This timely article really makes me wonder what people on the ground think is covered by the term 'self-determination'. To me, such terms, like 'liberation', 'independence' and 'control over your own affairs' have always meant hard work, more hard work than ever before, as the people themselves grappled with, and took on, all the burdens of responsibility. I just wonder if, in many parts ofthe north, many people thought that self-determination - a gabble of sounds, after all - meant doing less, having someone else doing more for you. Dreadful mistake.

There is a persistent belief that having a high proportion of a population below 25, or 21, or 18, meant ONLY a high birth rate, and a rapid population increase. It may be true, as the author notes, that "in many remote NT communities up to 50 per cent of the population is under age 25 .... " but this can also be a very worrying sign that the mortality of older Indigenous people, i.e. over 25, is very high.

After all, imagine if, in a certain population, nobody much lived past the age of thirty: what would be the proportion then of people under 25 ? In fact, if the birth rate was stable, even if it was at zero, with a high level of adult mortality, the bulk of the population would still be below 25. In itself, it means EITHER high fertility OR high mortality. A combination of both would give the impression of very rapid population growth.

A comparison of births every five years would clarify the long-term situation, and it does appear that, in the NT of all places, the Indigenous birth rate from one Census to the next, or from one Post-Enumeration Survey to the next, reveals a birth rate which has been lower than the nation-wide Indigenous average for decades.

So what 'a high proportion under 25' may actually reveal is the critical need to attend to what is actually a very high young-adult mortality rate, i.e. of people under forty or fifty, rather than a high birth rate in remote communities.

Charlie Ward is spot on in his critique of current policies affecting remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. Let's not beat about the bush on this. Current policy is a deliberate and targetted attack on the continuation of Aboriginal life in the bush except for a few arbitrarily selected 'priority' communities or 'Territory Growth Towns'. Those selected communities are to be large-scale exercises in social engineering, as the 'new Aboriginal person' is created, a bit akin to the making of 'Soviet man'.

In some ways this is a throw back to the assimilation policies of the 50s and 60s, but the architects of those policies, such as Paul Hasluck, were at least benevolent in their desires. Not so the modern policy maker - this is a much meaner and more brutal creature, so sure that they are the ones with the answers.

Current polcies are designed in particular to undercut the role of tradition and traditonal owners and custodians in decision making about Aboriginal land. There is a two-pronged approach here. One prong is to get traditional owners out of the way in the major townships through the mechanism of leases (by the way they are 40 plus 40 leases at the Govenrment's discretion, ie in reality 80 year leases). The second prong is simply to, over time, depopulate the bush. This is why no new houses are ever to be built on outstations and homelands under current COAG and bilateral arrangments.

Under Brough and then Macklin we have seen a largely hidden revolution in Aboriginal policy in this country. It is a new and brutal assimilation. It is not one that should be tolerated in a democratic country such as Australia.

It really is time that these policies were flushed out into the light of day, and that our politicians and senior bureaucrats were required to behave decently, sensibly and with a degree of respect towards Aboriginal people. It is time that neo-assimialtion was put back in the rubbish bin of failed and inhumane policies.

You could be right, Zelig, that government policy's " ... second prong is simply to, over time, depopulate the bush. This is why no new houses are ever to be built on outstations and homelands under current COAG and bilateral arrangments."

Surely, this is precisely why communities which have access to water and other resources have to work hard to set up genuine enterprises, such as vegetable gardens, orchards, chooks and some dairy cows - especially in those places where those sorts of activities were flourishing back in the days of the missionaries.

Where communities have water - and if they have flush-toilets and sewage treatment works [check out Google Maps], they have water - the councils could set aside, or lease, suitable areas of land to a local group constituted as a company or incorporated body, to get such enterprises going, and if possible, to provide neighbouring communities, which don't have much water, with fresh fruit, vegetables, eggs and milk, at reasonable prices, as well as their own community.

As well, of course: camping grounds, caravan parks, guided tours, and local staffing (after appropriate training and education) of all maintenance positions, mechanics, teachers, nurses, administrators, bookkeepers, etc. Is that impossible to contemplate ?

Of course, some of this could have been done while communities had access to effectively free labour, or CDEP, but there you go: Indigenous affairs is a graveyard of wasted opportunities.

Still, Zelig, with such enterprises, people would have a rationale to stay in their home-communities if they wished. But with nothing going on there, why should they stay ? And why should governments build houses where there will never be genuine work ? And should kids be condemned to live in settlements which represent no hope of any secure future ?

Yes, we must think of the old people, but surely people can walk and chew at the same time: we must also think of the young people. Do we sit by and watch another generation go down the drain ?

Joe

Good article by Charlie Ward, bringing into the debate important issues that normally lie submerged in media discussions. The issues raised by Loudmouth are equally important. Would be useful to hear a response from you, Charlie.

Charlie Ward is echoing the sentiments of all communities I visit. I have stated many times on OLO how incompetent the new system is in Nth Qld communities now under the umbrella of well, I can't actually mention the association as this organisation appears to be a sponsor of a community forum.
My particular branch of this organisation is so mismanaging some communities it belies belief. All instigated by Peter Beatty & implemented by Anna Bligh. We don't think it is planned but then again who'd know ? Perhaps there is some truth in the rumours of depopulating the bush. From my observations though it definitely looks like academic incompetence rather than a plan. CDEP was replaced by CEA which is even more evil considering they got rid of CDEP because it was so bad. remote communities have become cash cows for consultants with no responsibility. A lot of money is blown with impunity.
I just hope that people in the south find out about this & that their conscience will help get the coalition back in. I simply can't think it possible that Anna Bligh as Premier could not be aware of this.

Zelig,

Re your reference to assimilation in the 50s and 60s: is it coincidental that what you regard as the most terrible time for Indigenous people happens to be perceived by many other indigenous people as the time of hope and opportunity ? The time when restrictions and barriers were being removed ? When people could move to wherever they liked, work and live wherever they liked, marry whoever they liked ?

We really do need to have a discussion about the supposed evils of assimilation -

* on the one hand, insofar as people were able to move to towns and cities and build more secure and productive lives, what great harm did it do ?

* on the other hand, for all those who wave the boogeyman of assimilation at Indigenous people, can they really point to all that many people who, under the policy of assimilation, lost their identity as Indigenous people and 'passed' as non-Indigenous ? Wasn't that precisely what actually happened during the preceding decades, under policies of segregation, open racism and discrimination ? And would that be any wonder ?

So assimilation, in its positive sense, of opportunity and equal rights, has succeeded. But in its negative sense, of loss, it hasn't. Is it so easy to lose one's identity ? I don't think so. My wife and kids certainly haven't lost any sense of Indigenous identity just because there was a whitefella in the house, or living next door.

It really is time to bury the boogeyman of assimilation and stop using it to scare impressionable people. The dichotomy of assimilation versus separation is a false and quite evil one. Equal rights, opportunity and potential should be set against re-segregation, exclusion and loss of potential. The question then becomes: where does a person stand on that dichotomy ? Where do you stand ?

Joe

Joe, I think you are referring to what some people refer to as integration. Integration in this context respects difference and builds people who are culturally competent (primarily) in the mainstream culture while still maintaining their own identity and culture as they see fit.

Assimilation on the other hand is where Indigenous people, and people from ethnic minorities, are encouraged or forced to embrace the mainstream culture - forgoing their own. That is, for Indigenous Australians assimilation means being absorbed into the mainstream culture and rejecting their own. Assimilation was one of the foundations of the stolen generations and forced displacement of peoples. Of course Indigenous Australians could only ever hope to be conditionally accepted into mainstream culture regardless of how 'white' they acted, thought or looked.

Thanks Aka,good to hear from you:

I'm not so sure that 'assimilation', even as you define it, actually happened. Yes, something like integration, as you define it, certainly did, and probably that was how the policy of assimilation was shaped by the people themselves, into 'integration'.

In other words, 'assimilation' as perceived by policy-makers could never succeed, but as soon as people had opportunities and at least some formal equality, then they co-opted 'assimilation' and re-forged it into 'integration'. Does that make sense ?

And, as you so rightly say, ' .... Indigenous Australians could only ever hope to be conditionally accepted into mainstream culture regardless of how 'white' they acted, thought or looked.'

Which sort of means that any policy of assimilation never had a hope of flying - the Indigenous people took it further, to 'integration', and the whites didn't want much of it either. Even now, many older whites look down their snouts at inter-marriage. Even now, even on the Left, many whites are more comfortable with the notion of Blackfellas somewhere else, out in the sticks, not in their street, and certainly not getting too friendly with their daughters.

By the way, I do get a bit angry when people make the easy assumption that 'white culture' includes all the conveniences of modern life, as if it was some sort of monopoly that other people have to get bloody permission to use. Indigenous people have been in at the beginning of modernity as much as whites: when the first railway in Australia was opened in 1850 or so, in one photograph, there's a local Aboriginal guy sitting on the cow-catcher. The local people were probably involved in building the railway, after all.

I take the view that whatever Indigenous people do, in the city or country, is part of Indigenous culture, part of their contemporary identity, end of story. Whites don't have the monopoly on anything, and I suspect sometimes that the 'assimilation narrative' is a way of shutting Indigenous people out of modern life. Not that it's worked !

Joe

Australia is a great Country you are free to do just about anything. Anyone can do what they are capable of doing if they apply themselves. Sure it maybe harder for some people the path harder but it can still be walked no matter where you come from. I speaking as a lefty here when I say in the end Government can only do so much, Government should only provide a safety net. At some point we have to do it ourselves. It's very easy to blame government and white man in general for the current plight of indigenous poeple. People don't need handouts they need to help themselves.

To the Author Mr Ward how about in your next OLO spot you outline what these remote indigenous groups could do to help themselves.

Cornonacob,

You're spot-on, people have far more opportunities than they are often led to believe. As I tried to point out in

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11383

Indigenous people, primarily in the cities, have seized on higher education and there are currently (2009 figures) record commencements (4832) and enrolments (10465). I anticipate that 2010 data will show record graduations as well.

To put those numbers into perspective, we need to remember that there are about 8,000 Indigenous people in young-adult age-groups. So the equivalent of 60 % of an age-group commences university study each year - about a thousand in post-graduate courses, another thousand in bridging courses, perhaps a few hundred transferring from one course to another - so around a quarter of an age-group commences university study for the first time in a degree-level course.

The upshot is that about one in every nine Indigenous adults is a university graduate, a total of more than 26,000. Too many to form an elite, you might agree, and enough to demonstrate the huge possibilities of university education for Indigenous people.

That won't change into the future: there could easily be fifty thousand graduates, professionals contributing to the economy, by 2020, one in every six or seven adults. With a major birth-rate boom reaching tertiary age just now, there could be a hundred thousand graduates by 2034-2035, only twenty five years away, perhaps one in every four adults.

That will surely be part of 'Closing the Gap' :)

Yes, these developments are evidence of the development of a definite class structure in Indigenous society, with people in remote settlements dangerously left out, on the wrong side of the Gap. Right or wrong, like it or not, that's the reality.

So, do we keep the Gap open, or do we try to find ways to close it ? And is self-determination part of the solution, or part of the problem - as it has been put into practice ?

Joe

To the Author Mr Ward how about in your next OLO spot you outline what these remote indigenous groups could do to help themselves.
cornonacob,
I go along with that. In addition I'd like to see a list of EPA don'ts which deny remote communities to go about a reasonable daily life. For example why deny an indigenous community to create anchorages or bridges or just some facilities without having a clueless bureaucrat two thousand kilometres away to say yay or nay. Imagine if a canal development in the south were denied ? Oh boy, but we can do it on remote communities. Just not possible with a three-legged gerrymander. The amputated leg being the indigenous north. By all means throw tens of millions of dollars at consultants & useless constructions but dare not to provide anything practical.

The opportunities presented throught university and other education come with certain strings attached. Sadly, I would never recommend that an Indigenous Australian does post grad studies, even a phd, if they are wanting secure employment, or recognition of their endeavours.

While Joe regularly points out that there are a growing number of uni graduates and it is to be celebrated, however what the statistics do not show is that university education is a pillar of assimilationist policy. Universities teach Western theory and ideology. As a result, regardless of the educational achievement of Indigenous Australians, the tendency is to only employ Indigenous people who have learned to think white. This is evident in the disertations of many Indigenous PhD graduates where they have had to adopt the Western centric need to position Indigenous people as the other - writing as though they are 'white' and their own mob is the others.

The reality of education for Indigenous Australians is that they either have to embrace mainstream culture and knowledge and the subjugation of their own, or accept short term token jobs where the academic qualifications they have attained are continually under suspicion of not being 'real'. Assimilation in education is endemic and is really, 'it is either the white way or the wrong way'.

so aka, education is bad, whites are bad, assimilation is bad, reconciliation is bad ..

so is it any wonder nothing ever changes with attitudes like this, if it ever did change, some people would have nothing to whinge and whine about .. is it all just fodder for the aboriginal victim industry?

seems that way doesn't it ..

what you go on about is a fantasy, and most of us live in the reality that is life in Australia, however unfair it is that we have to make our own way and accept and be accountable for our own shortcomings and that life is not easy or that we don't all get infinite handouts.

jeez, aka, you need to move on and stop hating white people .. nothing will change until people who want to be victims forever, all die out

the world is not going to give aboriginal Australians a free pass to life, you either join the world as equals, or continue to demand that little bit extra and just hold out till you get it .. and you're still waiting eh aka?

Hi Aka,

You amply demonstrate my claim that " .... people make the easy assumption that 'white culture' includes all the conveniences of modern life, as if it was some sort of monopoly that other people have to get bloody permission to use."

I WAS thinking of white people having those attitudes, but you force me to broaden my thinking. And you have to ask yourself, what use am I to Indigenous people with that exclusionary attitude ?

No, Indigenous people are as entitled as anybody else to go to uni, it doesn't belong to whites. They can study whatever they like. I don't agree with your accusation that they are thereby restricted: it is really up to you to demonstrate otherwise. Don't feed the assimilationist boogeyman, Aka, it does you no credit. Give people a break, let them do as they wish, like anybody else.

rpg does have a point, you know :)

Joe

rpg I will respond to your trolling because you provide a perfect example of what I have been talking about. You demand that everyone thinks like you (god forbid) as your view is obviously perfect (shudder). Get a grip on yourself, it is not all about you and your views.

Contrary to your assertion, I do not hate white people or think they are all bad - gee I am married to a white person, am related to white people and I have even got good friends who are white.

I am not anti education, but it is not the panacea that it is sometimes assumed to be. Becoming educated does not create the equality you bleat about. If only it did.

I am pleased you feel that you are able to extend the offer for me to join the world as your equal, you must be powerful and egalitarian, however if Indigenous people in Australia were equal to mainstream citzens there would be an uproar about the NT intervention.

Alernatively, equality could entail mainstream Oz slipping to having the same as Indigenous Australians. This would definately cause an uproar from mainstream Oz.

You assert that I am somehow demanding something extra. If by that you mean that I want my educational qualifications recognised the same as my mainstream colleages (me ed is all mainstream btw) then yes I do - it is called equality.

Joe, assimilationist equates to maistream culture being insisted on as a condition of being accepted as equal.

I know that Indigenous people are entitled to go to uni and we do, and do very well at it. The point I am trying to make is that simply having an education is not the key to success, particulaly as in some sectors it is treated with disdain and seen as a 'black degree'.

I know I am generalising but I would like to challenge the inherent racism that still acts to exclude Indigenous Australians.

Joe, you hit the nail on the head - there are many reasons and uses for gaining an education, but if it is done as a way of gaining secure employment there can be the assimilationist strings attached.

If on the other hand there are many benifits of gaining an education and post grad research can be very rewarding - but employment can be conditional. Now I am aware that many people are happy to comply with the expected cultural norms in the workplace.

However, for Indigenous people the demand to follow mainstream worldviews and culture can be a tall ask and the expectation that people do so - is assimilationist.

Aka,

There are NO panaceas ! Not even education. Such things help, rather than hinder, but there are no silver bullets, and nothing is perfect. Not even education.

No, Indigenous people are not forced into mainstream education, whatever that may mean: it's theirs as much as anybody else's. I certainly don't agree on ' .... mainstream culture being insisted on as a condition of being accepted as equal .... ' Have Indigenous kids been forced into mainstream education in the Territory ? And look what a mess education is there.

In fact, what has worried me for twenty-odd years is the opposite, that Indigenous people are subtly barred from mainstream courses and funnelled into 'Black' courses by virtue of being 'Black'. I think that's why I was pushed out of the uni system, for supporting the right of Indigenous students to study whatever they liked, and not channel them into Ab Studies.

And once people graduate, they are just as subtly funnelled into 'Indigenous' jobs, units, when they WANT to work in the mainstream, on the pretext that 'you want to help your own people, don't you ?' With the unspoken assumption: ' .... then p!ss off and keep out of OUR business.'

The philosophy back in the 80s and 90s was that Whites have 'their' courses and Blacks should have 'theirs'. Of course, this was a racist view, through and through, even though its proponents probably thought that they were being radical. I'm very glad that it has died so thoroughly in the @rse.

No, nothing is perfect. Indigenous graduates still, I'm sure, get asked to show their degree parchments, and still get pushed into Indigenous-only compartments and sections and units, in teaching and nursing, etc., when they wish simply to be teachers and nurses.

In fact, I think that the big problem is being pushed out, or kept out, rather than dragged in, Aka: exclusion and segregation rather than integration and equal rights to work, restrictions on how and where one can work rather than open opportunity. There's not much new under the sun, dear :(

Joe

rpg,
Education is not bad. Who said so anyway ? Education for education's sake is pointless. Real education is to enhance knowledge & ability not to cram pointless information into a mind that doesn't desire pointless knowledge.
We have prove that it doesn't work, just look at the many educated but useless beings walking the streets & wasting space in offices.
Also, education does not build houses in communities, nor does it catch fish or grow food.
Knowledge with a dose of wisdom does that.
As to your "Whites are bad" I can only speak from experience as a white living in indigenous communities. Yes, many whites who get sent to communities are bad for the community simply because they don't want to be there & only stay there because of very generous allowances. They are actually the major hurdle for those communities to develop any social cohesion. Of course the blame lies with academic type bureaucrats telling fairytales to academic type politicians who then develop academic type policies which don't function in a practical, hands-on situation.

Many analyses but few solutions - try this one - stop giving individual people money as part of a universal welfare program which they waste on goods and services that are killing them at an early age. Put the same amount of money being paid to individuals into community development programs as you would to a Third World country. Administer it through AusAid.
Lets face it - remote Aboriginal communities are equuivalent in standard to Third World conditions and we must acknowledge and stop treating them as an extension of mainstream Australia.

Hi Rollo,

Aboriginal people, wherever they are, are Australian citizens. They are as entitled to welfare benefits as anybody else, and should be as liable to take on civic responsiblities as anybody else. If other able-bodied non-Indigenous Australians are provided with welfare benefits to tide them over unemployment, then so should Aboriginal people. But if able-bodied Australians have to look for work and take it where they find it, then so should able-bodied Aboriginal people.

You can't have special favours on the one hand, that people in remote areas don't have to look for work or go to where the work might be, then complain about the Intervention on the other hand. Equal rights surely also means equal responsibilities. No favours.

Of course, this is pretty much the case for Indigenous people in the cities, especially now that CDEP has been abolished there. No favours.

So should people be actually rewarded, with special favours and benefits, if they also happen to be living on their own land ?

To him that hath shall it be given ?

As a CONSTITUTIONALIST I deplore the conduct of the fake “SORRY” event because there was nothing “SORRY” about when they continue to perpetrated the gross unconstitutional injustice against Aboriginals. That is liker a person while raping a woman telling her he is sorry about it. This whole Northern Territory Intervention act is a unconstitutional legislation and well overdue to be recognised as such. One has to ask why all those lawyers who claim to be so smart by now did nothing about it to rectify it, or could it be that it would not be in their own financial benefit to do so? As an INDEPENDENT candidate in the Broadmeadows district (Victoria) election as well as in the Olympia Ward (Banyule) election I would like to see electors to give the political parties the boot o support INDEPENDENT candidates so instead of political parties doctrine we get back to real representation. If I were elected to the parliament I would question the constitutional validity of legislation and you may just discover it only takes one person with backbone to finally get it all addressed.

loudmouth "You can't have special favours on the one hand, that people in remote areas don't have to look for work or go to where the work might be, then complain about the Intervention on the other hand. Equal rights surely also means equal responsibilities. No favours"

completely agree, you seem to have a very good grip on this and are able to divorce yourself pretty well from the self centered emotion of many.

aka, you twist my words and try to verbal me in your attempt to always be seen as some sort of sage, you come across as a bitter person with a grudge.

As they say, most people in the aboriginal industry are balanced, with a huge chip on both shoulders. You don't like the truth and don't like to be questioned and are clearly someone who grates at not getting their own way .. which is why the perceived iniquities bother you. you need to put it aside, and move on, it's called diplomacy .. demanding everything and then having petulant little fits when refused, will get you exactly, nowhere.

Do you hate whites .. reread your posts (and not just this thread), any reasonable person would assume so. Perhaps it is just subconscious, perhaps you need help?