Dr Raynes,

No, I haven't changed my criteria to include restitution - in view of the fact that it was illegal in every state and territory to take children from their parents against their will without cause, i.e. illegally, all I am asking you to do, please, is name one Aboriginal person who was taken from their parents illegally. No more, no less.

Still waiting. Just one :)

CJ, I'm certainly not suggesting that no Aboriginal children were ever taken into care, but that - just as for non-Indigenous children in dire circumstances, the state had an obligation to do so. The glaring issue to me is how could conditions get so bad - in both cases - that such custody was necessary ? Why were people allowed to sink into destitution ? Why were health conditions so bad that so many mothers died in childbirth or of preventable diseases and exhaustion ? Why were children put in the position of near-death by starvation and malnutrition ? Why were Aboriginal men condemned to go hither and yon, seeking work in deplorable conditions ? Why isn't anybody condemning the conditions of life which Aboriginal people - and many non-Aboriginal people - were forced to endure ? Why aren't their complaints about the dumbed-down education systems of the early twentieth century which prevented Aboriginal people from gaining higher-level skills, and thsu condemned them either to unemployment or to employment at the lowest and most dangerous levels ?

We also forget that single mothers generally could not get any financial support from the state until 1971 or so, and that Aboriginal people could not get unemployment benefits on missions and settlements until about 1969. As well, in our current relatively affluent and stable life-conditions, we now find it hard to even conceive of a population of 'orphans', abandoned and neglected children, non-Aboriginal as well as Aboriginal.

[continued] .....

[continued] .....

And if the aim of some nefarious policy was to turn Aboriginal kids into white kids, why were so many of the homes well away from towns and cities - Oodnadatta, for example ? Why were so few kids ever fostered or adopted if this was the policy ? Why were they cooped up together if the aim was to scatter them and obliterate their culture ?

Ngarmada, person of mystery: I forgive you for your ad hominems, you probably don't have better arguments. Nga Tamatoa ? Remember the 123 Bookshop in Ponsonby Road which my brother and I set up in 1970, where we showed films for the local kids ? Small world :)

Individual: I might be half-baked but I deny that I am corrupt >:( Apart from that, I fully support your comments about 'life' on a remote community: it raises the issue of whether or not children are the property of parents to do as they wish with, or are they equal human beings from birth towards whom the state has a fiduciary 'duty of care of last resort', that those kids have as much right to be cared for as non-Aboriginal kids and thus the state has similar obligations. I think there should be far more people working in Aboriginal communities like you, who are courageous enough to criticise the crap that is going on, and to ask: should children anywhere have to live like this ? The truth shall set you free, CJ.

Foxy, you're on the wrong thread: try the one two down.

Ngarmada again: your projection onto others of your threats of violence as THEIR threats against YOU is amusing: what can you do to them, reach through the aether and rip their heads off ? I guess there are many levels of ad hominem arguments, after all, from the merely abusive to the clearly psychotic.

[continued] .....

[continued] .....

So, Dr Raynes, Please name just one: this is a much more modest request than Andrew Bolt's, and surely more easy to fulfil.

Incidentally, in many of those working parent/boarded children situations, the role of the mission and dormitory would have often been taken so much for granted by the Aboriginal people that parents would have dropped off their kids every week before they went out to work, so there may not even be any documentation. I think that would have happened at Gerard in the fifties, when parents went out on the fruit-picking during the week and picked up their kids on the weekends: a win-win situation, in that the kids were altogether, in regular touch with their parents, living in a community of Aboriginal people, with little danger of becoming little white kids. It certainly happened like that at Point McLeay from 1860 to around 1917. So it was very likely at Koonibba right from 1904.

Joe Lane,
Henley Beach
rmg1859@yahoo.com.au

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

Why are you suggesting another thread to me?

Was it something I wrote - that you found
offensive?

I'd like to know the reason for your
remark.

Dear Joe (Loudmouth),

My apologies.

I went and read that particular thread
and now I get it!

Just ignore my previous post.

And by the way - Thanks!

No blairbar, again you misrepresent the facts, probably as fictitiously as your claims of recognition of your balanced perspective by Indigenous Nth Qldrs. However, I am impressed how consistently pathetic your attempts to identify posters remains. In what part of the Australian military did you serve, inturligents? Don’t go near the ANZACS, they may despise you.

I am not a founding member of the Mongrel Mob, the ‘roopu’ I belong to is much more sophisticated and fearsome than that. I am aware however, the extent of bigotry you demonstrate, realises your fear factor at full capacity.

In fact the Mongrel Mob, alike Black Power, were initiated from disaffection of the continued perpetration of colonial oppression, as clearly and factually identified as the evidence Cameron R. is able to demonstrate in refuting your mindless and moronic claims. It is no coincidence your contributions to OLO are observed and identified as meaningless as those of your associate racists on the site, including the evident and resident stalker, ozzie.