In the eighteenth century, writers like Rousseau and Voltaire used the term 'nation' very loosely, to refer to any form of grouping related by birth - family, tribe, village, 'community', and so on. Perhaps if we substituted the term 'extended family' for 'nation' in Mr/Ms Williams' article, we might be able to make more sense out of it and get everybody's feet back on the ground.

In a long and largely mis-spent life of involvement with the Indigenous community (marriage, residence, employment), I've read (and occasionally written) a great deal of rubbish about the Indigenous predicament, but I don't think I've ever read anything as juvenile and ill-informed as Mr/Ms Williams' diatribe. It might go down well overseas, or in Mew Natilda, but it is so full of holes in logic and fact, that it is hard to know where to begin.

For a start, "dispossessed" nations ? But surely the vast majority of people affected by the Intervention in the NT are precisely on their own land, and have been perhaps forever ?

CDEP (i.e. no-work programs, mowing one's own lawn, home duties): people had thirty years and more to develop enterprises, starting small with projects such as vegetable gardens ($ 10,000 would do it) especially in those 'communities' which once had flourishing vegetable gardens in the mission days, then perhaps chook yards, a few dairy cows - that would have meant a huge proportion of daily needs satisfied - then orchards, and go from there. In fact, 'communities' with ample water could have been supplying those without much water all this time. And with subsidised labour (i.e., CDEP), they could have been selling those fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs and chickens at city prices or lower ! Indigenous affairs is indeed a junk-yard of wasted opportunities.

Remote community poverty: What, standard welfare benefits, royalties, double- and triple-dipping (CDEP + unemployment benefits + ABSTUDY), remote area education allowances, cheap housing, NT reduced tax tates - these aren't enough to keep people in the life of no-work to which they have become accustomed ?

TBC

Joe

[continued]

So why is life in the cities so much better for Aboriginal people ? How come their health and education and employment opportunities are so much closer to the Australian averages ? No, they don't have land rights, or access to royalties (except in Darwin ?) but they are far more likely to be trying to stand on their own feet.

It is surely obvious by now that self-determination has not worked, thanks mainly to the response to it (lifelong unemployment ? beauty !) by the people themselves. So has integration worked instead ? Yes, on the whole, by any measure. And Aboriginal people in the cities, even with very high rates of inter-marriage, have kept their identity, their links - and without being parked out in the never-never either. 25,000 Indigenous university graduates (50,000 by 2020), overwhelmingly in the cities - they will be the drivers of Indigenous futures, not the poor buggers dragging themselves around sh!tty 'communities'. More power to them !

Back to the books, Mr/Ms Williams.

Joe Lane
Adelaide

Days after landing in Melbourne in 1956, I realized the tragedy you so well describe. In my eyes, indelible, is the picture of that year in which three aboriginal boys and a girl are chained together by the neck.

If their situation has changed in the intervening half century, it has been for the worst.

It is true that it couldn’t be avoided in the nineteen century but an entire civilization has come and gone since Cook times. What we have learned by its passage should have tought us to be more humane but we are making no effort to learn from the past

We could have learned a lot from the Aboriginal culture and we still can if dollars and cents were not obscuring our lives and delivering us to an early extinction.

Skeptic, Australia's history is truly horrific as your account demonstrates, and unfortunately the past continues to influence the present. How else could it be that Chris Hurley is the first and only Australian police officer to be charged over an Aboriginal death in custody.

However, other new settlers like Amicus find the need to ask "Why does no other group in Australia appear to be in such need of total and overwhelming support". Surely a basic knowledge of history would show how Indigenous Australians continue to be ostracised and marginalised in Australia, having only gained citizenship in their own country in the 1960's.

Why is that people like Amicus take no responsibility for finding out the history of the country that has accepted him/her, but stridently demand an explanation that they then promptly berate.

Harden up Amicus, do some basic research, learn some of the history of how harshly Indigenous Australians have been treated since the first settlers/invaders arrived in Australia.

For a start, try and google "genocide Australia"

The "SUBSIDY" in question, "Community Development Employment Program or CDEP" IS WORK FOR THE DOLE and it was mandatory on most communities.

It was the ONLY employer, apart from the Council on the majority of remote communities.

As far as it being a subsidy, it entails working to improve the community and it did work.

Now we've gotten rid of it, removed the only reason a lot of people from these remote areas had to get up in the morning, to actually do a job of work and in turn be paid for it, to be off welfare, yeah, that's paternalistic.

For those who think there are "special loans", "special jobs" or whatever "special else" please, point out ACTUAL EXAMPLES? Put up or shut up.

As for keeping people in the communities, this is their land, period.

It'd be like complaining about the communities in western NSW/QLD that need food to be airdropped to them during flooding, or drought, etc. Oh that's right, farmers and blacks are different aren't they?

One lives on land they don't own, making money off that land and being subsidised whenever the seasons make that impossible. The others live in communities, having been dispossessed of that same land, being subsidised when it is impossible to make money on the community. Why exactly should they move? Their families are there, their support network, etc.

I wish people who were going to throw out racist crap would actually pull their head up out of where they have jammed it and actually go have a look at the "super-sudidised" lifestyle on the communities.

aka, well done, you've picked up my phrase "harden up" from the other comments trail - now, take the next really big step and apply it!

I know the history of Australia as I was brought up and schooled here, whether I believe all the opinions and variations of it is another, but less important point.

The thrust of my comments above which you ignore when anyone brings them up, not just me, is that you live in the past, and it is not relevant today.

Your dismissal of everyone else's story is amazing, it's all about Australian aboriginals isn't it? No one else matters, and you don't care.

Well, fine, the feeling is mutual.

BTW - Australian aboriginals were not here forever, so your noxious comments that I should leave because I don't subscribe to your view can be countered with "why don't Australian aboriginals" leave if they don't like it here? 50,000 years, 200 years, it's all relative, is the aboriginal claim better because they have been here longer?

Land dispossession is the undercurrent of world events, always has been, nothing new there.

So, harden up aka, don't take your anger out on people who tell you the truth about how the community feels, you can't take it and you react the same way every time I see our posts - accuse people of all manner of racism and bigotry instead of using your energy to uplift aboriginals into the broader community. The potential and capability to do something is in the grasp of aboriginals.

It is not an aboriginal land, it never was - aboriginals lived here, but there was no "nation", except in the land of make believe.

Join the community at large and move on. Attacking people who tell you hard realities just prolongs the anger and pain.

That's not racism, it's just an observation .. you can argue, but really, shrill hysteria and dog whistling are not helping aboriginals are they?

Reconciliation is a two way street, but there is only good will one way isn't there aka?