To inspire people to realise that closing the gap is very possible, I must point out that more than 25,000 Indigenous people have graduated from universities across Australia, overwhelmingly since 1990, two-thirds women, mostly urban (yes, 75 % of the Indigenous population lives in urban areas, perhaps 45 % in metropolitan areas). That's one in every nine Indigenous adults, or one in seven of those who are literate (Dr Michael Dodson has pointed out that 30 % of the indigenous population is illiterate, a shocking statistic). With the demographic changes of the 1980s and 1990s, this total could reach 50,000 by the year 2020 (one in seven adults) and 100,000 by the year 2034 (one in six adults).

Currently, (i.e. in the last year of data, 2008) there are record commencements of Indigenous students at universities, and record enrolments: the equivalent of about 40 % of the 20-year-old age-group commenced study for the first time in 2008, with another 10 % or so at post-graduate level. Actual numbers were: 4321 commencements, and 9529 enrolments. This information can be easily found at DEEWR's website:

http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Publications/HEStatistics/Publications/Pages/2008FullYear.aspx

Demographically, Indigenous births increased from about 7000 annually in the early eighties to about 12,000 annually in the early nineties. This wave is just reaching tertiary age, and perhaps not coincidentally far more Indigenous students are finishing Year 12, so the numbers of Indigenousstudents at universities could easily rise by 6 % p.a. (and graduates, by 7 %) between now and 2020.

So it's not all doom and gloom :)

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Dear Brigid, I was very pleased to see your comments related to “what works” rather than “one size fits all”. The latter in my view is about what I refer to as the “indigenous industry” pushing solutions.

Loudmouth, you have earned enormous respect from me in recent similar threads, where, in my view, you have dealt brilliantly with some I refer to as members of the “indigenous industry”.

I have always thought it is vital to align the “ability” to take advantage of opportunities, with the opportunities themselves. In your view, is what Brigid refers to as “what works” an example of this? Are the very positive examples you provide, products of this process at work and if so, how might we as communities of common interest, take advantage of more of “what works”?

Thanks.

spindoc hear, hear, completely agree with you.

The bullies, and their intolerance, from the AI should not be tolerated.

Thank you, Spindoc and Amicus, the feeling's mutual.

'What works' - well, clearly tertiary education is working and I suppose it could be called an Indigenous-led initiative, i.e. by the students themselves, they are heroes. I can't say as much for Indigenous academics who seem to run as far and as fast as they can from lowly Indigenous under-grads, in their pursuit of higher rewards like four international conferences a year and professorships.

Why has tertiary education worked so well ? Well, has it ? Adults make up about 2.2 % of the Australian adult population (and, taking Dr Dodson's point, about 1.8 % of the Australian adult literate population). In commencements and enrolments, if we take out overseas students, Indigenous students make up about 1.6 % of all commencements, and about 1.3 % of all enrolments. But you won't hear this from the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council (IHEAC) in its pursuit of a Learned Academy for the academic elite, so not all Indigenous-led initiatives are working, I guess. The history of the IHEAC is not all that positive, so far, but we live in hope.

Two-thirds of Indigenous students and graduates are women. Currently, Indigenous women are commencing tertiary study at a better rate than NON-Indigenous Australian men.

Indigenous commencements are currently 90 % at degree-level and post-graduate level. Whereas numbers stagnated between 1996 and 2005, paradoxically as sub-degree enrolments have fallem, higher-level enrolments have risen. And whereas some 30 % of Indigenous students were enrolled in Indigenous-focussed courses in the mid-nineties, today the rate has fallen well below 10 %.

Of the 25,000 graduates at the end of last year, more than three thousand were at post-graduate level. In 2007-2008, an average of around four Indigenous people graduated each day. In fact, since 1990, they have averaged about three a day. Three a day for nearly twenty years. Charlie Perkins would be cheering them on. So three cheers for 'Indigenous-led initiatives' like students' decisions to enrol and graduate at universities in standard awards. Bloody heroes !

I'm not sure what 'cultural safety' means, but I totally support Salman Rushdie's comment that the right to free speech is nothing if it does not include the right to say and write things which are offensive to at least somebody - the right of free speech would be meaningless otherwise.

All human beings are entitled to equal respect, by virtue of being human, and therefore they are equally entitled to hold opinions, this is also an equal right, if you like. But just as anybody can slag my opinions (that's their right, I'm a big boy), it follows that I and everybody else has the right to hold up for scrutiny and criticise other points of view, opinions, perspectives, 'knowledges', beliefs, biases, crackpot ideas (God knows there are enough of those around) and notions of reality - in this case, without necessarily being accused of being racist or sexist or whatever.

Of course, this right does not extend to blatantly racist or sexist remarks, or to speech or writing which incites abuse or contempt or violence against anybody. So this rules out ad hominems :)

So what is 'cultural safety' in this context ? Just as Indigenous people and others have the right (see above) to criticise non-Indigenous society, history, culture, attitudes, beliefs, etc., so does everybody have the right to criticise Indigenous society, culture, beliefs, 'knowledge', etc., if only to draw attention to the need for research into what is taken for granted, and is usually never criticised. A clear example would be domestic violence - is it happening and debilitating communities or not, and if so, is it a hangover from traditional society, or is it something provoked by the evils of colonialism, or a mixture of both ?

I fervently hope that 'cultural safety' will not be used to stifle legitimate - LEGITIMATE - criticism of social and cultural practices, Indigenous AND non-Indigenous. We're all in this together, forever, so we have to resolve issues together, without rancour, abuse or false accusations.

Joe Lane

Hi Joe, many thanks for the follow up. There is much in Brigid’s article and your comments that have the potential increase the understanding of the Australian public and consequently develop the “will” and the “policies” to “close the gap”. Most of us will never have the knowledge to get our heads round many of these issues however, I’m trying to understand. Unfortunately for me, I come from a corporate background, my thinking is somewhat mechanical.

I would like to ask some questions of both you and Brigid if you have the time and the patience.

Observation: When I follow indigenous issues there are two threads. One thread is indigenous people, groups or communities with a view of what is needed. I also observe a wide range of “interested parties” who seek to promote their views. The latter seem to have more influence than the former, why is that?

My corporate starting point is that there must be a “voice” and “empowerment”. By that I mean there should be a mechanism whereby the most “granular” level (individual/family) of input is needed, this is then represented (by appointees) to the group level and then to the collective level (however this is structured). The appointees are coached and mentored with the skills (not opinions) to represent those views on every related topic and distil them into meaningful needs and actions. My observation is that the lack of this process creates a vacuum that is filled by external views; this diminishes the “authority” of indigenous views and cannot be good?

There are always factors that are “enablers” and “inhibitors”. You have indicted that the progress in tertiary education is an example of “what works well”, then a “permissive environment” has indeed been created. It matters not, in my view, if not all indigenous-led initiatives work, that should never be an expectation. What does matter is that problems have been examined and potential solutions considered “by and for” a community.

A permissive environment for education is one thing, how might this be translated into “ownership” of such as health, housing, employment and social/cultural issues?

My point is that, since Indigenous issues are so much in the public arena, we have to be brave enough to face up to 'what isn't working', as well as celebrate and emulate what is. Andrew Forrest's Generation One initiative seems to be working on the one hand, but self-determination in remote communities, on the whole, doesn't seem to be.

If you take your car to a garage for repairs, you don't listen to just what the mechanic says is working fine, you want to know what isn't - after all, that's what he/she is paid for. If he did nothing, and the Mechanics' Guild or whatever forbad any criticism of work done and brought charges, say, of harassment against anybody who criticised a mechanic's work, under the guise of 'occupational safety', it would be a strange society that would allow that. Similarly with social processes and practices which are not going well - they have to be open to assessment, otherwise we keep going down the wrong path.

If we are genuine about 'closing the gap', we have to know about the obstacles which are keeping it open. Lifelong unemployment of able-bodied people seems to be one obstacle which fairly clearly relates to substance abuse, violence and child neglect and abuse. Massive, 100-year, tree-planting projects in the north, and the necessary infrastructural programs, might help to resolve this issue.

Health problems related to diet, exercise and substance abuse might be resolved partly by vegetable gardens and orchards and chook-yards wherever water is available at northern communities, not to mention their helping to soak up unemployment. Ideally, vegetable gardens could include native foods as well. They seemed to work well enough in the missionary times. Walking tracks around every village might help people to get some exercise as well (+ employment).

Of course, if all able-bodied people in northern communities had jobs, and if people were much healthier, there would be the problem of what to do with so many professionals and bureaucrats, now with nothing much to do. But we can cross that bridge in due course :)

Joe

Loudmouth, I see you're once again slagging off at Indigenous academics but then selectively citing them (Dodson et al).
Not all black academics are as you say they are, indeed many of them are busy trying to change the university structures they work in to better accommodate and respond to the needs of Indigenous undergraduates/ post graduates.
Yes there are those who have other loftier aspirations (and why they shouldn’t?) but in the main Indigenous academics choose to work in universities because they clearly see the link between higher education and community empowerment.
This link may not be evident on the ground to grassroots people or people like Loudmouth (whose only contact with Indigenous people appears to be limited to statistical representations) but every time you hear of an Indigenous teacher, lawyer, or other post graduate making inroads for their community you can bet they have been supported by Indigenous peers working in Indigenous centres, many of them having studied and graduated themselves.
And while Mr Loudmouth may think access numbers indicate a revolution, many of us think its only the tip of the iceberg and much more work needs to be done. This can be understood when attempting fathom the difference between the 25% who are accessing higher education and that 25 % of the population of Australian correctional centres. It’s not as simple as Mr Lane (Loudmouth) is purporting it to be. Freedom is a long hard road to walk. But we are walking it.

Rainier,
poor Joe, you gotta feel sorry for the fella as he does not think straight I think.

On one hand he says how wonderful it is that us poor Indigenous people are getting an education - the next thing he is bagging out educated Indgenous people. He just can't make up his mind.

On the earlier OLO about the Stolen Generations, he and his mates kept asking for information, but didn't bother to read it, or maybe they couldn't understand it.

Loudmouth,
if education is so good, how come so many people I have spoken to in a research study ( this arose as a significant side topic) who have at least one degree, some with mulitple degrees plus postgrad, still face continual racism in employment. They still face the assumption that they got a pretend degree/masters/doctorate, and continue to be relegated to lower paying and ranked work - still second class citizens.

Until the issues of racism and racist behaviour is adressed, education just gives us another weapon in our fight for justice.

While education gives us the access to records, literature, proof, of the atrocities and policies of colonisation/invasion and we will use this knowledge to educate those willing to learn, and argue with those who cling to the archaic myths of the colonisers racial supremacy'.

Rainer,

Thanks for your contribution. [God, I wish it would get a bit 'rainer' down here in Adelaide ! Yuk, yuk. Joke, to lighten the mood. Bugger it, didn't work.]

I've knocked around Aboriginal issues for 45 years or so, my brother and I tried to run the first Aboriginal cabaret in Adelaide in 1965. I was lightly involved in helping the Aboriginal candidate in the Miss South Australia contest that year (she was a nurse, and later became a teacher and lecturer, a gorgeous woman :) )

But since AnTAR was set up, I have never felt good enough to join - almost everything I've wanted to do wasn't symbolic enough, it always had that damn practical side to it. In 1972, when my late wife Maria and I cam back from New Zealand, where we had set up the first book-shop selling newspapers from the islands (Cook Island News, Tohi Tala Niue, a major paper from Fiji), we found factory jobs and used to make Aboriginal Flags after work, to send all over the country. Thaey were pretty symbolic, but they had the practical effect of pulling Indigenous people together that little bit more, so that was probably too practical for ANtAR. And the little scurrilous journal that we ran and completely self-funded, Black News, had only a little bit of symbolism in it and probably no symbolic effect whatever.

When we went to live in an Aboriginal community, Maria to open and run the pre-school voluntarily, me to find labouring jobs and get a vegetable garden going in my spare time, those initiatives also unfortunately were too much of a practical nature. And after we came back down to Adelaide to get some qualifications, and worked in Indigenous student support programs for a combined forty years, that too had the practical effect of producing graduates, which would have also failed the ANTaR criterion of being only symbolic.

[to be continued]

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Rainer,

Continuing my search for the purely symbolic:

[continued]

When I was typing up three thousand pages of old documents, I probably hoped that it would be of no practical benefit whatever, but unfortunately some people were happy to read some of them, The Rev. Taplin's 20-year journal, for instance, so again I failed to meet ANTAr's criterion. Other people were happy to read my typed-up copies of the letter-books of the Superintendents at Point McLeay, where my wife was born.

I'm sorry, everything I have done has been insufficiently symbolic, it usually has had - at least potentially - a practical focus. What can I do, Rainer, to contribute something purely symbolic ? Plastic hands, and walks across bridges are already covered. My son has suggested a giant hand balloon to float over Parliament House whenever it is in session. How would that do ? What about a re-enactment of the Rabbit-Proof Fence epic story, perhaps in daily stretches, with support vehicles, etc. ? Or helping to devise, not just opening ceremonies, but closing ceremonies ?

I'm sorry, Rainier, but just about everything that I can think of which seems to be desperately required right now in remote communities has far too little symbolic content, usually only practical content, like vegetable gardens, and far more rigorous adult and school education, and control of addictive substances. All too practical :(

So I seek your advice urgently on these matters.

[continued]



Joe Lane

Rainier,

[continued]

In connection with tertiary students, yes, there have been some wonderful and dedicated staff at universities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, providing support for Indigenous under-graduate students (post-grads know the ropes, they can look after themselves). But they tend to be looked down upon by the Indigenous staff involved in teaching Aboriginal-content courses to non-Indigenous students: support for Indigenous students is lower on the totem-pole than working with non-Indigenous students. And many Indigenous academics are too important to do even this, as they preoccupy themselves with international conferences and research to justify Indigenous research methodology, and powdering their little freckles.

And you are totally right, 25,000 graduates are only the tip of the iceberg to come - 50,000 by 2020 and 100,000 by 2034. They are heroes, symbols of what Indigenous people can achieve, even now (to take Aka's point) in the face of racism in the workplace, which prefers manipulable unqualified Indigenous staff rather than qualified Indigenous staff.

No, nothing is simple in Aboriginal affairs - it's been a long grind, and there is a long way to go, so many things to do, but I'm sure that purely symbolic initiatives (is this what the article's author means by 'what works' ?) can still be given the acclaim that they richly deserve.

Joe Lane

Noel Pearson has an absolutely brilliant article in today's Australian:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/some-magic-bullets-for-education/story-e6frg6zo-1225846160455

Admittedly, there is not much symbolism in what he is proposing, but I'm sure that the teachers' union and other concerned white middle-class citizens can find ways to modify his proposals to ensure that their outcomes have had no practical value whatever by 2020 :)

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Rainier and Akam

I get it now ! I'm using the word 'academic' to refer to Indigenous staff at universities, lecturers and tutors, not to all 25,000 Indigenous university graduates. The Indigenous academics make up a thousand-strong elite, I guess, within the 25,000-strong graduate body.

That might clear up what you think is some weird contradiction in what I was saying. Sorry for the confusion.

But I'll stick by what I said: apart from some very dedicated staff working in Indigenous student support, I don't have much time for most of the rest, who would rather spend time working with non-Indigenous students rather than Indigenous students (on DEEWR's Indigenous student support money), and who in fact would rather not be teaching and tutoring at all, but doing 'research', and actually would rather not do that either if they can get on the international conference circuit and international committee gravy-train. Some of them. That's my get-out-of-jail card. I might need it, literally, if it ever becomes illegal to cast aspersions on the angelic nature of Indigenous academics.

Joe

Closing the gap is about dragging the european patriarchy which has inhabited Australia over
the past two centuries up to the standards of respect and sustainability of Aboriginal tradition.
the magic bullet is women's rights, from which all else proceeds.
readiness and attendance is achieved with parliament and corporate governance conducted by
agreement between women's and men's legislatures and committees.