Loudmouth:>> Wha ?! 25,000 Indigenous people in this country are university graduates, and the total could reach 50,000 by 2020 - that will be one in every seven adults.<<
>> . Nothing to do with 'hunter-gatherer societies', just plain old racism.<<

Joe I am not referring to the ability to complete tertiary education, and therefore I am not referring to IQ. I meant the ability to culturally assimilate with a vastly more complex European society, as I said no indigenous peoples have been able to assimilate culturally.

The issue is environmental and psychological.

Environmental from the fact that these pre modern cultures end up in the lowest socio economic strata of the community, being environmentally challenged to achieve the perceived strata of opulence or accreditation that the European culture holds in admiration.

Psychologically in regard to the difference in the perception of "value” between indigenous and European cultures.
Time runs European cultures down to the minute, and our children accept that time dictates actions and move onto adulthood knowing that they must be at work on time, must keep appointments, be at a pre arranged place at a pre arranged time etc. Indigenous people view and value time in a different framework to Europeans. The term "walk about" is used to describe the Aboriginals inability to understand European time. When they have had enough they would walk away, usually regardless of consequence, "now" is the only relevant time to them at that moment. It is not choice, it is psychological makeup.

Joe you mentioned the fact that Aboriginal kids achieve scholastically, and as I said the denial of that was not my premise. What I refer to is the ability after the education to live on European time, with every second accounted for.

Please do not call me a racist based on a misinterpretation of my words

Joe (Loudmouth)

Thank you for taking the time to reply in full, it is appreciated.

Sorry, SonofGloin, I wasn't referring to you as a racist - my use of the term related to the exclusionist educational policies of the first half of the twentieth century, which were modelled on the colonial policies employed in Africa and elsewhere, under the rubric of 'culturally adapted education' - which in turn were modelled on the 'industrial' (i.e. grossly inferior) education foisted on Blacks in the US. Strange how the term (and the content) has entered the stage again, this time from the Left.

<<I meant the ability to culturally assimilate with a vastly more complex European society, as I said no indigenous peoples have been able to assimilate culturally.>>

<<What I refer to is the ability after the education to live on European time, with every second accounted for.
>>

I think the supposed inability of Aboriginal people to 'assimilate' (whatever that may actually mean) has been hogwash from Day One. Here in SA, when whaling stations were set up on the south coast, within months of the first occupations, Aboriginal people from the surrounding regions were involved from the outset. Admittedly, their needs (meat) were symbiotic with those of the Europeans (skin, bone and oil), so they may have thought that they were onto a good thing ,and not have even perceived that their country was elsewhere being invaded and occupied. But within five years or less, the people in that region had become familiar with money, clothes, tobacco, grog, flour, and the ability 'to live on European time', by which I'm guessing that you mean routine, punctuality, 'industrial time', as Marx would have called it.

[TBC]

Joe

SonofGloin,

Further on the subject of 'assimilation' (one day, there has to be a discussion about what the word means, in all its manifestations):

Economic and social 'assimilation': The first railway built in Australia ran through from Port Elliott to Goolwa (and vice versa: so versatile!): Aboriginal men would have been involved in its construction and unless my old eyes are deceiving me, one of the photographs on its opening day had an Aboriginal bloke sitting on the cowcatcher. People were certainly IN the general economy from the earliest times.

Aboriginal people across the south and east of Australia saw their first planes, cars, the Overland Telegraph (actually I suppose not too many white Australians have actually seen the Overland Telegraph) at roughly the same time as white people did. Most Aboriginal people are not all that exotic, but they ARE all human beings :)

My wife Maria was born in a small Aboriginal community on Lake Alexandrina. By the time her great-grandfather finished school there in the 1860s (all the kids could speak and write in English), the Overland Telegraph to Melbourne had been built, passing the mission by a couple of miles. By that time, there were four or five schools within fifty kilometres, a dozen taverns to cater for the overland traffic to Melbourne and the South-East, a dozen churches of most denominations, forty paddle-steamers going past on the Lake, post offices, stores, and a couple of police stations. Men worked up and down the Murray on the harvests, people went to and from Adelaide and the neighbouring towns, and Aboriginal people from other groups were moving to the mission to live and start families. Her great-grandfather took up a farming lease in the late sixties, as did many other Aboriginal men between then and 1900.

Call it what you like, but Aboriginal people were participating in 'Australian' life from the early days.

[TBC, yet again]


Joe

SonofGloin,

Where is Gloin ? It sounds Irish :)

What do you mean by 'cultural assimilation' ? You don't think that Aboriginal people all over Australia don't drive, watch TV, use ATMs and shops, play football, etc. ? Many paint, sing, rap-dance, and for all I know, collect stamps and rare coins. What 'cultural' aspects are you referring to ?

The reality is - and I apologise for the angst this might cause to all those, Black as well as white, who can't BELIEVE it - that Indigenous people are as able as anyone else to master the heights of our educational system, the universities. One in nine Indigenous adults is now a graduate, after barely twenty years of full-on involvement. Standard or mainstream higher education is part of Indigenous people's identity, part of their culture, part of who they 'are'.

Now for the hard part: getting used to that reality, Black and white: it's going to drive the future.

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Another fact Joe.

Our native people have been getting 'whiter' with every generation. I don't only mean they have been merging into mainstream Australian culture through education, employment and way of life but also genetically.

The Aboriginal gene pool is already heavily diluted and becoming more so. Right now there are many people who say they are "Aboriginal" but whose make up is at least 3/4 Caucasian and or other race/s. Some may APPEAR about as Aboriginal as Kevin Rudd. Others mistaken for Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or Latin descent.

Usually white culture tends to predominate (If you can't beat 'em, join 'em plus whitey life tends to be more attractive) so in another 50 years or so I predict that assimilation will be pretty much complete.

Dysfunctional communities will inevitably dwindle into insignificence or die out when abused & neglected children are finally rescued and given education, support and training needed to live healthy independent lives, or at least the chance. They will lead the way for their people. Those beyond help will self destruct but without dragging the next generation into the morass.

So there's a bit of 21st Century dreaming for a better, healthier, vigorous future for all Australians ...