Joe, the number of graduates is impressive and a credit to those who have pushed the barriers aside, as well as to the graduates themselves. So thanks for these observations. But a couple of questions for you (and anyone else):

How many of these tertiary students came from city families who gave up or were forcibly removed from their traditional country years ago?

Should Aboriginal people have the right to continue a largely traditional lifestyle on tribal lands with the adoption of ‘white’ values and options to the extent they choose?

What should be done to give children in traditional communities a fair shot at a good education?

If the issue is "how to get people up on their own two feet and making their own decisions" do you support the Greens and Labor policy of an Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander elected body like ATSIC?

What should be done to give children in traditional communities a fair shot at a good education?
Alan Austin,
Just for once can we stop forcing people to have to do what we want ? Let people make up their own mind. They know that academic education is not available in certain places. If they'd want it they'd go & seek it. All this education waffle is well & good if there is employment at the end of it. But there isn't is there ? look what Hawke's clever country achieved ? Absolutely nothing, on the contrary. We now have academic ignoramuses running around indigenous communities like chooks with their heads cut off & stirring everyone up. These mutts cost the taxpayer a fortune just to dream up useless schemes that cost the taxpayer even more. Yes we do need education but it has to have a degree of pragmatism. Education just for education's sake only gives us what we have now, a great many confused people with no idea where they're heading & dragging everyone down the drain with them. A mechanic or a plumber or a carpenter can keep a community going, an academic can't. So, which is of more use ? Education is not about creating intelligence it's about harnessing & putting intelligence to use for the common good. In the past few decades all we got out of education is two generations of people who can't contribute to their own existence & expect everyone else to feel responsible.Is this Education ? No.! Force-fed mindlessness ? Yes !

Joe,
Great numbers on education, maybe i am not so correct and for the last generation things are moving. Perhaps we are simply expecting to much to quick and the change comes generationally and in another 30 years there will be much stronger outcome as the next generation of uni graduates come through.

Individual,
I take it that you refer to tertiary education. If that is so i very much agree, we have far to many uni degrees and no where near the trades people that we need. more practical action and less brilliant ideas that amount to nothing would be appreciated.

nairbe "The intervention for all respects is as bigger disaster as the batt's scheme. Pity there isn't the same level of outrage in the community over that."

The Coalition hasn't been running the intervention since November 2007 .. if it's now a disaster, I suggest parking at the ALP's door, not the coalition.

I agree, why is there no outrage about it? If the coalition was running it and it was a disaster, we'd all know about it - but because it's the ALP, it's evidently OK for it to be a disaster. Mind you, among all their other disasters it probably doesn't rate .. except when you think of all the rhetoric about what they were going to do, and haven't done.

Then again, ALP voters seem to love the symbolism don't they .. and someone actually doing something, like the intervention is what .. you seem to think it's still being run by the coalition, such is the level of knowledge of ALP voters .. or such is the spin, you think it's still being done by PM Howard.

Do you remember why it was done? To improve child health and safety was a m major reason .. how's that going? Why don't we hear .. because it is a success? You're the first person I've heard mention it for ages .. the ALP have sure buried it haven't they.

If there is a human rights issue, again, go ask the ALP.

Alan, thanks for your questions; I'll try to offer answers to each of them:

<How many of these tertiary students came from city families who gave up or were forcibly removed from their traditional country years ago?>

- You might be aware that, although Indigenous people were dispossessed 150-200 years ago in the settled parts of Australia, they were still not allowed to live in urban areas until well after the Second World War. But many people broke out of missions and dispersed across rural towns in the forties and fifties and sixties, and from there people moved to the larger towns and cities where opportunities were better for their kids. So close to half of all Indigenous people now live in Australia's cities, and this has been going on for up to three generations or more.

Universities tend to be based in the cities. So, no surprise ! Indigenous university students and graduates tend to come from the cities. In the eighties, the first major boom in Indigenous student numbers, a much higher proportion of students came from country towns - but even then, very few came directly from communities.

<Should Aboriginal people have the right to continue a largely traditional lifestyle on tribal lands with the adoption of ‘white’ values and options to the extent they choose?>

- Of course, whatever 'a largely traditional lifestyle' might mean in the context of welfare and royalty incomes, Toyotas and half-million-dollar homes. Are people actually living 'a largely traditional lifestyle'? I don't know, I don't think so.

<What should be done to give children in traditional communities a fair shot at a good education?>

I would take Individual's advice on this. I'm not sure what he means by 'academics' (university graduates ? university lecturers ?) but he seems to be critiquing the b*llsh*t TAFE courses foisted on Indigenous people in communities, the rubbish Certificates which have got people nowhere, under the guise of 'Aboriginal TAFE'.

[TBC]

Alan,

Another 'representative body' ? Was the last one a major driver of innovation and opportunity and a beacon of light and prosperity, or was it a crock, memorable for its innovative combination of incompetence and corruption ?

We now have an MP in the Lower House, and articulate and outspoken leaders like Noel Pearson, Warren Mundine and Wesley Aird. Indigenous issues are likely to be prominent in this new government's thinking, if only because Noel and others will keep them honest. Meanwhile, dead silence from the newly-appointed Council of Indigenous Whatever: quieter than a fifth wheel, only less useful.

Yes, voluntary organisations can spring up any time, anywhere, nothing is stopping Indigenous people from initiating their own associations, but appointing some bunch of elites to roll around in a $ 128 million bucket of money and big-note each other ? Really ?

Nairbe, 'expecting too much too quickly' ?! No, higher education is one area in which Indigenous people ARE moving quickly, and not asking your permission either - given that 30 % of the Indigenous population is illiterate (Prof. Michael Dodson), the university participation of LITERATE Indigenous people is close to parity. Indigenous women are commencing university study at a better rate than Australian non-Indigenous men. Commencement (4600) and enrolment (10,000) numbers break new records every year.

These are not just mindless numbers: the current 25-26,000 graduates are individuals with families, relations, and friends, and with influence in their work-places. They have graduated across the entire spectrum of tertiary study - you name it, there's already graduates. By 2020, by which time graduate numbers could double to 50,000, these graduates will be in regular contact with a couple of hundred thousand other Indigenous people and their families. By 2034, the graduate numbers could double again. Of course, by that time, 80-90 % of the Indigenous population will be urban, perhaps 70 % metropolitan.

This isn't some one-off 'that's nice' moment: it's forever. The people are doing it, and they are not waiting for 'progressive' whites to get their heads around it. They are leading, not following.

Joe