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