ~80 000 centuries of indigenous culture and several hundred years of British colonial culture.
Gough giving back just a very tiny bit of Australia.
A colonial view that continues to this day is that indigenous culture achieved little. That if it wasn't for colonisation that the indigenous population would still be sitting around camp fires with no advancement, no television, no internet, no aircraft... no "civilisation".
The other side of the argument is that anglo-capitalist unrelenting pursuit of "growth" has led to the destruction of nature, placing the ecosystem of the earth at peril, an escalating downward spiral that leads to an uninhabitable planet. A capitalistic short shrift end game of extinction of all mammals (including the human variety).
One could well argue that maintaining ~80000 years of sustainable culture, arts, language and spirituality is a stunning achievement. Living under the stars, telling stories, singing, dancing, for six thousand decades, a well proven stable civilisation, freedom unhindered by the many ills not least eco-disaster that arrived with western colonisation.
Comparatively the colonists free society included mass incarceration, police brutality, weapons for mass killing, perpetual war and other freedom bringing hypocrisies.
One could easily argue that the pre-colonisation indigenous population of Australia was doing freedom a hell of a lot better than the Western model.
Yet one might also argue the opposite.
Futility and a Death Wish
The existential crisis that emerges with a realisation of the futility of life. The pathetic human condition. This meaningless transferred into suffering. Generations suffering with a persistent reminder of futility. And freedom sought through distraction. Distractions like drugs and alcohol, medications, or gadgets and luxury, inventions and money making, wealth accumulation, collective accelerated "growth".
Growth leading to mass extinction, mass death, mass freedom.
In short shrift.
The Western evolution model: extinction of the species as a magnanimous act of freedom.