This timely article really makes me wonder what people on the ground think is covered by the term 'self-determination'. To me, such terms, like 'liberation', 'independence' and 'control over your own affairs' have always meant hard work, more hard work than ever before, as the people themselves grappled with, and took on, all the burdens of responsibility. I just wonder if, in many parts ofthe north, many people thought that self-determination - a gabble of sounds, after all - meant doing less, having someone else doing more for you. Dreadful mistake.

There is a persistent belief that having a high proportion of a population below 25, or 21, or 18, meant ONLY a high birth rate, and a rapid population increase. It may be true, as the author notes, that "in many remote NT communities up to 50 per cent of the population is under age 25 .... " but this can also be a very worrying sign that the mortality of older Indigenous people, i.e. over 25, is very high.

After all, imagine if, in a certain population, nobody much lived past the age of thirty: what would be the proportion then of people under 25 ? In fact, if the birth rate was stable, even if it was at zero, with a high level of adult mortality, the bulk of the population would still be below 25. In itself, it means EITHER high fertility OR high mortality. A combination of both would give the impression of very rapid population growth.

A comparison of births every five years would clarify the long-term situation, and it does appear that, in the NT of all places, the Indigenous birth rate from one Census to the next, or from one Post-Enumeration Survey to the next, reveals a birth rate which has been lower than the nation-wide Indigenous average for decades.

So what 'a high proportion under 25' may actually reveal is the critical need to attend to what is actually a very high young-adult mortality rate, i.e. of people under forty or fifty, rather than a high birth rate in remote communities.

Charlie Ward is spot on in his critique of current policies affecting remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. Let's not beat about the bush on this. Current policy is a deliberate and targetted attack on the continuation of Aboriginal life in the bush except for a few arbitrarily selected 'priority' communities or 'Territory Growth Towns'. Those selected communities are to be large-scale exercises in social engineering, as the 'new Aboriginal person' is created, a bit akin to the making of 'Soviet man'.

In some ways this is a throw back to the assimilation policies of the 50s and 60s, but the architects of those policies, such as Paul Hasluck, were at least benevolent in their desires. Not so the modern policy maker - this is a much meaner and more brutal creature, so sure that they are the ones with the answers.

Current polcies are designed in particular to undercut the role of tradition and traditonal owners and custodians in decision making about Aboriginal land. There is a two-pronged approach here. One prong is to get traditional owners out of the way in the major townships through the mechanism of leases (by the way they are 40 plus 40 leases at the Govenrment's discretion, ie in reality 80 year leases). The second prong is simply to, over time, depopulate the bush. This is why no new houses are ever to be built on outstations and homelands under current COAG and bilateral arrangments.

Under Brough and then Macklin we have seen a largely hidden revolution in Aboriginal policy in this country. It is a new and brutal assimilation. It is not one that should be tolerated in a democratic country such as Australia.

It really is time that these policies were flushed out into the light of day, and that our politicians and senior bureaucrats were required to behave decently, sensibly and with a degree of respect towards Aboriginal people. It is time that neo-assimialtion was put back in the rubbish bin of failed and inhumane policies.

You could be right, Zelig, that government policy's " ... second prong is simply to, over time, depopulate the bush. This is why no new houses are ever to be built on outstations and homelands under current COAG and bilateral arrangments."

Surely, this is precisely why communities which have access to water and other resources have to work hard to set up genuine enterprises, such as vegetable gardens, orchards, chooks and some dairy cows - especially in those places where those sorts of activities were flourishing back in the days of the missionaries.

Where communities have water - and if they have flush-toilets and sewage treatment works [check out Google Maps], they have water - the councils could set aside, or lease, suitable areas of land to a local group constituted as a company or incorporated body, to get such enterprises going, and if possible, to provide neighbouring communities, which don't have much water, with fresh fruit, vegetables, eggs and milk, at reasonable prices, as well as their own community.

As well, of course: camping grounds, caravan parks, guided tours, and local staffing (after appropriate training and education) of all maintenance positions, mechanics, teachers, nurses, administrators, bookkeepers, etc. Is that impossible to contemplate ?

Of course, some of this could have been done while communities had access to effectively free labour, or CDEP, but there you go: Indigenous affairs is a graveyard of wasted opportunities.

Still, Zelig, with such enterprises, people would have a rationale to stay in their home-communities if they wished. But with nothing going on there, why should they stay ? And why should governments build houses where there will never be genuine work ? And should kids be condemned to live in settlements which represent no hope of any secure future ?

Yes, we must think of the old people, but surely people can walk and chew at the same time: we must also think of the young people. Do we sit by and watch another generation go down the drain ?

Joe

Good article by Charlie Ward, bringing into the debate important issues that normally lie submerged in media discussions. The issues raised by Loudmouth are equally important. Would be useful to hear a response from you, Charlie.

Charlie Ward is echoing the sentiments of all communities I visit. I have stated many times on OLO how incompetent the new system is in Nth Qld communities now under the umbrella of well, I can't actually mention the association as this organisation appears to be a sponsor of a community forum.
My particular branch of this organisation is so mismanaging some communities it belies belief. All instigated by Peter Beatty & implemented by Anna Bligh. We don't think it is planned but then again who'd know ? Perhaps there is some truth in the rumours of depopulating the bush. From my observations though it definitely looks like academic incompetence rather than a plan. CDEP was replaced by CEA which is even more evil considering they got rid of CDEP because it was so bad. remote communities have become cash cows for consultants with no responsibility. A lot of money is blown with impunity.
I just hope that people in the south find out about this & that their conscience will help get the coalition back in. I simply can't think it possible that Anna Bligh as Premier could not be aware of this.

Zelig,

Re your reference to assimilation in the 50s and 60s: is it coincidental that what you regard as the most terrible time for Indigenous people happens to be perceived by many other indigenous people as the time of hope and opportunity ? The time when restrictions and barriers were being removed ? When people could move to wherever they liked, work and live wherever they liked, marry whoever they liked ?

We really do need to have a discussion about the supposed evils of assimilation -

* on the one hand, insofar as people were able to move to towns and cities and build more secure and productive lives, what great harm did it do ?

* on the other hand, for all those who wave the boogeyman of assimilation at Indigenous people, can they really point to all that many people who, under the policy of assimilation, lost their identity as Indigenous people and 'passed' as non-Indigenous ? Wasn't that precisely what actually happened during the preceding decades, under policies of segregation, open racism and discrimination ? And would that be any wonder ?

So assimilation, in its positive sense, of opportunity and equal rights, has succeeded. But in its negative sense, of loss, it hasn't. Is it so easy to lose one's identity ? I don't think so. My wife and kids certainly haven't lost any sense of Indigenous identity just because there was a whitefella in the house, or living next door.

It really is time to bury the boogeyman of assimilation and stop using it to scare impressionable people. The dichotomy of assimilation versus separation is a false and quite evil one. Equal rights, opportunity and potential should be set against re-segregation, exclusion and loss of potential. The question then becomes: where does a person stand on that dichotomy ? Where do you stand ?

Joe